Rugged personality-possessing newspaperman Charlie LeDuff can typically be found roaming Detroit in search of frozen hobo bodies and colorful raccoon hunters. Today, he has a more serious topic: Enough violence to make you...well, never want to go to Detroit.

LeDuff's story today on the murder of a witness to another murder unfolds like a single strand of an unceasing web of violence, drugs, and urban hopelessness; by the time LeDuff's finished, he's detailed two gun murders, a man beaten to death in a nightclub, the vagaries of Detroit's biggest crack gang, multiple crime witnesses terrified for their own lives, an old man beaten and robbed, and one informant convinced the prosecutor of the case he's informing on is going to get him killed. And vice versa!

"Me and my family's dead, know what I'm saying? I mean, the first witness got killed," he shouted. "The prosecutor's desperate for a case but they can't even use that tape. I could have been lying. It's hearsay. If they subpoena me, I ain't saying s—-. I'm taking the Fifth. Who's gonna protect me? BMF runs the streets. I'm f——— dead. I ain't going out without a gun battle. I promise. There's gonna be a war."

The prosecutor wears a bulletproof vest, btw. Detroit: Jesus Christ, what the fuck. Read the whole story. And the upshot of this piece of journalism: LeDuff tells us he's taking precautions with his family. "Let me just say they're staying elsewhere." [Pic: Flickr]