Protesters: Give Highland Park donated fire rig collecting dust - KMSP-TV

Protesters to Detroit: Give Highland Park donated fire truck collecting dust

Down on your luck?  Your town is burning down?  Can't get no satisfaction?  Here is this week's lesson in how to get the government to work for you.

As you might know, Detroit got a fire truck donated to it last year, but hasn't really used it.

Now Highland Park, the poor stepbrother to Detroit, doesn't have equipment fit for a junk yard.  They have been begging for Detroit to give them the truck.

Friday, Highland Park came to Detroit to take it.

We asked Mayor DeAndre Windom why Detroit is making them beg.

"I'm not coming to beg.  I'm just demanding," he explained.

"Give it up, turn it loose," one person said.

"Let Highland Park use it," said another.

"We need one desperately," a woman remarked.

"Free the truck," a child said.

"This is about what's morally right," said Detroit paramedic Wisam Zeineh.

You know what happens in America when you voice your opinion?  They come down to the street.

"We wanted to get the fire truck if it wasn't being utilized here in the City of Detroit because we could use it in Highland Park," Windom told Detroit Fire Commissioner Don Austin.

"We will bend over backwards to do anything we can to provide assistance.  Nothing has changed.  What I'm announcing today in this short meeting here is not new.  We've been doing this all along.  So, I don't understand where the discourse is other than you want our truck, and we can sit down and maybe have a conversation about that.  So, if you would like to do that, you're both welcome into my office," the commissioner responded.

Well, they're talking, and that's a start.  Good for you Highland Park and thank you Commissioner Austin.