Is Scientology Savior for Flint, America's Most Dangerous City?

Flint has notoriously topped the FBI’s list of America’s most dangerous mid-sized cities since 2010. The city council is considering whether to participate in a Church of Scientology program to help rebuild its decaying moral fiber. (Photo: wikimedia commons)

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Fair or not, Flint, MI, has a reputation that is as gritty as its name.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, a native of Flint and son of an auto assembly line “shop rat” left jobless when General Motors pulled out of Flint, painfully laid out the industrial city’s economic demise in his 1989 documentary “Roger and Me.”

Since then, the reputation of the city of 100,500 has sunk even lower. The New York Times dubbed Flint “Murdertown, USA” in 2011, and with good reason. Flint has topped the FBI’s list of the most-dangerous mid-sized cities in America four years running.

“The moral fiber of our community is so decayed it will take years” to change. – Flint City Councilwoman Monica Galloway

What that means is that in Flint, a person stands a one in 36 chance of becoming a crime victim, compared with a chance of one in 220 in the rest of Michigan, according to Neighborhoodscout.com. The site, which bases its rankings on FBI crime statistics, gives Flint a crime index of 1, the worst possible on a scale of 1-to-100.

Changing Flint’s violent culture is a riddle for city officials, and they’re willing to consider some out-of-the-mainstream rehabilitative approaches.

“The moral fiber of our community is so decayed it will take years” to change, Flint City Councilwoman Monica Galloway told MLive/The Flint Journal.

“We need to sow (values) into these children,” she said, adding that strong moral values “are things they are not getting.”

“From the information I’ve seen, apparently it works. I’m for anything that works.” – Police Chief James Tolbert

Enter Monika Biddle, a member of the Church of Scientology, who asked the Flint City Council earlier this month to consider adopting “The Way to Happiness,” a “non-religious moral code” developed by the religion’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

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Scientologists believe the spirit can alleviate “injury, trauma or discomfort,” including those that may have occurred in past lifetimes, by “putting the spirit in communication with the body,” according to an FAQ published by The Telegraph when famous Scientologists Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes dominated celebrity headlines in 2012.

Police Chief James Tolbert said he thinks the council should adopt the program, which is being used in St. Louis, MO, and Compton, CA.

“From the information I’ve seen, apparently it works,” Tolbert told MLive/The Flint Journal. “I’m for anything that works.”

If the council approves of the program, some strategies may also include:

• Distribute “The Way to Happiness” book on film to criminal offenders: The book’s 23 principles include everything from the importance of temperance, dangers of promiscuity, to loving and helping children to honor and helping parents.
• Give police officers a supply of the books to routinely hand out to neighborhood watch groups and others involved in community policing.
• Target youth groups, after-school programs and detention centers with public service announcements that reinforce messages such as “do not murder,” “don’t do anything illegal” and “do not steal.”
• Work with educators on the merits of using the booklets in tutoring and mentoring programs.

It’s unclear how much the program would cost the city.