In today’s video, we’re going to take you with us as we explore an abandoned police station and courthouse within the city of Inkster Michigan. Inkster is a small city, only about 6 and half square miles, located approximately 20 miles west of Detroit, following along the famous US 12 route also known as Michigan avenue. The city of Inkster is notorious in its own right, with an extremely higher rate of violent crime than the US average.
Many locals consider Inkster to be just as dangerous as its neighboring city of Detroit and often gets a bad wrap for such. In the late 1960s, the city of Inkster built a sprawling municipal complex along South River Park Drive, just to the north of Michigan ave. It consisted of three buildings; the city hall, police station, and courthouse.
The modern and brutalist looking municipal buildings were in operation for approximately 45 years when the city of inkster was awarded $8 million funding to build a new city hall and police station directly off of Michigan avenue in 2013. In 2014, the new building was finally completed and the offices all moved out from the former complex along south river park drive. The old municipal buildings were left abandoned and as you will see in the video, city officials left pretty much everything behind for us to uncover upon our exploration.
When we first explored the inkster police station, courthouse, and city hall in 2017, we couldn’t believe the amount of supplies, equipment, property, files, and paperwork left behind. Of course we found boxes of criminal and traffic tickets, folders of criminal investigations, the booking area, the detective offices, the courtrooms, the evidence room, and the jail cells. In addition to all of that, we also found police officer uniforms, jackets, and a bulletproof vest in the old locker room.
But nothing could prepare us for what we would eventually uncover in the basement. The first thing that we came across was an old conference room that had several different plastic and foam people, made for target practice. And yes of course they had been riddled with bullets. One of the people targets looked like Burt Reynolds while another adorned a gas mask. On top of the table, we found more paper targets, ammunition, riot gear, and real crime scene photos.
In a different room next door, we discovered a room full of outdated surveillance equipment; such as cameras, video cameras, tape recorders, wiretaps, and polygraph equipment. Then the most memorable part was another room that had old mugshots and fingerprint cards scattered all over the floor, directly in front of several boxes stacked up full of years old criminal records and a large whiteboard with handwritten notes still showing open murder investigations.
The most emotional part of this explore was the handwritten message on another smaller whiteboard located on the floor. It was left by a police detective as they moved out of the building in 2014. The message read “I am sorry to all the victims & families of homicides I did not solve. I am deeply sorry politics and ignorance got in the way.” The extremely powerful statement was almost like a testimony to the infrastructure culture within the city of inkster police department at the time. After all, this was just months prior to the awful police brutality beating of inkster man Floyd Dent and amidst several other pending police brutality lawsuits within the city’s police department. Anyway, with that all being said, I am so hurt that I never got the basement on video.
Unfortunately, in 2018 the pipes in the basement busted open from a combination of scrappers and the harsh brutal Michigan winters and the entire basement was left underwater and subsequently impossible to explore ever again. In 2023, the city of inkster sold all of the former municipal buildings and each building has since been emptied out. As work is now underway, it will be interesting to see what happens to the old inkster police station, courthouse, and city hall.