If you're living in Detroit and you've been paying close attention to the whirlwind spinning around the city over the firing of Police Chief Warren Evans, then you're probably thinking "this is all we need." And if you are, you're right. But you shouldn't be surprised.

Top Detroit cops getting the ax should be as familiar to Motor City residents as Faygo Redpop. It goes back to the early '90s, when William Hart was convicted of embezzling $2.6 million from the city, all the way up to now.

So it should come as no surprise that the murder rate has increased, although it should be noted that the violent crime rate has dropped. The buck has got to stop somewhere and all roads lead to 1300 Beaubien -- that's police headquarters, y'all.

Mayor Dave Bing has declined to say what led to Evans' firing. It could have been his participation in the A&E show 'The First 48,' the chief's relationship with a subordinate, or how well the two men got along, even though Bing handpicked Evans.

But the beginning of the end was obviously the shooting of Aiyana Stanley Jones earlier this summer. That is a very involved, complicated case with victims who did not deserve to be hurt, thugs that deserve to be put under the jail, and a grimy lawyer who deserves to be hung by his toenails and flogged.




Evans was out of town when the incident happened but many people traced the police's tactics back to his heavy handed style. It was popular when he was nabbing knuckleheads off the street. But when innocent little girls started winding up dead from police bullets and his tactics proved only to be as effective as the New York Police Department's "Stop and Frisk" policy - that is, not very - his credibility waned.

When that happens to a Detroit police chief, the writing is on the wall. Evans' predecessor Ella Bully-Cummings, the department's first female police chief, and Evans ex-wife, retired in 2008 after morale in the department reportedly fell to an all-time low. This was around the same time that ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was being charged in the sexting scandal that has him locked up today.



Evans took Bully-Cummings' place with Bing's full confidence. But this was also as Detroit made national headlines as a city sinking in quicksand. That attracted reality TV producers like bats to a cave and perhaps Evans saw an opportunity to show good, effective police work.

The cameras of "The First 48" were rolling when police busted into the East Side home where 7-year-old Aiyana lived with her family. That footage has been confiscated by the Michigan State Police which is still conducting its investigation, but it is probably the only evidence that shows what may have been good police work gone awry, or may show sloppy uncoordinated police killing a child.

Whatever it was, it was enough to do yet another Detroit Police Chief in.