(Detroit Mayor) Kilpatrick faces firestorm of criticism over police dismissal (of IA cop)

DETROIT (AP) -- Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a former college football player and member of a local political dynasty, is no stranger to challenges.

Complaints about his large security detail and his decision to give city jobs to friends and relatives have plagued the mayor since early in his 16-month tenure.

Now Kilpatrick, 32, is facing criticism over his dismissal of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown, who oversaw the department's internal affairs decision.

Brown claims he was fired on Friday because he had begun to investigate allegations of drunken-driving accidents, falsified overtime records and a possible cover-up of the incidents, all involving members of Kilpatrick's security detail.

Brown also said he was looking into reports of an incident at the Manoogian Mansion involving Kilpatrick, his family, a party with nude dancers and an assault that also allegedly was concealed from police.

Michael Stefani, Brown's attorney, said Wednesday that his client met with Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver about a week before he was fired to discuss an unrelated investigation.

At that time, Stefani said, Oliver asked Brown to write a memo outlining the investigation into Kilpatrick's security force. On Friday, two days after he submitted the memo, Brown was fired, Stefani said.

"He knew he was on the hot seat," Stefani said. "The chief told him the people in the mayor's office were not happy with them investigating the security detail."

Mario Morrow, a Detroit political analyst and consultant, said the allegations could have a devastating effect not only on Kilpatrick, but on the city as a whole.

"Until these allegations and these problems are corrected, whether they are true or false, people are going to look at Detroit and raise eyebrows," he said. "They'll say 'That's not a place where I want to raise my family or open a business, or that's not a place I want to work."'

Jamaine Dickens, Kilpatrick's spokesman, said he could not comment on why Brown was fired because it was a confidential personnel matter.

Kilpatrick denied the allegations in a Tuesday news conference, and he left for Washington on Wednesday without speaking to reporters who had gathered to question him at an unrelated news conference at the Kronk Gym.

He said Kilpatrick made the trip to talk with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials about how the city spends its grant money. Last week, a department official in Detroit said the city is not using the funds effectively.

Morrow said Kilpatrick, the youngest elected mayor of Detroit since 1838, should have postponed his Washington visit.

"In the midst of a controversy like this, there's no time to leave the city," he said. "I'm sure there's business in Washington that will be in Washington two weeks from now. There's a job that needs to be done here and needs to be done fast."

But Lansing consultant Tom Shields applauded the mayor's commitment to maintaining a focus on his duties.

"Any time you have incidents like these, it distracts from the job that you're trying to do," he said. "Just in responding to these issues it takes you off course."

Kilpatrick has politics in his blood: His father Bernard Kilpatrick was chief of staff to retired Wayne County executive Ed McNamara and a former Wayne County commissioner, and his mother is U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. He was first elected to the state House in 1996, taking the spot vacated by his mother.

After he was elected in November 2001, Kilpatrick said his first mission as mayor would be a restructuring of the police department, saying at the time that "corruption cannot be tolerated in any form."

Kilpatrick on Tuesday called Brown's charges "very troubling and totally false" and asked Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans to investigate.

But Evans declined to lead the probe, saying Wednesday that his office lacks the resources for such a broad investigation.

The Detroit City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Brown's dismissal and said it planned to forward that request to U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins.

The U.S. attorney's office in Detroit said Wednesday afternoon it had not received any requests, but Collins said his office will review and evaluate any that are received.

Pollster Steve Mitchell of East Lansing said he does not believe Brown's accusations will have much of an impact on the popular young mayor, but added that Kilpatrick could take a hit if an investigation reveals that he broke any laws or covered up any criminal incidents.

The police department already is the subject of an ongoing Justice Department investigation that was prompted in 2000 by a number of fatal civilian shootings by officers.

The review seemed to be nearing an end last month, when Oliver said an independent monitor likely would be hired to oversee the department. Messages seeking comment Wednesday from the police department were not immediately returned.

Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez said Wednesday he could not comment on the status of the investigation.

Megan Norris, chairwoman of the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, said she fears the latest allegations will create a "crisis of confidence" among city residents.

"If people believe the allegations, they will wonder how many other cover-ups there are," she said.

Kilpatrick, a 6-foot-4, 290-pound former All-American football player, also has been questioned about the size of his 20-officer security force. They work 24-hour shifts on a rotating basis protecting the mayor, his wife and their three young children, Dickens said.

In comparison, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street said Wednesday that his security force has fewer than a dozen officers.

And an aide to Dallas Mayor Laura Miller says one security person is with her at all times through the day, picking her up in the morning, driving her to work, then driving her home at the end of the day. She employs two officers, who rotate their security duties.

Something very rotten here:
http://www.freep.com/news/locway/cops1_20021101.htm

Detroit evidence room scoured for $5 million

Cops not certain confiscated cash amid the clutter
November 1, 2002

BY BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Detroit police have fouled up their accounting on as much as $5 million in cash that they thought was safely tucked away in their cavernous evidence room.

Now, they are counting money as fast as they can, then taking more and more of the cash to a bank for safekeeping each day.

Still reeling from the scandal over the alleged theft of cocaine from the storage facility, police say they are sure most of the money is probably somewhere on the disorganized shelves.

A key problem is a computer-generated index to the evidence room that does not match with what is actually on the shelves.

Since police are focusing first on sorting out the cash, it's too soon to tell whether evidence in active cases may have been misplaced as well.

"It's frustrating. It's pretty much like trying to audit your checkbook when you've written 13,000 checks and don't have any bank statements," said Deputy Chief Gary Brown of the Professional Accountability Bureau. "We're still counting money and putting it into the bank, but we're not in the position to conduct an audit until the situation is in a more manageable state."

In some cases, guided by the computerized index, envelopes of cash appear to be missing, Brown said.

"Then there's one of three scenarios: It's misplaced and in a different bin, it's missing, or it has already been deposited in the bank," he said. "Once we have everything we can account for deposited in the bank, we'll go back and try to find out what happened to the missing envelopes."

Brown promised the Detroit Police Board of Commissioners after the Oct. 9 cocaine scandal to get the evidence room in order as soon as possible.

In the cocaine scandal, nine people, including a longtime civilian employee, were indicted on charges of stealing 223 pounds of cocaine from the evidence room on the first floor of police headquarters at 1300 Beaubien. The main defendant, John Cole Sr., 50, allegedly replaced the evidentiary cocaine with flour, sold it and used the proceeds for real-estate transactions.

The Rev. Edgar Vann Jr., a police commissioner, commends Brown's effort to sort out the mess.

"There's no way you can make sense of what is nonsense -- and that is what the property room is," said Vann, who has toured the room. "I had a feeling it was going to take longer than they expected."

For years, the Police Department has stored property in the sprawling facility in which different types of evidence were mixed together on overflowing metal bins.

"When I was in there several years ago, I was amazed at the obvious disorganization," said Juan Mateo, a Detroit attorney. "To this day, I have no idea how they keep track of anything in there."

Mateo said he has represented criminal defendants on several occasions in which property has been lost. On one occasion, he said, a homicide section officer had to take the stand and testify that an entire homicide file had been misplaced.

"If you lose evidence, you may be losing a case for a prosecutor if they can't substantiate an element of the defense," Mateo said.

Chief Jerry Oliver, in his push for a new headquarters building, had been candid about the outdated condition of the room. Oliver also said he cannot guarantee that other items haven't or won't be stolen if the room remains in its current state. He said the department needs a system in which evidence is bar-coded and computerized, so it can quickly be tracked at any time.

As a result of the current disorganization, Brown said, the department decided to start depositing money seized from drug forfeitures and evidentiary money that is not needed in court. Police are averaging $20,000 in deposits a day and have thus far counted about $250,000, he said.

"We're trying to clean up years of neglect, and it's taking a lot longer than we expected," Brown said.

Contact BEN SCHMITT at 313-222-6597 or schmitt@freepress.com.

More rot in Detroit:
http://www.freep.com/news/locway/cops5_20021005.htm

8 from Detroit police indicted in drug theft

Missing cocaine was in the evidence room
October 5, 2002

BY JIM SCHAEFER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

At least eight current and former employees of the Detroit Police Department have been indicted in the disappearance of millions of dollars' worth of seized narcotics, a top police official said Friday.

Deputy Chief Gary Brown said the drugs were stolen on numerous occasions dating to the mid-1990s, though he wouldn't pinpoint a number.

"We just know how much is taken and it's substantially more than we originally believed," said Brown, who oversees the department's part of a joint investigation into the missing drugs with the U.S. Justice Department.

In March, police officials disclosed that about 35 kilograms of cocaine, worth about $12 million, were missing from the first-floor property room in the downtown headquarters.

News of the indictments comes during a bad week for the police department. A lawyer accused an off-duty sergeant of fatally shooting a man twice in the back, and a police commissioner implied that many squad car video cameras are not working because officers don't want their behavior recorded.

Brown would not discuss many details of the federal indictments, which are sealed but are expected to be announced next week. He said the suspects include police officers and civilian workers. Some of the suspects are current employees.

The drugs were found to be missing after narcotics officers came to retrieve cocaine for use in an undercover investigation. Police had seized the cocaine in a 1993 bust.

In place of the real stuff, the narcotics cops found flour in the property room, officials said.

Brown said department officials asked for help from federal investigators to determine what happened.

For years, the property room has been a mess. Brown and other officials have admitted there were sloppy accounting procedures and lax security. He said matters have improved recently with the installation of video cameras, new employees and stricter controls.

The room is home to tens of thousands of pieces of evidence, including seized drugs, stolen jewelry and cash. Most of the evidence is kept in the room for use in trials and appeals.

Brown said investigators have figured out what happened to the drugs, but he would not provide details, including whether any of it was sold on the streets.

Several property room employees have been transferred in recent months in incidents unrelated to the missing drugs, Brown said. He said department leaders hope to fire an officer they believe stole about $1,000 worth of stereo equipment, a case in which prosecutors declined to seek charges. The other incidents revolved around policy violations, such as shoddy record-keeping, Brown said.

Aside from helping the department in the investigation of the missing drugs, Justice Department investigators have been digging into other areas of the department for nearly two years.

The federal probe has focused on police shootings of civilians, conditions at police lockups and allegations that officers illegally conducted dragnets, arresting witnesses and others to coerce their cooperation in homicide investigations.

Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver has pledged cooperation with federal investigators, and has ordered improvements that include the rewriting of a department policy handbook.

Oliver, who was hired as chief in January, has said many of the problems are due to badly outdated policies and traditions. He was not available Friday to comment on problems that arose this week.

On Tuesday, the off-duty sergeant shot and killed Mark Boyce, 37, outside a west-side bar. Police said Sgt. Kevin Kemp was trying to break up a fight and that Boyce had a gun, though none was found.

Homicide Inspector Craig Schwartz said the shooting appeared justified, but on Thursday, a lawyer for Boyce's family said a private autopsy showed Boyce was shot twice in the back.

Deputy Chief Brown said the shooting may be legally justified, but he is looking into whether Kemp acted within department rules. The department's review is not final, but "it looks like there were some decisions made that were not good decisions."

Also Thursday, Detroit Police Commissioner Nathaniel Head asked the department to explain why only 50 of 300 video cameras installed in squad cars are operating. Head said people who have complained about police abuse have been told cameras that should have recorded the behavior in question were not working.

Contact JIM SCHAEFER at 313-223-4542 or schaefer@freepress.com.

Sooo Rotten:
http://www.bobkarolrico-informant.com/DetNewsArticles.html

Officer's wife admits to role in drug ring

By Wayne Woolley; THE DETROIT NEWS
Date: September 23, 1998
Page: C2

Edition: Final
Section: Metro
Dateline: DETROIT
Length: 276 words
Record Number: DTN09230063

DETROIT -- The wife of a Detroit Police commander admitted Tuesday to playing a role in a drug ring federal officials say operated in the Cass corridor since 1990.

Trina Johnson, the wife of Cmdr. Gary Johnson, pleaded guilty to one count of sales of drug paraphernalia before U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr.

As part of the plea agreement, Johnson may be asked to testify against other members of the reputed drug organization at trials later this year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Stern said.

Gary Johnson, who was formerly the top officer on former Chief Isaiah McKinnon's staff and is assigned to the department's personnel section, is not under investigation, authorities said.

Gary Johnson declined comment.

His wife's attorney, Christopher Andreoff, said that she faces a possible prison term of six to 12 months as part of the plea agreement. The judge, he said, has the option of allowing Johnson to serve part or all of the term in a halfway house.

The charges against Johnson stem from a sting operation that's led to federal charges against 20 people who allegedly were involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and food-stamp fraud in Detroit's Cass corridor and adjacent Brush Park neighborhoods.

Her role in the operation has not been disclosed.

The first arrests in the case were made in April 1997. Although Johnson was questioned early in the investigation, no charges were filed against her until Tuesday.

Copyright 1998 The Detroit News, Inc.

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