RoboCop statue in Detroit? Group has raised funds for it

DETROIT – Your move, Detroit.

A group working to build a statue of the fictional crime-fighting cyborg RoboCop in the city said it has reached its fundraising goal of $50,000 after a social networking campaign exploded in support of the project. The next step: convincing the mayor and city officials it’s a good idea.

“I am very positive that it’s gonna happen,” organizer Brandon Walley said Wednesday.

The 10-day-old RoboCop saga started innocently enough when Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s social media manager answered a Twitter query about a possible statue. That response – “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion” – led to a firestorm of commentary online, with Twitter users making it a top trending topic for days.

Imagination Station, a Detroit-based nonprofit that latched on to the topic’s viral fervor, set up a way for backers to donate to the project via the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. The effort yielded more than $25,000 in donations. A private source matched the funds.

Walley said he sees potential for the planned 7-foot sculpture in the city, hoping RoboCop would draw the curious and tourists, just as the Rocky Balboa likeness does in Philadelphia and the Fonzie statue known as “Bronze Fonz” does in Milwaukee.

The 1980s science fiction film was set in a futuristic Detroit in which crime ran rampant and centered on police officer Alex Murphy (played by Peter Weller), who is killed in the line of duty and resurrected as an alloy-encased part-man, part-machine.