Detroit 1-8-7 cast including Michael Imperioli at center
By Diane Bukowski Aug. 5, 2010
DETROIT – The new ABC cop series, “Detroit 1-8-7.” is currently shooting in the city without council-approved permits, according to City Council member Kwame Kenyatta. Its producers claim it will inject $25 million into the “local” economy, while its stars are injecting much of what has been spent so far into the economies of well-to-do suburbs like Birmingham and Royal Oak.
Controversy about the show has swirled in the wake of the May 16 killing of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones by Detroit police. They shot her in the head after throwing an incendiary grenade into her home, as TV cameras from A&E’s “The First 48” were rolling.
Mayor Dave Bing afterwards barred reality shows from trailing police, but his chief communications officer Karen Dumas says he is working with “Detroit 1-8-7” producers.
“We met with the production staff of Detroit 1-8-7, who expressed their interest and willingness to work cooperatively,” Dumas said. “They removed their initial trailer, which some saw as negative. [While] any film production requires permitting (granted by the city) for access to city locations, street closures, and any resources required for those things, them doing the show in general does not require our approval. They were committed to doing the show anyway, and we thought it best to work with them to insure a mutually beneficial outcome.”
The revised trailer on the show’s website says, “Welcome to Detroit, home of the auto industry, Motown Records, and the finest homicide detectives in the country. These are detectives that are protecting this city any way they can. Every victim deserves justice, every cop has their methods, every crime has a story, but here in this city its takes more than just a badge, it takes being a champion.”
It features actors’ lines including, “I love this city; I’ve been a cop in this city so long, when I started, half the suspects was white,” and “Since the homicide rate went up, we’ve had to add columns, we’ve sort of hit capacity.”
Detroit actor and producer Edward Greene, New Life Entertainment
Edward Greene, 24, of Detroit, is an actor and producer with his own Detroit-based company, New Life Entertainment. He said he has been acting for five years, after African-American actors Morris Chestnut and Blair Underwood selected him for training in a special project.
He was interviewed after he testified at a City Council discussion on the show July 27.
“My company is taking a negative and turning it into a positive, like a baby being born,” Greene said. “We want to put the right things in our children’s lives. We need shows that put Detroit in a more positive light, and also lead to the establishment of in-house production companies. ’Detroit 1-8-7’ is painting a negative picture of our city.” Continue reading
