A Sister's Dilemma: Gamble, Sit still, or Roll Over?

In this whole scandal that has enveloped Detroit, I feel for the women in this mess. We as women take on many roles as for example; wife, mother, mistress, cohort and ally. I feel and know that some roles we do willingly and some we do begrudgingly.

With the current news that a former police mail clerk has come forward indicating that she saw a police report indicating that Mrs. Kilpatrick assaulted dancer Tamera Green, the plot thickens. Sure the information has been out there for a long time, but this is the first time someone has personally attempted to come forward and make an actual claim that Tamara Greene was assaulted by Mrs. Kilpatrick at the rumored party held at the Manoogian Mansion. I really hope that Attorney Norman Yatooma can get his hands on those text messages for his case. I also hope that for the ex-clerk's sake, she has protection, and a clear background because after the father of Tamara Greene's son indicated that his house was broken in and vandalized, no telling what may come at her because of her statements.

Whether the accusation is true or not, remains to be seen. Since the Kilpatricks' January 30th broadcast from their church, Mrs. Kilpatrick has kept a low profile. I don't blame her because I would have done the same. Ms. Beatty has been seen around and about briefly when she visits her lawyers. The toil of the scandal must be stressful, and it can be seen on their faces. Ms. Beatty, in a recent Detroit News photo, appears like the situation is draining the life out of her.

Neal Rubin's column in today's Detroit News made a suggestion that may play out in Ms. Beatty's favor, but I doubt it will happen soon. He suggested in order for her to save herself and keep her life from going down the toilet, she needs to drop a dime on the mayor. After the rumored police hit on Tamara Greene, the rumored death of another Detroit dancer in Atlanta, and the upheaval of the lives of the police officers who filed the whistle blower suit in which she played a part, I believe that it will take a lot of convincing for Ms. Beatty to take that route. I think the Fed would have to offer a lot of protection, relocation and guarantees before she would even consider that option. It would also depend on how deep the emotional attachment and feelings that she may still have for Mayor Kilpatrick. I think once legal proceedings began including if and when they are indicted, the scenario will sharply change the loyalties and relationships between all the players in this drama.

'What ifs' float around as text scandal drags on'

Detnews.com
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Neal Rubin

A friend who used to get paid for prosecuting bad guys floats an interesting notion: What if Christine Beatty rolled over on the mayor?

Not rolled over, literally, like in the good old days when the taxpayers were sending them on romantic getaways. She means rolled over as in testified. Snitched. Finked. Sang. Turned state's evidence.

So far, Beatty is the only one who's paid a price for the widening text message scandal. A few months ago, she was Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's imperious chief of staff. Now she's an unemployed law student, working toward a degree she might never get a chance to use.

Even when she was earning $140,000 a year, she needed help buying a house: A sketchy $12,000 bank grant and a $237,000 mortgage approved despite her poor credit rating, after a bank official wrote a memo describing her as "a personal referral from the mayor."

Historically, being the mayor's friend has not been much of a character reference. Among his running buddies is Bobby Ferguson, whose heavy construction company has received tens of millions of dollars in city contracts. Ferguson's resumé includes whacking bouncers with a bat outside a sports bar, firing a gun into a crowd during a street fight, pleading guilty to a misdemeanor related to carrying a concealed weapon and serving time for pistol-whipping an employee.

In some jurisdictions, those things might disqualify a fella from cashing in on city work. But not in Detroit, where Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy says she's close to a decision on whether to prosecute Beatty and Kilpatrick for lying on the witness stand during a whistleblower lawsuit filed by two former police officers.

The jury didn't believe them, awarding the officers $6.5 million, and that might be what keeps them out of jail. Prosecutors tell me the stern hand of justice gives much larger wedgies when a lie affects the outcome of a trial.

Blame anyone else

Kilpatrick's response after the verdict was instructive: He blamed the racial makeup of the jury, which had only one black member. He's all about building bridges to the suburbs until it suits his purposes to dig a moat.

The latest company line is also illuminating. Frankie Darcell of WMXD-FM (92.3) floated it on Devin Scillian's "Flashpoint" on WDIV-TV (Channel 4), and it goes like this: "You don't right a wrong with a wrong."

Darcell landed the first interview with the mayor after the scandal broke. It was somewhere between soft-hitting and fawning. Now she and the other mayoral apologists are contending that since the Detroit Free Press obtained the text messages illegally, no one should be called to account for their contents.

It's a clumsy bit of sleight-of-hand, built on the unsupported assertion that the Free Press broke the law. But let's assume, for the sake of ridiculing a frivolous argument, that skulduggery was involved. The mayoral position is that a bank robber shouldn't have to return the money if the private party who tracked him down and made a citizen's arrest committed trespassing.

What's next?

My guess is that the mayor will plead out to a misdemeanor and get re-elected. When we're talking about voters who put municipal leech Alonzo Bates on the city council, a third term seems almost reasonable.

If Kilpatrick continues to paint himself as a victim, though, my friend the ex-prosecutor says to expect some heavy leaning on Beatty. A felony conviction would keep her from getting a license to practice law. A misdemeanor might not, a stern lecture wouldn't, and a friendly word to the bar association from Worthy's office could only help.

Right now, Kilpatrick has a job, a spouse and a future. Beatty no longer has any of those things, but she has information, and there may come a point where her only choice is to throw the mayor under a bus.

He's a large man, but it's a big Greyhound.

Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.

Like most of the media, L.A is also focusing on Detroit also.....

From the Los Angeles Times............link provided below

(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-detroit8mar08,1,7865919,
full.story?ctrack=2&cset=true)

An old killing and new
rumors roil Detroit

Jeffrey Sauger / For The Times

LEFT BEHIND: Jonathan Bond was 10 when his mother was killed nearly five years ago.
His father, Ernest Flagg, right, and attorney Norman Yatooma helped Jonathan sue the mayor
and the city, charging that they quashed an investigation.

A stripper's shooting death nearly five years ago is emerging as a key story line in the ongoing civic soap opera.

By P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 8, 2008

DETROIT -- In a city that routinely sees more than 400 homicides a year, the 2003 slaying of Tamara "Strawberry" Greene was an easily overlooked crime.

Few people initially took notice when the 27-year-old stripper was found slumped over the steering wheel of her green Buick Skylark. But soon the city was buzzing with rumors that she had danced at a party at the mayor's mansion -- a story that has never been proven.

Victim

click to enlarge

'Hip-hop mayor'

click to enlarge

The investigation into the rumored party and her slaying helped launch Democratic Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick's avalanche of current woes, but nearly five years later, Greene's death has been overshadowed by recent revelations of an affair between the mayor and his then-chief of staff, Christine Beatty.

The scandal, complete with text-messaged endearments, has been fueled by reports that Kilpatrick and Beatty lied about the affair while testifying last year.

Now Greene's shooting death in April 2003 is emerging as a key story line in the city's civic soap opera.

Lawyers for Greene's 14-year-old son are pushing forward with a $150-million federal civil lawsuit against the mayor and the city, charging that they quashed the investigation of her slaying.

They recently filed a statement from a former Detroit police officer alleging that his homicide unit was pressured to drop the case, even though it appeared to him that Greene's slaying was a hit -- one possibly carried out by another police officer. They've also subpoenaed a slew of text messages between city employees, including those sent between 1:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the day Greene was killed.

The city is petitioning for the case to be dismissed. A federal judge ordered SkyTel and the city to save certain messages from 42 city pagers, including Kilpatrick's, as well as all messages sent on the day Greene died.

The tale of Greene's slaying revolves around the rumored party at Manoogian Mansion, the official residence of the mayor. Court documents lay out the following sequence of events:

An officer with the mayor's Executive Protection Unit reported that a party for the mayor and his friends had taken place and " . . . the party featured nude female dancers," according to a 2003 internal affairs memo commissioned by then-Police Deputy Chief Gary Brown.

When the mayor's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, unexpectedly arrived at the mansion, she saw her husband and the strippers, according to Harold Nelthrope, the officer who reported about the party.

Nelthrope, who was not at the alleged event but learned about it the following day, "further stated that a fight ensued between Ms. Kilpatrick and a dancer, and that the dancer received injuries requiring medical attention." Nelthrope did not state who told him about the alleged events.

The dancer -- believed to be Greene -- was taken to a hospital, " . . . and the Executive Protection Unit confiscated all activity log sheets" from the police precinct that responded, Nelthrope said.

The mayor, who declined to comment for this story, has repeatedly denied that the party or any assault ever took place. Carlita Kilpatrick also declined to comment. So, too, have Detroit police officials -- at least publicly. A state investigation resulted in Michigan Atty. Gen. Mike Cox dismissing such claims as urban legend.

"They have no eyewitnesses, no caterers, not one person that said they were there that has been named," said attorney Mayer Morganroth, who is defending the city and the mayor in the lawsuit filed on behalf of Greene's son, Jonathan Bond.

Jonathan's attorney Norman Yatooma said, "The mayor is a proven liar and perjurer. Neither the party nor Tammy's murder are urban legend. It's another legendary cover-up."

Brown, a 25-year veteran of the force, was also looking into allegations that officers on the mayor's security team falsified overtime payroll, drank on the job and hid accidents in city cars.

He was unexpectedly fired after the 2003 memo -- in part, Brown claimed, for investigating the rumored party and because the mayor and Beatty feared their relationship would be exposed.

The investigation into Greene's slaying, meanwhile, was quietly being sabotaged, court documents allege.

In a 10-page affidavit filed earlier this month in connection with the son's lawsuit, former Detroit Police Lt. Alvin Bowman -- a 31-year police veteran who led the homicide unit looking into the Greene slaying -- said that top police officials derailed his investigation in order to avoid any inquiry into the party.

Bowman said files and case notes on the killing were deleted from homicide investigators' computers and reports were removed from the file. At one point, the file was placed in a combination-lock safe that Bowman and others couldn't get into. "The focus of our investigation was to solve Ms. Greene's murder, not to investigate the Manoogian Mansion party," Bowman stated in his affidavit. "However, because of the persistent and pervasive rumors concerning her appearance at that party and rumored assault by the Mayor's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, my investigation required my [s]quad to follow up and investigate those rumors."

This week, Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings told reporters that Bowman's accusations were "reprehensible," and that "there is no cover-up in this police department into the death of Miss Greene."

Called the nation's "hip-hop mayor," Kilpatrick at one time faced a bright political future. Many people -- particularly his mother, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) -- predicted that the charismatic attorney could win a seat in Congress, or be the first black president.

But his reputation was overshadowed by scandal, including a series of police whistle-blower lawsuits.

Last year, after a jury sided against the city in one of the suits, Kilpatrick convinced the City Council to approve an $8.4-million settlement with three police whistle-blowers.

Part of the deal that the council did not know about but that was reportedly approved by the city attorney: that proof of the text messages showing the mayor and Beatty lied under oath about their romantic relationship was to be concealed.

The affair was first reported in the Detroit Free Press in January, after investigative reporters obtained almost 14,000 text messages sent from, and received by, Beatty's city-owned pager in 2002 and 2003.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy opened an investigation into possible perjury and other charges against the mayor.

The investigation, expected to be completed next week, and the mayor's troubles have galvanized this blue-collar community.

At a City Council meeting this week, angry residents clutching handwritten speeches crammed inside the public chambers to voice their views about the mayor.

"He has disgraced my race, and he is no longer able to carry on as mayor of this city," said one resident, retired city schoolteacher Hattie Massey, 73.

Jonathan Bond was 10 when his mother was killed. Jonathan's father, Ernest Flagg, filed the lawsuit on behalf of his son. His family has told him to let the case go.

Flagg recently moved his family out of Detroit, after their home was broken into and trashed.

"I had to move," said Flagg, 35, a business consultant. "I also have to do this. What kind of a man am I teaching him to be, if I don't fight?"

p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com