Light years seem to have passed between Detroit's June 17, 2013, bankruptcy filing and the warning issued by the city's newly elected Mayor Coleman Young in his 1974 inaugural address.
"It is time to leave Detroit. Hit Eight Mile Road. And I don't give a damn if they are black or white, if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road," he said.
To the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city, equating the police with criminals was a way of telling his overwhelmingly black constituency that he understood their concerns about police brutality and civil rights.
To the city's white residents, it was a message that he placed those concerns above public safety and civil order. White flight, which began in the late '60s, accelerated.
In 1970, Detroit's population was 1.5 million. Forty-four percent was African-American, 54 percent was white. By 1990, the city's population had fallen to slightly more than 1 million, with African-Americans accounting for 78 percent and whites only 20 percent.
The population shift under Young cemented the Democratic Party's lock on the city. The labor organizer-turned-Democratic lawmaker would serve five terms, stepping down in 1993 at age 74 as his health worsened.
Under him, Detroit became a one-party big city machine. The last Republican mayor, Louis Miriani, was elected in 1957. Since 1970, only one Republican, Keith Butler, was elected to the city council.
As a result, Detroit exemplifies what happens when one political party - and it doesn't matter if it's the Democrats or the Republicans - keeps an iron grip on political power for decade after decade.
Young used the power to reward his base. The police force became 50 percent minority under his watch. Efforts to steer city business to a black-owned company resulted in two federal corruption probes in the early 1980s. Young himself was never charged.
Other corruption scandals followed. Young's police chief, William Hart, was convicted of embezzling $2.4 million in police funds in 1992.
Young's successor, Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned amid a "pay to play" and sex scandal in 2008. In March, he was convicted on 24 counts including racketeering and bribery.