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Old July 28th, 2009 #50
Joe_J.
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Detroit --City leaders are exploring whether they can recoup millions of dollars paid to a federal monitor after text messages revealed she rendezvoused with former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick over at least 18 months.

Officials on Monday said they're exploring legal action after the U.S. Justice Department shared text messages with them showing a "personal relationship" between the former mayor and Sheryl Robinson Wood, who resigned last week as the monitor overseeing Detroit police reforms.

The messages between 2003 and 2005 indicate Wood and Kilpatrick met in Washington, D.C., and "several other cities" for meetings unrelated to a consent decree implemented to curb police abuses, said Saul Green, a city executive who oversees public safety. The city paid the monitor at least $10 million through 2006.

"They showed contacts between the monitor and the former mayor that were inappropriate and also an exchange of information related to the litigation," said Green, who declined to say whether the encounters were intimate.

"It was a personal relationship in which they met, in which they went to dinner."

U.S. Attorney Terry Berg said Monday that he couldn't say if the Justice Department would open an investigation into Wood. He declined to discuss the texts or how the department obtained them.

"This is a serious situation," Berg said.

Green also wouldn't say how the feds obtained the messages, but the development could underscore federal interest in Kilpatrick. He resigned last year and served jail time after text messages indicate he lied during a 2007 police whistle-blower trial about his affair with former chief of staff, Christine Beatty. More than 600,000 messages -- many of which have never been released -- were obtained by Wayne County prosecutors.

Since then, Kilpatrick and his father, Bernard Kilpatrick, have been linked to a federal corruption probe into pay-to-play accusations at City Hall.

City Council briefed

Green, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, briefed the City Council for about two hours Monday about the messages with the city's corporation counsel, Krystal A. Crittendon. Some members say they are considering legal action to recoup some of the money they have paid to the federal monitor since 2003.

"Every penny," said Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins, who missed the meeting with Green. "I think they should both go to jail for this."

She likened Kilpatrick to Superman's archenemy, Lex Luthor, repeatedly causing trouble for Detroit long after he left.

"He's a master criminal," she said. "His intent is devious. That's what it seems like to me Mr. Kilpatrick has done. We need to know where every penny has gone."

Kilpatrick, who now lives in Texas, couldn't be reached for comment. His criminal attorney, James C. Thomas, said he didn't have enough information to comment.

No one answered the door of Wood's downtown Baltimore home Monday evening.

Wood was selected as monitor in June 2003, roughly when the text messages began, above objections from the council, and has gone to court to increase her compensation.

Kilpatrick "moved heaven and earth to get (her) hired," lobbying "heavily for her," said Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel. At the time, Wood worked for Kroll, an international firm that also implemented a consent decree in Los Angeles. The former federal prosecutor left Kroll to form Venable LLP, with offices in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., since then.

Wood has worked for Kroll as an independent monitor, Kroll said in a statement.

The consent decree, signed to end a class-action suit about police brutality and jail conditions, was supposed to last five months. It's expanded to years as the city struggled to implement procedural changes and capital improvements such as new holding cells. Initially, the monitor's fee was $250 an hour, but she successfully lobbied for a 15 percent pay bump to $287.50 an hour.

Her fees were supposed to decline as the city implemented reforms, but after six years, she found the department had met only 73 of 203 provisions of the decree.

As of June, the monitor was paid $180,000 a month by the city.

Green said the city -- which does not have the text messages -- is now reviewing thousands of pages of billing records and invoices to determine what impact the relationship may have had on the city's progress.

By Friday, the Justice Department and city of Detroit plan to have an interim monitor in place for 30 days. By the end of the month, the two sides hope to agree on a monitor. If they can't, they will each submit a name. The city will accept proposals outlining the costs of monitoring.
Public hearings vowed

Councilwoman Alberta Tinsley-Talabi and several other council members vowed public hearings on the latest scandal.

"There's going to be a thorough investigation of this," Tinsley-Talabi said.

Calls to Wood's offices weren't returned.

Larry Dubin, a University of Detroit-Mercy law professor, said Wood could face legal disciplinary action or criminal charges, which may lead to the city recouping some of the fees.

"It's fair to assume there was a serious inappropriate part of her relationship with Kilpatrick," he said.

The latest scandal began to percolate last Friday when 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. Reaction from the Detroit community was one of muted surprise, given the other revelations regarding Kilpatrick over the past several years.

"Nothing shocks me anymore about this whole text message case; this is just another person who's wrapped up in it," said former Detroit Police Deputy Chief Gary Brown, who won a whistle-blower lawsuit against Kilpatrick that eventually led to the release of the text messages. "It's a shame this saga doesn't seem to end.

"When the mayor has the kind of power that he had, and was acting in such an unethical way, you can have all the checks and balances in the world and it won't stop that type of behavior."

Political consultant Adolph Mongo, once one of Kilpatrick's biggest defenders, said he's baffled about the mayor continuing to "let a lot of people down."

"It's set the city back another decade," he said. "It's going to take a long time to dig us out of this mess."
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090...or--Kilpatrick
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