An attack on one is an attack on all of Hamtramck

Six women were victimized this past week in Hamtramck.

That, of course, is six too many.

We don’t know what this means, whether Hamtramck’s streets are getting meaner, or if it’s just one of those unfortunate flukes.

One thing we do know: What happened to those women is intolerable, and something needs to be done to prevent incidents like these from happening again. Fortunately, there are concerned community members who have formed “Take Back the Night Hamtramck” to combat these assaults on women.

In the first incident, in case you haven’t heard by now, two women were kidnapped at gunpoint from their Andrus St. home by a spurned ex-boyfriend of one of the two. At this point, more than a week since the women went missing and the ex-boyfriend and his accomplices have been arrested, it’s unlikely the two women are alive.

In the second incident, a street thug carjacked four women who had just left a bar and sexually assaulted three of them. (One woman was able to escape before anything worse happened.)

We are truly sickened by what has happened, and our hearts go out to the women and their families.

Hamtramck is hurting this week. An attack on innocent victims is an attack on our city.

Crime statistics tell us that if you are going to be a victim of crime in this city, it will likely involve the theft of your property. But that is hardly comforting.

We’ve heard repeatedly in recent months from a variety of residents that the streets seem to be getting meaner. There is fear in the air.

But there is hope. Hamtramck knows how to organize and fight back. We do, indeed, own our streets, and we’re not going to let some mindless thugs take that away.

We all need to do some soul-searching in the coming days. More importantly, we need to band together, get to know our neighbors and figure out how to make our city and our lives safer.