Forget the trials (no pun intended) of Democrat Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit’s collapse from years of impoverishing corruption and violent crime has created a morbid phenomenon unheard of by people from even the seediest cities in most of America: an exodus of the dead.

Reading this Charlie LaDuff piece I imagine that this is the final stages of White flight though Black folks with the means have been fleeing Detroit for some time as well so it is probably more accurate to say that the Dead Flight phenomenon is the third stage in the general emptying out of a dying city as it enters its last death throes.

The disinterment and moving of the dead by their families is driven, as you could imagine, mainly by the fear of the lousy neighborhoods surrounding them:

The movement of the dead from the nation’s largest black city to its overwhelmingly white suburbs is a small, though socially symbolic phenomenon, revealing the grinding problems of race, crime and economics that plague both sides of Eight Mile.

From 2002 through 2007, the remains of about 1,000 people have been disinterred and moved out of the city, according to permits stored in metal filing cabinets in the city’s department of health. Looked at in another way, for about every 30 living human beings who leave Detroit, one dead human being follows. Moreover, anecdotal evidence compiled by a Detroit professor suggests the figure may be twice as high, meaning city records may be incomplete and that thousands upon thousands of deceased people have been relocated from the city over the past 20 years.

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Although there is little information or statistical evidence regarding the phenomenon across the country, it is quite likely that Detroit and its surrounding communities lead the way, as it does in population loss among the living.

The reasons are two-fold, surmises Patrick Lynch, a Clawson funeral home director and executive board member of the National Funeral Directors Association. “People have to drive to a place that may take them through neighborhoods they otherwise may never go,” he said. “Their safety might be compromised. Whether that is real or perceived, it’s real to them.

Detroit is the setting of the film The Crow and a little research shows that J. O’Barr’s bleak vision of a crime ridden wasteland wasn’t far from the reality of the motor city. I think the thing that surprised me the most was that Devil’s Night, a major theme of the movie, is real and had gotten bad enough that volunteers are organized every year to patrol the streets to help stop the arson.

Detroit police are coy about posting official crime stats, but word on the street is that Detroit is murder city and you enter the city proper at your own risk. With the loss of business that suburban visitors would have brought the city, Detroit’s problems will only get worse. For the first time in American history we are literally seeing a major city collapse in on itself, its foundations undercut by “progressive” politics and union driven corruption. It should serve as a warning to all the radicals out there as to what their political agenda ultimately looks like.