DETROIT—Ending an eight-month long dirty drama that has overshadowed Detroit, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick consented to leave office last Thursday, leaving Detroit City Council President Kenneth Cockrel to take charge Sept. 19. The ongoing events and scandal surrounding Detroit’s youngest mayor have paralyzed much of the city’s business.
In a tense courtroom Sept. 4, Mayor Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two felony counts of obstructing justice by committing perjury. He will spend four months in jail, pay up to $1 million in restitution, and serve five years’ probation. He also agreed not to run for public office during that five-year span.
According to the Detroit Free Press, in a rushed monotone Kilpatrick told Wayne Circuit Judge David Groner: “I lied under oath ... I did so with the intent to mislead the court and jury, to impede and obstruct the disposition of justice.”
Kilpatrick’s string of misdeeds culminated in an incident last month where he shoved a sheriff’s deputy. The deputy was delivering a subpoena to one of the Mayor’s aids.
Prior to that, the Detroit Free Press revealed a string of text messages on city-issued pagers that included graphic descriptions of Kilpatrick’s adulterous sex-capades with his aid Christine Beatty and their illegal use of city funds. The text messages included incriminating evidence that Kilpatrick had paid out $8.4 million in city funds to Police Deputy Gary Brown, who Kilpatrick had fired after Brown began investigating him.
Controversy and Misconduct
When Kilpatrick was elected at age 31, he became the youngest mayor in Detroit’s history. But Kilpatrick’s stewardship has been anything but peaceful for this beleaguered city. Allegations of marital infidelity, conspiracy, perjury, and murder have filled the local media headlines during his two terms.
Kilpatrick was first elected to public office in 1996, taking the Michigan State House of Representatives seat vacated by his mother, Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, when she left to campaign for a position in the U.S. Congress.
The young, high-profile Kilpatrick was also elected floor leader by fellow House Democrats, making him the first African-American to lead a Michigan legislature.
Kilpatrick became the youngest mayor of Detroit when elected in 2001. Controversy soon followed when he was criticized for using this financially challenged city’s funds to lease a car for his family’s private use, and using city-issued credit cards to charge thousands of dollars worth of extravagant dining, alcohol and spa massages. Upon public disclosure in the media, Kilpatrick paid back $9,000 of the $210,000 worth of credit card charges.
The most serious controversies stem from a wild party held in the Fall of 2002, involving strippers at the official residence of the mayor, the city-owned Manoogian Mansion.
Former members of the Mayor’s security team alleged that the Mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, came home unexpectedly, discovering Kilpatrick with the strippers, and began to attack the women.
Later, one of the strippers, 27-year-old Tamara Greene, was shot multiple times while sitting in her car with her boyfriend. While the official Detroit Police Department statement claims that Greene was only shot three times, sources from the DPD Homicide Division say that she was actually shot 18 times.
Allegations began to surface when Officer Harold Nelthorpe contacted the internal affairs department of the Detroit Police, asking them to investigate alleged abuses by the Mayor’s Executive Protection Unit (EPU). The Mayor denied any misconduct by him or his security team. Nelthorpe and Gary Brown, who was head of DPD’s internal affairs unit, both allege that they were fired by the mayor’s administration for investigating the Mayor as well as other superiors.
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