DETROIT — Stopping for gas at a Detroit gas station is “just a call for a carjacking,” according to Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who also thinks that the solution to the city’s financial problems is building a fence around it and turning it into an Indian reservation.

Patterson has come under fire for demeaning comments he made about Detroit in an interview with the New Yorker published on Monday, Jan. 20.

In an article titled “Drop Dead Detroit,” Patterson is quoted as saying, “I used to say to my kids, ‘First of all, there’s no reason for you to go to Detroit. We’ve got restaurants out here.’ They don’t even have movie theaters in Detroit — not one.”

Patterson added that live sport is the only unique attraction in Michigan’s largest city.

“For that, fine — get in and get out,” he said. “But park right next to the venue — spend the extra 20 or 30 bucks. And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That’s just a call for a carjacking.”

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and City Council President Brenda Jones announced in a joint statement on Tuesday that they hope Patterson apologizes for his remarks about the city.

“Brooks Patterson’s statements were not what you would expect from a regional partner with a vested interest in a strong and healthy Detroit,” Duggan and Jones said in the statement. “We hope he apologizes for this promptly. The Mayor and Council remain focused on our unified efforts to improve the quality of life in Detroit and we are not going to be distracted by negative comments from anyone.”

Patterson.

Patterson addressed Duggan in a statement stressing that he is available to help the Detroit mayor on any projects he supports, but he did not issue an apology.

“I have worked hard to build good relationships with some of the past mayors of Detroit,” Patterson said. “I do not intend for the New Yorker article to damage my relationship with Mayor Duggan and I look forward to working with him over the next four years.” 

Patterson’s spokesman Bill Mullan said Paige Williams, the New Yorker author who wrote the article, had a plan to negatively portray the Oakland County executive, but he did not dispute the quotes.

“It is clear Paige Williams had an agenda when she interviewed county executive Patterson,” Mullan said in a statement. “She cast him in a false light in order to fit her preconceived and outdated notions about the region.”

Williams accompanied Patterson to different social events in a tour around Oakland County in September. 

She told the Detroit Free Press on Monday that she did not have anything against Patterson.

“Our focus was simply to explore what made Oakland County so successful. That’s what we did do. It’s a balanced portrait,” Williams said.

Detroit-based pastor and community organizer W. J. Rideout described Patterson’s comments as “biased, racist, discriminatory lies.”

Rideout said Patterson is acting “as if he’s a Ku Klux Klan leader.”

“Those statements are disrespectful to Native Americans and Detroiters of all ethnicities and backgrounds,” he added.

The pastor said he finds it ironic that Patterson’s comments were published on a national holiday dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., “a peace maker who stood for justice for all.”

Rideout said the Oakland County executive cannot blame the New Yorker reporter for what he said, calling on him to apologize for the remarks.

“He’s got to come forward and say ‘I apologize,'” Rideout said. “He’s got to be responsible for what he’s said and done.”

Rideout added that the worshipers at his church also find the remarks racist and are demanding an apology.

Fay Beydoun, the executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, said she was concerned about Patterson’s comments because most gas stations in Detroit are owned and operated by Arab Americans.

However, she added that his comments were not directed against the Arab American community, stressing the important role Detroit’s neighbors have to play in the city’s economic future.

“It is going to take regional cooperation to bring Detroit back. We all need to work together,” she said. 

Nidal Dawud, a Palestinian American businessman who owns a gas station on the west side of the city, said Brooks’ comments were both “inaccurate and inappropriate.”

“It’s not that bad. We’ve had a gas station on Plymouth Road for two years, and we never had a problem,” he said. “Some gas stations in the suburbs have robberies and carjackings. Not all of Detroit is dangerous, and if you’re at a gas station outside Detroit, it doesn’t mean you’re safe.”

Dawud acknowledges safety challenges for businesses in Detroit, but added that as a politician Brooks should not have made such comments.

“The best way for the City of Detroit and Wayne County to respond to those claims is to hire more cops and security personnel to make sure that our businesses and gas stations are safe,” he said.