Editing Coleman Young (section)

==Assessment==

===Corruption===
Six federal investigations of his administration resulted in trials and convictions for some of his associates, including Detroit Police Chief and Deputy Chief, William L. Hart and Kenneth Weiner, but none for Young.<ref name="2000Trib">{{Cite web 
|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-01-10-0001100068-story.html 
|title=FBI Reportedly kept an eye on Mayor Young 
|work=Chicago Tribune 
|quote=Records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act show the surveillance began in the 1940s, when federal agents who suspected the well-known labor activist had communist ties followed him to union organizing meetings, the newspaper said. Federal agents continued keeping tabs on Young through the 1980s, when bugs were planted in his office in the official mayoral residence. 
|date=January 10, 2000 
|access-date=January 2, 2022 
|archive-date=January 2, 2022 
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220102195211/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-01-10-0001100068-story.html 
|url-status=live 
}}</ref><ref name=graft>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/28/us/ex-police-chief-gets-a-10-year-sentence-in-detroit-graft-case.html| work=The New York Times| title=Ex-Police Chief Gets A 10-Year Sentence In Detroit Graft Case| date=August 28, 1992| access-date=July 15, 2014| archive-date=January 18, 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140118213941/http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/28/us/ex-police-chief-gets-a-10-year-sentence-in-detroit-graft-case.html| url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=embezzlement>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/08/us/former-detroit-police-chief-convicted-of-embezzlement.html| work=The New York Times| title=Former Detroit Police Chief Convicted of Embezzlement| date=May 8, 1992| access-date=July 15, 2014| archive-date=March 31, 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140331192934/http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/08/us/former-detroit-police-chief-convicted-of-embezzlement.html| url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2000, a [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|FOIA]] investigation showed that Young was under FBI surveillance beginning in the 1940s (because of his suspected link to communists) and continuing through the 1980s. The Detroit FBI office turned over 935 of its 1,357 pages of material, which included business records and wiretap transcripts.<ref name="2000Trib"/>

In 2018, ''[[Detroit Free Press]]'' columnist Bill McGraw said claims Young was corrupt were a "myth":<ref name="2018Freep">{{Cite web 
|url=https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2018/05/26/coleman-young-myths/638105002/ 
|title=Coleman Young: The 10 greatest myths 
|last=McGraw 
|first=Bill 
|work=Detroit Free Press 
|quote=The FBI investigated Young for decades. They confronted him in random places; asked about his politics; wiretapped his condo; wired a convicted con man who was his business associate and scrutinized the mayor’s finances. But while relatives and people around Young went to prison for corruption, Young never was indicted or charged with a crime. 
|date=May 26, 2018 
|access-date=January 2, 2022 
|archive-date=January 2, 2022 
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220102195214/https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2018/05/26/coleman-young-myths/638105002/ 
|url-status=live 
}}</ref>
<blockquote>The FBI investigated Young for decades. They confronted him in random places; asked about his politics; wiretapped his condo; wired a convicted con man who was his business associate and scrutinized the mayor’s finances. But while relatives and people around Young went to prison for corruption, Young never was indicted or charged with a crime.</blockquote>

===Crime===
Though there were no civil disturbances as serious as the race riots of [[Detroit Race Riot (1863)|1863]], [[Detroit Race Riot (1943)|1943]], and [[1967 Detroit riot|1967]]  during Young's terms as mayor, he has been blamed for failing to stem crime in the city.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} Several violent gangs controlled the region's drug trade in the 1970s and 1980s. Major criminal gangs that were founded in Detroit and dominated the drug trade at various times included The [[Errol Flynns]] (east side), Nasty Flynns (later the NF Bangers) and Black Killers and the drug consortiums of the 1980s such as [[Young Boys Inc.]], Pony Down, Best Friends, [[Black Mafia Family]] and the [[Chambers Brothers (gang)|Chambers Brothers]].{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

From 1965 onward, Detroit had experienced an upwards trajectory of its homicide rate. In 1974, the year Young took office, the homicide rate in Detroit was slightly above 50 per 100,000 residents. Over the rest of the 1970s, Detroit's homicide rate trended downward, dropping below 40 homicides per 100,000 in 1977 and 1979. However, in the 1980s the homicide rate significantly increased, reaching a peak of 63.5 in 1987. In 1994, the year Young retired from office, the homicide rate was roughly 54 per 100,000.<ref name=damron>{{cite news| title=Detroit's homicide rate nears highest in 2 decades| url=http://www.freep.com/article/20121228/NEWS01/312280175/Detroit-s-homicide-rate-nears-highest-in-2-decades| work=[[Detroit Free Press]]| first=Gina| last=Damron| date=December 28, 2012| access-date=July 15, 2014| archive-date=November 9, 2013| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131109153319/http://www.freep.com/article/20121228/NEWS01/312280175/Detroit-s-homicide-rate-nears-highest-in-2-decades| url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Economic conditions===
Young's administration coincided with some periods of broad social and economic challenges in the United States, including [[economic recession]], [[1973 oil crisis|oil shock]], the decline of the U.S. automotive industry and a loss of manufacturing sector jobs in the Midwest to other parts of the U.S. and the world. [[White flight]] to the Detroit suburbs, which had begun in the 1950s and accelerated after the [[1967 Detroit riot|1967 race riot]], persisted during Young's two decades in office, amid ongoing crime and drug problems in the inner city. Supporters of Young attributed the flight to factors such as white resistance to court ordered [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]], deteriorating housing stock, aging industrial plants and a declining automotive industry leading to a loss of economic opportunities inside the city.<ref name=decline>{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873465,00.html| title=Michigan: Decline in Detroit| access-date=July 15, 2014| magazine=Time| date=October 27, 1961| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070520082431/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C873465%2C00.html| archive-date=May 20, 2007| url-status=dead}}</ref> Over the course of his time as mayor, Detroit lost about one-third of its population.<ref>[[Largest cities in the United States by population by decade]]</ref>

Economic conditions in Detroit generally trended sideways or downward over the period of Young's political tenure, with the unemployment rate trending from approximately 9% in 1971 to approximately 11% in 1993, when Young retired. However, most economic metrics (unemployment, median income rates, and city gross domestic product) initially dropped sharply during economic recessions, reaching their lowest points in the 1980s and early 1990s, with the unemployment rate in particular peaking at approximately 20% in 1982.<ref name="cus.wayne.edu">{{cite web|url=http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/publications/Detroit%20Crime%20Barometer%20October%202005.pdf |title=Detroit Crime Barometer |publisher=Wayne University Center for Urban Studies |date=October 2005 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029195308/http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/publications/Detroit%20Crime%20Barometer%20October%202005.pdf |archive-date=October 29, 2013 }}</ref>

Young himself explained the impact of the riots in his autobiography:

{{blockquote|The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totalling twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion – the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969.{{sfn|Young|1994|page=179}}}}

===Police department===
Young himself expressed his belief that reform of the police department stood as one of his greatest accomplishments. He implemented broad affirmative action programs that lead to racial integration, and created a network of Neighborhood City Halls and Police Mini Stations. Young used the relationship established by community policing to mobilize large civilian patrols to address the incidents of [[Devil's Night]] arson that had come to plague the city each year. These patrols have been continued by succeeding administrations and have mobilized as many as 30,000 citizens in a single year in an effort to forestall seasonal arson.<ref name=meredith>{{cite news| last=Meredith| first=Robyn| work=The New York Times| date=February 19, 2008| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/03/us/civic-angels-curb-detroit-devil-s-night-fires.html| title=Civic Angels Curb Detroit 'Devil's Night' Fires| access-date=July 15, 2014| archive-date=August 8, 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140808031317/http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/03/us/civic-angels-curb-detroit-devil-s-night-fires.html| url-status=live}}</ref>

===Overall===
A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the [[University of Illinois at Chicago]] ranked Young as the twelfth-worst American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Holli | first = Melvin G. | title = The American Mayor | publisher = PSU Press | year = 1999 | location = University Park | url = https://archive.org/details/americanmayorbes0000holl | isbn = 0-271-01876-3 }}</ref>