Stray dogs roaming the ruins of Detroit

It doesn't matter to Jessie Clarke how many stray or loose dogs are roaming the ruins of Detroit. After the 65-year-old was attacked by two pit bulls outside of her east side home in April, even one or two is too many.

She's not alone, as some Detroit residents complain that packs of dogs for years have terrorized various neighborhoods. So far, there's been no reliable way to know how many there are, though some have guessed it's in the thousands.

But Tom McPhee, a filmmaker and executive director of the Ann Arbor-based World Animal Awareness Society, hopes a two-day survey that started Saturday will put a number to the problem.

Clarke's left arm shows scar tissue from dozens of stitches used to close a gash ripped by the pit bulls. Similar marks are on one of her legs.

"There was a lot of biting. There were a lot of stitches," Clarke said from her dining room, looking through a window at the spot of the attack.

The more than 30,000 vacant houses and buildings that once were homes for Detroit residents now provide havens and shelter for the animals. McPhee said he plans to share the numbers to find a way to humanely deal with what has become a safety risk as the strays breed, increasing their population even as the city's population falls. Read more >>

Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reveals Dysfunction Common in Cities

No city was hit as hard by the recession as Detroit, America’s one-time industrial capital whose decades-long decline cut its population in half and left $18 billion in debt it can’t afford to pay.
Even so, the pressures that pushed Detroit into the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history are playing out on a smaller scale around the nation. Diminished tax revenue and rising labor costs have left four cities insolvent since 2007. Service cuts were made by others such as Detroit, where street lights are dark and police are scarce.

“None of the other cities are as far along, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of cities that have similar issues,” said Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public-policy research organization in Washington. “Every other industrial city has problems that could send them down the same path.”

U.S. municipalities have recovered slowly from the 18-month recession that ended four years ago, depressing property-tax revenue and leading to investment losses for pensions that many cities haven’t fully funded for years. Projected pension and health-care obligations for the 61 biggest cities will top assets by about $217 billion, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based research and public-policy group. Read more >>

Detroit retirees face pension cuts

The battle over the future of Detroit is set to begin this week in federal court, where government leaders will square off against retirees in a colossal debate over what the city owes to a prior generation of residents as it tries to rebuild for the next.

Soon after Detroit emergency manager Kevyn D. Orr and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) approved a bankruptcy filing Thursday, groups representing the 20,000 retirees reliant on city pensions successfully petitioned a county court to effectively freeze the bankruptcy process.

Now, city and state officials, who say the court ruling will not affect their plans, are asking a federal judge to hold hearings early this week to validate the bankruptcy and move forward with a strategy for Detroit to discharge much of its estimated $19 billion debt.

Orr has promised that retired city workers, police officers and firefighters will not see pensions or health benefits reduced for at least six months. But on Sunday, he said those retirement benefits will have to be cut down the road. Read more >>

Obama To Detroit: No Bailout

While in the past President Obama has been more that willing to throw good money after bad and "refuse to let Detroit go bankrupt," it seems when push comes to shove - under the intense scrutiny of a nation awash in scandal, a drastically bifurcated congress - that despite the imploring from local congressmen for "moar" already - that the savior of the city will not this time ride to the rescue on his white horse.

In a statement, the White House said they "are monitoring the situation in Detroit closely," with no hint - just as they have made clear for months - of any sort of Federal bailout. As USA Today notes, the federal government provided federal loans to prevent New York City from declaring bankruptcy during the 1970s. But times have changed; the federal government has debt and financial problems of its own, and a Detroit bailout could run into significant opposition in Congress and cause serious damage in the Muni market.

While the GM debacle put pensioners ahead of creditors, it would be unprecedentedly bad for the massive Muni bond market should Obama acquiesce and change the law once again to put pensioners ahead of GOs... Read more >>

10 Scenes From The Ongoing Global Economic Collapse Sweeping Across The Planet

A simulated-color satellite image of Metro Detroit, with Windsor across the river, taken on NASA's Landsat 7 satellite. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Excerpt from The Economic Collapse

When is the economic collapse going to happen?  Just open up your eyes and take a look around the globe.  The next wave of the economic collapse may not have reached Wall Street yet, but it is already deeply affecting billions of lives all over the planet.

Much of Europe has already descended into a deep economic depression, very disturbing economic data is coming out of the second and third largest economies on the globe (China and Japan), and in most of the world economic inequality is growing even though 80 percent of the global population already lives on less than $10 a day.

Just because the Dow has been setting brand new all-time records lately does not mean that everything is okay.  Remember, a bubble is always the biggest right before it bursts.  The next major wave of the economic collapse is already sweeping across Europe and Asia and it is going to devastate the United States as well.  I hope that you are ready.

The following are 10 scenes from the economic collapse that is sweeping across the planet:

#1 27 Percent Unemployment/60 Percent Youth Unemployment In Greece

The economic depression in Europe just continues to get worse with each passing month.  According to the Daily Mail, the unemployment rate in Greece has nearly tripled since 2009...

Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 per cent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country's crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.

Greece's jobless rate has almost tripled since the country's debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone's average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.

While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 per cent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January.

#2 Detroit, Michigan Is Insolvent And Is Rapidly Running Out Of Cash

I love to write about Detroit because it is a perfect example of where the rest of the country is headed.  They have just gotten there first.  At this point, Detroit is essentially bankrupt, and the new emergency financial manager is saying that Detroit may totally run out of cash next month...

Detroit may run out of cash next month and must cut long-term debt and retiree obligations, according to emergency financial manager Kevyn Orr’s preliminary plan to save Michigan’s largest city from bankruptcy.

Orr’s report says the cost of $9.4 billion in bond, pension and other long-term liabilities is sapping the ability to provide public safety and transportation. He listed cutting debt principal, retiree benefits and jobs among his options.

“No one should underestimate the severity of the financial crisis,” Orr said yesterday in a statement. He called his report “a sobering wake-up call about the dire financial straits the city of Detroit faces.”

#3 Economic Despair In France

France is going down the same path that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy have gone.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Economist...

HELDER PEREIRA is a young man with no work and few prospects: a 21-year-old who failed to graduate from high school and lost his job on a building site four months ago. With his savings about to run out, he has come to his local employment centre in the Paris suburb of Sevran to sign on for benefits and to get help finding something to do. He’ll get the cash. Work is another matter. Youth unemployment in Sevran is over 40%. Read more >>

Detroit $14 billion in debt

The fiscal crisis plaguing Detroit is now in the hands of Michigan's governor after a state-appointed review team determined the city was in a financial emergency with "no satisfactory plan" to resolve it. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has 30 days to decide if Detroit needs an emergency manager to take charge of its finances and spending, and come up with a new plan to get the city out of its financial mess.

After spending weeks looking at the city's books, the independent review team released a report Tuesday saying Detroit's deficit could have reached $900 million last fiscal year had it not borrowed enormous amounts of money. The city's long-term liabilities, including underfunded pensions, are more than $14 billion.

The report also said the city's bureaucratic structure makes it difficult to solve the financial problems. Some fiscal experts believe the city's only way out may be municipal bankruptcy, but state Treasurer Andy Dillon said answers could be found if the city and state work together. Read more >>

Drought Hits Shippers on Great Lakes

The Midwest drought is lowering water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to near-record lows, putting pressure on the shipping industry and turning some beaches into long mud flats. It is also intensifying a debate over a decades-old dredging project near Detroit that permanently reduced the lakes' levels by nearly two feet.

The two lakes, which meet at the Straits of Mackinac, were down nearly a foot in August from a year earlier and nearly two feet below the average for the past century. The levels could break a record low set in 1964 in the next few months, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projections.

The drought has lowered water levels in lakes and rivers throughout the Midwest, including the Mississippi, which has experienced periodic closures to barge traffic. But even the vast Great Lakes, which represent a fifth of the earth's surface fresh water and are hundreds of feet deep, are being hit by the lack of rain.

Great Lakes water levels are especially important to the shipping industry, which moves some 200 million tons of cargo each year, since the depth of water near ports and shipping channels dictates how much coal, iron, grain or other cargo can be loaded on ships. Read more >>

Abandoned Homes Plague US Cities

Some local governments hardest hit by population losses are struggling with what has been left behind: large numbers of abandoned housing units. Census figures released Thursday underscore the problem: In places racked by foreclosure, job loss and a weak economy, housing units haven't fallen as fast as population.

A handful of cities such as Detroit have demolished thousands of housing units over the past few years. Many others — such as Baltimore, where city officials said as many as 10,000 empty buildings need to come down — have seen levels remain flat. Although an eighth of the nation's 800 largest counties have lost population since 2005, fewer than half those have seen declines in housing stock.

"The principal impediment is the cost," said Michael Braverman, deputy commissioner of code enforcement for Baltimore Housing, which tears down 200 to 300 buildings a year.  Read more >>

Home Prices Fall to Lowest in 10 years

Home prices hit new post-bubble lows in March. Average home prices were down 2.6% from 12 months earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major markets. Home prices have not been this low since mid-2002.

In 13 of the 20 cities, average home prices fell in March from the year before. Atlanta fared the worst, with home prices down 17.7% year over year. Home prices in Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit and Las Vegas are all below their January 2000 levels.

Alternatively, Phoenix posted the largest gain, with prices up 6.1% from last year. Other cities showing an uptick included Dallas, Denver and Miami. Overall, the 20-city composite is down about 35% from its peak in 2006. Read more >>

Half of Detroit’s Streetlights May Go Out

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating nearly half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year. 

Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Detroit’s plan goes further: It would leave sparsely populated swaths unlit in a community of 713,000 that covers more area than Boston, Buffalo and San Francisco combined. Vacant property and parks account for 37 square miles (96 square kilometers), according to city planners. Detroit’s dwindling income and property-tax revenue have required residents to endure unreliable buses and strained police services throughout the city. More...

99 of 100 metros lost jobs in past year

bizjournals.com

Ninety-nine of the nation’s 100 largest markets -- including Buffalo -- have fewer private-sector jobs now than they did a year ago, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The sole exception is Augusta, Ga., which added 100 private-sector jobs between March 2009 and the same month this year.

The biggest declines occurred in the Chicago market, which lost 133,200 private-sector jobs during the past year, and the New York City area, which lost 133,000.

Buffalo’s year-to-year decline totaled 4,600 private-sector jobs, which ranked 22nd on a list that went from Augusta's gain down to the biggest losses. More than three-quarters of America’s 100 major metros suffered bigger drops in raw numbers.

Click here for the latest employment data for all 100 markets.

Wichita, Kans., suffered the worst 12-month decline in percentage terms. Its private-sector employment fell 6.0 percent between March 2009 and March 2010. Las Vegas was next with a drop of 5.9 percent.

Buffalo posted one of the nation’s 10 smallest declines on a percentage basis, 1.1 percent.

Other information released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday:

• Seventeen of the top 100 markets have expanded their employment bases during the past half-decade, led by Houston, which has 142,300 more private-sector jobs now than it did in March 2005. Austin was second with a five-year gain of 55,200 jobs.

• Los Angeles suffered the biggest decline since 2005, losing 344,500 private-sector jobs. Detroit came next with a drop of 318,600. Buffalo’s five-year loss was 11,500.

• Forty-eight markets have gained private-sector jobs over the past decade. Houston was again the leader, with a 10-year increase of 205,000 jobs. Washington was the runner-up with a pickup of 202,900 jobs since March 2000.

• Nearly half a million private-sector jobs have vanished from the Detroit area during the past decade -- 474,700, to be precise. That’s by far the worst decline suffered by any top 100 market. Buffalo’s 10-year loss was 27,500 private-sector positions.

Rampant Unemployment across America: 35 Cities Suffer Unemployment Above 15%

Ben Rooney
Unemployment rates continue to rise, with the majority of U.S. metropolitan areas showing an increase in January, according to a government report.

In fact, there were 35 metropolitan areas with unemployment rates at or above 15% in January. California and Michigan remain the hardest hit, with 19 cities in California showing rates above 15%, according to the Labor Department. Michigan logged the next highest number, with 6. In December, there were 25 cities with jobless rates above 15%, most of which were also in California and Michigan.

Overall, jobless rates increased in 363 of the nation's 372 metropolitan areas in January. The number of metro areas with jobless rates above 10% reached 187 in January. Contrast that with the national unemployment rate, which stood at 9.7% in January, according to the government's monthly jobs report.

There were only 2 urban centers with rates below 5% in January. That compares with 10 areas that posted rates below 5% in December.

Spotlight on California

Friday's report highlights the ongoing job woes for the nation's most populous state. Unemployment increased in all but one of California's 27 metropolitan areas during January. El Centro, the one city where the jobless rate fell, continues to have the highest rate in the nation, at 27.3%. Merced, Calif., had the second highest rate at 21.7%, followed by Yuba City, Calif., at 20.8%.

However, high unemployment rates in California's agricultural areas are not unusual since many seasonal farm workers collect unemployment for several months out of the year in those areas. Still, the job market remains strained in parts of California where farming is not the main industry. Los Angeles, for example, suffered a jobless rate of 12.4% in January, compared with 11.3% the month before. A year ago, unemployment in LA was 9.8%. Meanwhile, all 15 of the metropolitan areas in Michigan reported higher jobless rates in January.

One jobs bill down, what's next?

Michigan has suffered rising unemployment for several years as the state's manufacturing industry has gone into deep decline. In the Detroit metro area, unemployment rose to 15.6%. Another city that has suffered from a prolonged job slump, Elkhart, Ind., reported a 15.6% unemployment rate in January. While that's still high, it marks an improvement over the 19.2% that the former auto-industry town posted a year ago.

Among the cities with comparatively low unemployment rates, many were located in North Dakota, Iowa and Kansas. All four of the metro areas in North Dakota, for example, reported declines in the unemployment rate during January.

Instant Karma: New US War Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon

Chris Floyd
Wow, that didn't take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from ... wait for it ... Yemen!

Yemen-trained terrorists on the loose in American airplanes! At Christmas! Great googily moogily! It's a good thing our boys are on the case over there right now, pounding the holy hell outta some of them Al Qaeder ragheads! And to think, a few pipsqueaky fifth columnists had been starting to wonder why we were killing dozens of innocent civilians on behalf of an authoritarian regime embroiled in a three-way civil war on the other side of the world.

Well, now they have their answer, by God! Alleged attempted terrorists allegedly trained in Yemen! What else do you need -- a freaking warrant or something? We would obviously be justified in nuking that desert hell-hole and everybody in it! Just think of it -- some guy with some kind of something on an airplane, right there in the Heartland! You gonna stand for that? Exterminate the brutes!

And yet, because we are good, because we are godly, because our heart is always in the right place, even when -- as President Obama himself admitted in his noble Nobel Speech -- we sometimes make mistakes, we have not brought down the full force of the iron rod that God himself has placed into our hands for the chastisement and right order of the world. No, there will be no nukes falling on the children of Yemen tonight. But boy howdy, they'd better get ready for some sure-enough heavy ordnance -- fired from distant ships, from far-flung bases and from computer consoles in leafy Stateside suburbs, where you can bravely kill some alleged attempted somebody-or-other (and everyone in their immediate vicinity), and still make it home in time to to eat supper with the kids.

So here we are. Just one day after the alleged attempted terrorist incident in Detroit, we already have headlines blaring in the New York Times, the "paper of record," tying the alleged attempt to Yemen. How quick and convenient is that? Already the echo chamber is roaring with the all-justifying cacophony: "Terror, Yemen, al Qaeda, Homeland, Bomb, Terror, Yemen, Yemen, al Qaeda."

And it must be true, right? I mean, just look at how well-sourced the NYT story is. "A law enforcement official" -- Police captain? State trooper? G-Man? Traffic cop? -- said that the alleged attempted terrorist said he'd got his "explosive chemicals" from Yemen. (Elsewhere in the paper, other unnamed officials told NYT reporters that the alleged material strapped to the alleged attempted terrorist was "incendiary," not explosive. But who cares? "Bomb, Terror, Yemen!")

Of course, the NYT noted that "authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the suspect" (nor, they could have added, have they independently corroborated that the claim was actually made), but still, the completely anonymous "law enforcement official" said that the suspect's claim "was plausible," and even added: "I see no reason to discount it."

Well, it doesn't get more solid than that, does it? They nailed that story down so tight you couldn't pry it open with God's own crowbar. An anonymous source confirmed the plausibility of his own claim. Man, that's ironclad. It's certainly good enough to light up the media firmament with headlines linking "terror in the Heartland" with the empire's newest killing field in a volatile foreign land.

And it turns out that the suspected attempted terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was already on the radar of our all-encompassing security services -- just like the last Muslim terrorist in the heartland, Major Nidal Hasan. (And, for that matter, just like many of those accused of carrying out the 9/11 attack.) As in almost all of these cases, the question arises: Who is running whom? (For more, see "Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire.")

But this query is precisely the kind of pantywaist handwringing that rightly goes down in the flood of the he-man Homeland Security strutting that always follows these incidents. As we noted here the other day, there's no time for depth, context, history -- or even facts -- when the "frame" is screaming "Terror!"

In any case, whatever facts about the case -- or rather, shards and splinters of filtered information -- that are allowed to emerge from the depths of the security apparat, you can be absolutely sure that, as always, the "facts will be fixed around the policy."

And what is that policy? Why, endless war, of course! The American war machine (which now dominates most of "civilian" society as well) is like a shark: it must keep moving, and feeding, or die. "Terror, Bomb, Yemen!"

Thousands Mob Detroit Center, Hope for Free Cash

Scuffles erupted as several thousand Detroit residents jockeyed, pushed and shoved Wednesday to get free money being offered to only 3,500 of the city's recently or soon to be homeless.

Dead Bodies Pile Up in L.A., Detroit; families, counties broke

Image via Wikipedia

Poppy Harlow, CNN
Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer.

Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. "Some people don't come forward even though they know the people are here," said the former Detroit cop. "They don't have the money."

Lifelong Detroit residents Darrell and Cheryl Vickers understand this firsthand. On a chilly September morning they had to visit the freezer to identify the body of Darrell's aunt, Nancy Graham -- and say their goodbyes.

The couple, already financially strained, don't have the $695 needed to cremate her. Other family members, mostly in Florida, don't have the means to contribute, either. In fact, when Darrell's grandmother passed recently, his father paid for the cremation on a credit card -- at 21% interest.

So the Vickers had to leave their aunt behind. Body number 67.

"It's devastating to a family not to be able to take care of their own," said Darrell. "But there's really no way to come up with that kind of cash in today's society. There's just no way."

The number of unclaimed corpses at the Wayne County morgue is at a record high, having tripled since 2000. The reason for the pile-up is twofold: One, unemployment in the area is approaching 28%, and many people, like the Vickers, can't afford last rites; two, the county's $21,000 annual budget to bury unclaimed bodies ran out in June.

"One way we look back at a culture is how they dispose of their dead," said the county's chief medical examiner, Carl Schmidt, who has been in his position for 15 years. "We see people here that society was not taking care of before they died -- and society is having difficulty taking care of them after they are dead."
Detroit is not alone. The Los Angeles coroner's office said it, too, has seen an increase in the number of bodies abandoned. That's not surprising at a time when unemployment tops 10% in many cities and the median cost of a funeral in America hovers around $7,000. Cremation can cost $2,000.

Little help available

This is an issue of concern, said the Detroit mayor's office, but the city can't afford to offer any assistance. "The failure, through inability or choice, to bury the deceased is a reflection of the economic conditions that have arrested this region, where people are now forced to make emotionally compromised choices," said a spokesman in a prepared statement.

The state, however, does have some funds available to assist with burial costs. For fiscal year 2009, Michigan allocated $4.9 million for assistance, and of that, approximately $135,500 remains. Those in need of assistance can find grant applications at Michigan Department of Human Services offices, most funeral homes, and at Michigan.gov/dhs.

The Vickers did not know about the funds until CNNMoney notified them. But, fortunately, they were eventually able to scrape together the $695 and will be able to cremate their aunt with help from Social Security, social services and their aunt's church.

The way Darrell sees it, the stimulus package should have helped people in situations like this, rather than to "spark the economy and sell cars. We can't take care of our own when it comes to laying them to rest and letting them rest in peace."

'Reflection of the economy'

Believe it or not, the Vickers are among the fortunate.

Dozens of other bodies remain, some never identified. And they can't be disposed of until their families come forward or the county's burial fund is replenished when the 2010 budget is approved. There were 66 bodies before Aunt Nancy's, and they'll be interred on a first-arrived-first-buried basis.

"There are many people with sad lives," said Schmidt. "But it is even sadder when even after you are dead, there is no one to pick you up."

And in a town with so much need, Schmidt noted one more cause for concern: The increase in unclaimed bodies is not due to an increase in murders -- though the rate remains high -- but due to natural causes. Schmidt speculated that many of the deceased didn't have health insurance or could no longer afford medication for the chronic medical conditions.

"If anything is a reflection of the economy, that is a reflection of the economy," he said.

But this messy reality is shielded behind the Wayne County morgue's perfectly trimmed hedges and pristine brick walls.

"I feel sadness because I can recall when it [Detroit] was really booming," said investigator Samuels. "I don't think a lot of people are really aware that these types of things are happening in such a wide area."

Detroit jobless rate a record 28.9%

JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
The unemployment rate in the city of Detroit rose to 28.9% during July, the highest rate since modern record-keeping began in 1970. The rate rose from a revised rate of 28.3% in June. Unlike statewide rates, the rates reported for the city are not seasonably adjusted. Rates tend to rise in July because auto manufacturers lay workers off during the annual model-changeover period. And, of course, Michigan has been suffering the nation’s highest jobless rate for most of the past two-and-a-half-years. The state’s rate was 15% in July. The national rate was 9.4% in July.

Low crimes like Breaking and Entering may not get prosecuted in Detroit

California may capture the lion's share of media attention for black hole budget woes, but cities and states across the nation are crumbling before our eyes -- as Wall Street rallies on -- and may soon become about as lawless as the Wild West. To wit, Detroit. Prosecutor Kym Worthy told commissioners that low-priority crimes like breaking and entering might not be prosecuted and the conviction rates will continue to decline if the proposed budget for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is approved, according to Kathleen Gray with The Detroit Free Press.

“We can’t even cover our courtrooms anymore,” Worthy said in vehemently disagreeing with the $28-million general fund budget proposed for the prosecutor’s office by Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. “At some point, if the budget continues to be cut, we’re going to have to start making decisions about what crimes we prosecute.”

Commissioner Burton Leland states the obvious: “The No. 1 problem in the city is crime. If there’s not a certainty of punishment here, this is the place where they come to do their business. You’re the last department we should cut.”

“I know times are tough," said Worthy, "but I don’t care about any other department. I care about mine,” she said. “I’m not a prima donna, but we’re losing cases now that we shouldn't’t because we don’t have enough people.”