<p>As if Detroit’s reputation isn’t bad enough, now the mayor is firmly entwined in a perjury and sex scandal.</p>
<p>The City was sued in a “whistle-blower” lawsuit by two former police officers who claimed they had been dismissed because of their knowledge of an affair between Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief of Staff. Under oath they both denied any such involvement. Now, their text messages, released through a FOIA lawsuit by the Detroit Free Press, confirm the relationship and their perjury during the trial. The lawsuit could have been settled for $2.5 million - the jury award was $9 million. The mayor has consistenly denied the allegations and protested his innocence to anyone with ears.</p>
<p>The mayor’s mother is in the US House of Representatives.</p>
<p>He should do the honorable thing and resign, and pay back the $9 million dollars, or as much as he can. Detroit’s got enough problems without having to focus on another long scandal.</p>
<p>What’s Ken Cockrel like? He would take over temporarily.</p>
<p>If perjury would normally mean a jail sentence in this kind of case, then he and his girlfriend/chief of staff should get time in jail/prison.</p>
<p>She’s in law school now, hope this means she can’t practice if she is guilty of perjury.</p>
<p>I can’t believe the level of arrogance required to:</p>
<p>Have an affair with your chief of staff on city time and use your security force to cover it up.</p>
<p>Fire two people who object to what you’re doing.</p>
<p>Use a city owned and payed for cell phone to text your lover the details, plus the fact that you fired someone who wanted to turn you in.</p>
<p>Refuse to settle with the person you fired and demand that you have a trial.</p>
<p>Lie under oath both about the fact that you had the affair, and the fact that you fired the person.</p>
<p>Act insulted and amazed that the jury wouldn’t agree with you.</p>
<p>When confronted with the proof of both the affair and the firing with text messages from you city issued cell phone, claim that it was a private and personal matter that you and your wife dealt with years ago, meanwhile having spent a week in a “lover’s retreat” outing in another state with another woman a week ago.</p>
<p>The people of Detroit elected and reelected him. He needs to be recalled, if he won’t resign. </p>
<p>It’s looks as if his family lives in Florida and he is nowhere to be found. They can’t find him in Detroit today. It also looks like his kids don’t even go to school in Michigan.</p>
<p>He was at a spa last week having massages with a woman other than his wife, while the auto companies announced 100,000 more layoffs and the auto show is going on.</p>
<p>It’s completely shameful. He is one of the worst mayors ever, and there has been a lot of competition for that in the US.</p>
<p>From today’s Detroit Free Press:
"Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s new chief of staff, Kandia Milton, can relate to the financial double whammy many Detroiters face with adjustable rate mortgages and declining property values, his lawyer said today.</p>
<p>The combination, his lawyer says, drove Milton and his wife into bankruptcy in August 2006.</p>
<p>“A lot of Detroiter are going through what he’s going through,” bankruptcy lawyer Andrea Cartwright of Southfield.</p>
<p>Bankruptcy records showed he has assets of $345,501 and liabilities of $389,207 shortly after he filed for bankruptcy. The debts included money owed to purchase his home and two properties, credit cards, car payments and a membership to a health club. When he filed for bankruptcy, he and his wife, Lisa, were making $96,983 annually.</p>
<p>Cartwright said Milton wound up losing the two rental properties to make ends meet, but kept his house and is on a five-year repayment plan to repay his creditors…"</p>
<p>I do not know much about the new chief of staff. I do know that mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will make a public announcment tomorrow evening at church. He cannot hide forever. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say.</p>