The Centrist is reading where the former Mayor of Detroit during his tenure had a ’18 month personal relationship’ with the woman who resigned last week as the federal monitor overseeing Detroit police reforms. .
Story Via Detnews.com
July 27, 2009
Detroit –Text messages obtained by the U.S. Justice Department illuminated an 18-month "personal relationship" between former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the woman who resigned last week as the federal monitor overseeing Detroit police reforms, the city’s point-person on public safety said this afternoon.
Saul Green said the city was made aware of the messages on Wednesday after being contacted by the U.S. Justice Department. He said they span a period from 2003 through 2005 and document Kilpatrick and the monitor, Sheryl Robinson Wood, meeting in Washington, D.C. and other places in the country for meals and at hotels that were not related to the consent decree.
"It was of a personal nature," Green said, he declined to comment on whether the encounters were of an intimate nature.
Green and the city’s corporation counsel, Krystal A. Crittendon, spent nearly two hours meeting privately with City Council.
Green said the city is now reviewing thousands of pages of documents to determine what impact the relationship may have had with the city.
Green, who previously had been the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said he believes the Justice Department will also be reviewing what impact the relationship may have had on the consent decree that required the city to spend millions of dollars.
"It cuts both ways," said Green.
He added "there is no way to tell" at this point what impact the relationship may have had.
Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook, who oversees the consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, announced that Wood resigned after being confronted with documents that showed she had "meetings of a personal nature" with Kilpatrick. Kroll Inc., the company that was contracted to provide the oversight, issued a brief statement today declining substantive comment
"Kroll takes very seriously its responsibilities as the court-appointed temporary custodian of all documents relevant to this matter, and will await direction from the court on July 31st, when an interim monitor will be appointed," the statement read. "Until then, we are constrained by the consent decree to discuss the matter in any further detail."
Also this morning, Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel said she recalled how the Kilpatrick administration lobbied that Wood, who at the time was unmarried, be hired. She said the ex-mayor and his staff "moved heaven and earth to get Miss Robinson as monitor."
"Was the mayor’s office doing another wink-wink?" Cockrel asked.
She, too, said there will be public hearings but cautioned that today’s meeting with Green is to "discuss legal issues." She also wants to investigate "how can we get some of our money back."
Wood, who has held the role as monitor of the city’s consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department since 2003, submitted her resignation Thursday night, and the city is searching for a successor. A temporary one could be in place this week.
The Justice Department was initially brought in by former Mayor Dennis Archer to address problems that included a high number of officer-involved shootings, prisoners dying in lock up and reports of witnesses to crimes being arrested to coerce them to talk.
Cook wrote in an order: "It has now become apparent to the court that (Wood) had engaged in undisclosed communications, as well as meetings of a personal nature" with Kilpatrick.
Both the Justice Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office have conducted investigations into conduct within City Hall and the Kilpatrick administration.
The company overseeing the consent decree, Kroll Inc., has been paid roughly $10 million since 2003, when the agreement was reached.
Attempts to contact Wood, the wife of Wesley Wood, a state delegate candidate in Maryland, were unsuccessful.
Today, an assistant in Wood’s Baltimore office said she would not be in today.
Calls to Venable LLP, where Wood now works after leaving Kroll, were not returned
Wood issued her last report as federal monitor July 16.
Kroll Inc. was paid more than $180,000 in June for roughly one month of work for the city.
Related Websites -
US began deliberating spy swap well before arrests [/caption] By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON – The White House began deliberating a spy swap with Moscow nearly a month ago, well ahead of the arrests of 10 Russians in the United States less than two weeks ago, a White House official said Friday. In the course...... -
NYC car bomb suspect pleads guilty [/caption] NEW YORK – Calling himself a Muslim soldier, a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing and left a sinister warning that unless the U.S. leaves Muslim lands alone, "we will be attacking U.S." Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in...... -
Experts see trouble ahead for developed world [/caption] CERNOBBIO, Italy – Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook — especially for the United States and much of the industrialized...... -
Is your ISP a new branch of the government? I dont even know what to say. "An arm of the government." Wow. "I think that the request raises some really, really major privacy problems," said Lee Tien, a lawyer for the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Justice Department is "asking ISPs (Internet service providers) to really become...... -
Internet Gambling Laws: U.S., U.K. And the World by Sistak Internet Gambling Laws: U.S., U.K. And the World Legal minds turned to Internet gambling laws as a specialty when the industry went beyond growth and exploded into the public mind. "The law surrounding Internet gambling in the United States has been murky, to say the least," according......