Texts reveal relationship of fed monitor, Kilpatrick ‘Inappropriate’ contact occurred in several cities Detroit may sue to recoup payments

And the music goes 'round and 'round. The level of stupidity and corruption surrounding Detroit politics should be unbelievable, but after so many things it becomes "ho-hum" just another distraction.

Texts reveal relationship of fed monitor, Kilpatrick
‘Inappropriate’ contact occurred in several cities
Detroit may sue to recoup payments

BY DAVID JOSAR, DAVID SHEPARDSON AND LEONARD N. FLEMING The Detroit News 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. Kilpatrick Wood 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 wasa 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 whistle­blower 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.” George Hunter, Darren A. Nichols and Francis X. Donnelly contributed.