More Text Messages Haunt Detroit

If they are not there yet, the citizens of Detroit must be getting pretty close to that symbolic point of no return if they have had any time to digest the latest damaging court document to be made public yesterday by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge, Robert J. Colombo Jr.

The 18 page document (via the Detroit Free Press) exposes the moral and ethical decay of those now leading the city through its assumed power in the mayor's office and its police department.

If Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty had been half as concerned with providing their city an effective administration as they were with covering their asses to the public while baring them to each other, the city wouldn't be facing all the problems they are facing now.

Would the city still be facing blight? Sure, six years is not enough to wipe out decades of neglect. Would there still be administrative problems? Of course. Dennis Archer took great strides in taking a broken political machine and transforming it into a machine less bureaucratic and more responsive--but there was still a long way to go. Dennis Archer deserves a lot of credit, for he was the one that got the trend started, but it was up to his successor to keep the positive momentum going.

Alas, along came Kwame Kilpatrick assisted by the pretty yet malcontented Christine Beatty. Kilpatrick and Beatty, given the opportunity to serve together on the governing board, could turn heaven into a hell hole before lunch. That they had six years to conspire, manipulate the system, obfuscate, posture, and lie unchecked to everyone that surrounded them could not have boded well for the city's continued recovery. Those that they could not corrupt and draw into their schemes they fired or pushed aside. Those that they could influence were promoted or given favors.

City services? Gee, wouldn't an extra $8.4 million laying around help out just a little?

The embarrassment of their exposed sexual dalliance cannot be easy to bear--no one wants that stuff public. But, as far as the city goes, that should not be its personal shame. What Detroit will have the most difficulty overcoming are the layers of suspect bureaucrats that have risen to the top in Kwame's six years of you-scratch-my-back administrative protocols. Six years is a lot of time to frustrate the effective and reward the crony.

Current Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings is but one such example. The court documents show that Bully-Cummings was at least aware of the conspiracy to fire internal affairs chief Gary Brown if not involved in the plot itself. Now she sits atop the police department. That has to be comforting.

Given the conniving that is so well documented now by all the text messages that have become exposed (among the many more that are irrelevant to this case and therefore not released) how can Detroiters and Michiganders be anything but suspicious about greater undiscovered corruptions that might yet exist, and how deeply their roots may have burrowed into the city bureaucracy?

I don't know if Kwame Kilpatrick can last out this term, but one thing is for sure. When Kwame does leave office his successor will have to dismiss a lot of suspect employees that have percolated to the top of the mess.

A great place to start would be Ella Bully-Cummings.