Replace Tools Stolen from Precinct

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday, thieves broke into our building and stole everything we had been using to do our restoration work at the historic former Detroit Police Department 6th Precinct. Now, the Detroit workers that we hired from the neighborhood are not able to work - these thieves took the food right out of their mouths at the worst possible time - during this holiday season.

The scrappers stole our generator, our compressor, all of the power tools, drills and saws. They hauled away all of our expensive door locksets, nine stainless steel sinks, angle steel for security windows, shelves, a number of jail bars, all of our power cords, all of our hand tools, utility carts and just about everything they could get their hands on during their first trip. Worse, they piled up even more materials at the inside of our door so they could return and do more damage. Thankfully, the Detroit Police Department discovered the break-in on Monday morning Dec 1st and helped us prevent them from coming back and doing even more damage.

Our project is all about helping Detroit. We are trying to restore an incredible piece of Detroit history. We are trying to bring new jobs to a Detroit neigborhood, to create a Cloud Computing Data Center where servers are actually safe and sound in Jail Cells - DataBehindBars. We are trying to spur commerce, to provide IT Office Space in the same building as our high speed cloud, to renew and revitalize Detroit and make a difference outside of Downtown and in the severely depressed outer ring where the City needs us the most. We are trying to provide free wi-fi to the homes located around us, and to provide community space for meetings and training. We are trying to breathe new life into this building and into this neighborhood. 

This theft puts us out of business and brings our project to a screeching halt. Our Detroit workers are now sitting home with no work to do, and we are busy licking our wounds, trying to make sure nobody comes back to steal from us some more. Can you help us get back to work? This loss has amounted to approximately $14,000 in stolen gear and another $4000 in damage and new costs to secure what broken areas they have left behind.

Our project needs much more money than this to complete - so if you want to see our dream become reality, you can feel free to give above and beyond our goal. Every penny will go to our project and will help keep our newly hired Detroit workers on the job. You can see more about this project at https://www.facebook.com/6thprecinct and at http://www.databehindbars.com and there are two news stories about our loss at http://www.wxyz.com and http://www.myfoxdetroit.com if you want to see more information.

Thanks so much for taking the time to hear about us and our project.  The direct links to those stories are: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/27542615/scrappers-halt-restoration-of-former-detroit-police-6th-precinct and http://www.wxyz.com/news/thieives-target-old-police-precint-in-detroit