Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick

by Kwame Kilpatrick

  Not so surprisingly, I was the only African-American in the bunch. You know the scene in movies when the black guy walks into the wrong party and the music screeches to a halt and everyone stares? That’s exactly what happened, but without the music. I’m certain whiplash cases at the local hospital spiked that evening. I was also the only Democrat present. Because of this very odd combination of diversity that I brought to the mix, I was moved to the front of the receiving line, just behind Governor Engler. It was a perfect spot. When the President came down the steps, with the usual applause and small band playing “Hail to the Chief,” all I was thinking about was saving my $18 million.

  The President shook the Governor’s hand, and then he immediately grabbed mine and said, “Hey, Mayor, how ya doing?”

  “I’m just fine, Mr. President,” I said, “but I do have one problem.”

  “What is it?” he replied. I truly thank God that this episode happened before Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, the housing market crashes and Wall Street pimpin’. Or before we learned of the dramatic fallout of the No Child Left Behind law and its continuing effects on public education.

  “Mr. President,” I said, “I have been mayor for less than three months, and HUD is attempting to take $18 million of much-needed low-income housing money from my city in two days. I really need some help from you to stop this from happening.”

  He immediately turned to a staffer and said, “Hook the Mayor up with Mel, ASAP.” I thanked the President, and he moved on with the rest of his greetings. I stepped out of the long receiving line and huddled with his staffer. I gave him all of my contact information, and he gave me his. I then sought the nearest escape route before the President made some brief remarks.

  I raced back to the office and, upon walking in, my secretary told me that I had just received a call from HUD Secretary Mel Martinez, and that he would like me to call him back ASAP. Wow, the President works fast! I quickly entered my office and called him. I told him about my problem in greater detail, and he listened carefully. He and I agreed on a date for me to go to Washington and meet with the department about an overall strategy to move forward in a positive relationship. He also agreed that we should disregard the previous letter and that no money would be taken from the City.

  One month later, I flew to Washington, having saved $18 million. I met with Deputy HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson and Asst. Secretary Liu. Liu was much more supportive and kind, as was Deputy Secretary Jackson, who was extremely supportive, encouraging and knowledgeable about the inner workings of government. President Bush later appointed him to HUD’s top spot, and he remained very supportive throughout my time as mayor.

  That wasn’t the only time that President Bush helped get the City out of a bad situation involving federal departments and/or federal dollars. It’s funny, with all of the disagreements that I had with him and his administration on policy, politics and overall organizational strategy, he and his administration always helped when we called.

  One problem solved, tons more to consider. The city was notorious for a couple of other things at that time. For one, more people died while in confinement in Detroit than in any other city in the county. Police officers would arrest people, put them in the city lockup, and they would die from suicide, stroke, and all kinds of reasons. It was a big issue. The Detroit Police Department was known throughout the land for using deadly force against its citizens. Police officers argued that they were bound in performing their duties because they had few options to the use of tertiary force. They claimed that they either had to use mace or guns in difficult situations, and there was nothing in between. Mace won’t stop a crackhead. I heard that argument several times.

  Mayor Archer threw up his hands and called in the federal government. Without informing the Police Chief, he asked the Feds to take over the police force. This happened just before I was elected, and it was a live issue when I entered office. Detroit had a reputation of being the city where people got jacked, robbed and killed. And the Super Bowl was coming. The big thing for me was to get a handle on safety, to appoint a chief who had a national reputation and could start to hammer down the consent decree that the federal government had issued to the police department. I wanted to send the message that Detroit was becoming a safer place, so I conducted a national search and hired Jerry Oliver, who was then the chief of police in Richmond, Virginia.

  Police officers rebelled against the new chief’s leadership right away. I received several written threats to ruin my career. Looking back on it, I guess they were more like promises than threats. But I stood by my decision, and to this day, I believe it was the right one. Ella Bully-Cummings, whom I appointed to succeed Jerry, was better received, because she came in and implemented many of the things he had begun to put in place. But they didn’t like Jerry. Detroit has always had a closed culture, especially the police department. The police department was well on its way to becoming the bane of my existence as mayor.

  When Jerry arrived, he decided that the best way to attack the deeply embedded negative culture of the police department was to completely change the organizational leadership structure, and to re-assign all of the people sitting in those positions. Many in the DPD saw this as an official declaration of war on the department. Lines were drawn, clearly defined battle groups started to form, and the enemies, Jerry Oliver and Kwame Kilpatrick, were clearly identified.

  Jerry assembled an eleven-person team of deputy chiefs who helped him manage the day-to-day aspects of each division and section of the department. He developed a process that included oral and written examinations, and a personal interview with him. I made a decision very early in the transition period that I was not going to be involved in leadership’s personnel decisions within the police department. Big mistake! Note to future mayors: vigorously and tenaciously study your police department! Understand the financial, business and operational elements of the entire force. And for God’s sake, get to know the leadership before you hire them! I did take that advice later in my administration, and accomplished great things in law enforcement, such as grant writing, efforts for Homeland Security and overall police operational strategy. But I went through hell first. You live and learn.

  Chief Oliver presented me with the list of names of those he wanted to see in the deputy chief positions. I didn’t have a problem with any of them. Hell, I didn’t even know them, for the most part. But one name in particular did stand out, and that was Gary Brown, in the leadership position at Internal Affairs. I didn’t know Gary Brown, but during the transition period, I received many negative comments about him. He was called “a snake” who shouldn’t be trusted. Everyone acknowledged that he was smart, savvy and smooth, but they said that all of those qualities were most often used for deceitful activities.

  I shook off the discussions because I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to present themselves. I didn’t want anyone to be hampered or handicapped by rumor, speculation and innuendo. But I did not know enough to understand that the director of Internal Affairs is a very important position. The person in that position must understand confidentiality and trust. He must have the integrity to be sure and certain about an investigation, lest he recklessly pursue a brother officer. Also, considering the Department of Justice investigation, that person was the link between the City, our department and the federal government.

  My immediate response to Jerry Oliver’s list of eleven recommended individuals was “yes” to ten, but “no” on Gary Brown. I actually said, “Hell naw, not this guy,” I explained that I had heard some bad things about him, and that he couldn’t be trusted in that position.

  “I really need him there,” Jerry said. He said Brown would be helpful in dealing with the department of Justice. Now, my gut instinct has never failed me, but I’ve failed it plenty. And this time, I made a terrible decision. I told him to give me some time to think about it. After a week, I decided to approve Brown for the position. I made the decision to support Jerry. I’d
brought Jerry to Detroit to help create positive and revolutionary change in the department, and I wanted to do whatever I could to support him in that effort. I trusted his experience and expertise in law enforcement. He was strong, committed and engaged. I appreciated his tenacity and focus, and I felt that it was time for me to stop stalling and allow him to continue to push forward.

  I’ve often heard that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I truly meant well, but this was really a bad decision. I approved Brown as the deputy chief over Internal Affairs, and when the rest of the team was announced, I received a call from Benny Napoleon. Benny was a former Detroit police chief under Mayor Archer, and he is the current Wayne County Sheriff.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Benny said. “Don’t put that guy there.” He implored me, saying Brown was not the guy I needed to put in that position. I told Benny that I appreciated his advice, but I was loyal to Jerry. I’ve told Benny that he was absolutely correct several times over the years. Gary Brown is smart, and Jerry liked academically smart guys who can articulate law enforcement across a plethora of subjects. A lot of Detroiters are street smart. They come up a different way. They don’t go before people and make presentations in a way that would please academia. Instead, they do it from a community perspective, in a way that makes others feel protected and secure.

  There was a transition occurring in police work during this time, and it involved an influx of policemen as executives who had the demeanor that Jerry favored. It was a movement that was going on across the country, and it touted a new, “model” police chief. They were becoming more prevalent, especially in cities with high crime. Jerry was one of those guys. He was like Charles Ramsey in D.C., and Richard Pennington in New Orleans, and later Atlanta. They were counterculture, press conference guys. The movement started with William Bratton, who was New York’s police chief before moving to Los Angeles. They represent the new pattern of a chief. You wear a suit, only wearing your uniform when attending official events.

  It was the new thing, but it was the right thing. Jerry had the newspapers’ confidence. He was able to raise money for police activities. He had different ideas about how to get support for the police department. He had tests to put people in positions that were based on merit, and not favoritism. But he kicked out the old-boy network.

  With Jerry in place, we came up with a campaign named “Kids. Cops. Clean.” Zeke, Christine, Carlita, Jerry and I sat down together and decided on this idea. We involved many creative minds in the project because we figured if we could get people more involved in helping clean up Detroit, we could make it a safer city, develop some activities for kids, and move the city farther than it had ever gone before.

  The community embraced the idea. The first citywide cleanup we did, the Motor City Makeover, attracted 60,000 volunteers. City residents had gotten involved with the “Clean Sweep” project before my time in office, where they swept around their streets. But we thought, “Let’s really give the city a makeover. We’re getting abandoned cars off the street. We’re doing demolitions, painting, and getting companies to support us.” The initiative did more to clean the city in those first two years than anything that had been done in the past twenty. We cleaned vacant lots. We painted. We paved city streets. In fact, we would end up paving and resurfacing more streets in my first four years than had been done in the previous thirty years.

  We were goal-oriented. I had decided that by the time Super Bowl XL got to Detroit, we were going to clean that sucker up. This is going to look like a different place. That was our opportunity to reintroduce ourselves to the world. So let’s take four years to shine this bad boy (no pun intended) up as much as we possibly can.

  We dangled the Super Bowl for constant public discussion. A popular response I’d get was that people didn’t care about football. But I’d say, “Listen, you don’t even have to like the sport or the Super Bowl. But the world is coming to your house! And they’ll take away an opinion about Detroit that would last a generation.”

  Fortunately, we got people to buy into that argument, even City workers. They got things going, and they started early. By 2004, Detroit’s crime statistics reached its lowest point since 1963. It had decreased consistently from the time we started, three years earlier. We rebuilt and redesigned thirty-seven parks in my first two years, complete with new playground equipment and a grass-cutting cycle to ensure it was cut in regular intervals. If that seems like a small thing to you, imagine what your child may come across while playing in a field in a large city, where the grass has grown a mere six inches taller than normal. Food. Cans. Dirty syringes. Animal waste. Sound more serious now? This is what “Kids. Cops. Clean.” was all about, seeing the vision for people with short sight. Word on the street was that Kilpatrick, if nothing else, was going to cut the grass.

  The operational improvements that we made in our general and overall maintenance program became our normal practice. We were doing things on a regular basis that hadn’t been done in Detroit in more than a generation. The maintenance plan we established for the city’s roads resulted in consistent work over a sustained period of time. People started calling my office to complain that we were fixing roads too much, that there was always a construction project afoot. That was a great compliment, I thought. We’d come out like gangbusters, and people were taking notice.

  Unfortunately, Jerry wouldn’t last long enough to see the “Cops” part of “Kids. Cops. Clean.” through. While traveling on official business in 2003, he packed a loaded gun into his luggage. It was not his police-issued weapon. Of course, this was against the law and the Detroit Police Department’s rules. He was actually given a chance to remove the weapon from his bag before takeoff, but he chose not to do it. The TSA recovered the gun and immediately sought to arrest Chief Oliver.

  The incident quickly became a fierce and aggressive media story. The Detroit police unions and several officers called for his resignation, or for me to fire him. The major issue was that Jerry had suspended and fired officers for much less. He was a strong advocate of a “zero tolerance” attitude toward police discipline. He believed that one way to fix crime was to build trust in our police department, and the only way he saw to do this was to assure confidence in our officers. So he’d harshly punished officers for minor and major offenses. The unions, then, were vehemently opposed to him and his style. This was the break they needed, and they launched a campaign through the media, the police department and the community to get me to fire him.

  I went to Jerry’s home to speak with him and his wife, Felicia. We discussed the circumstances and the next steps. I was willing to support him and keep him on as chief. I did, however, need him to truthfully tell me whether he believed he could still garner the community support and the confidence from his troops in the Detroit Police Department in order to lead them. After a few hours, Jerry decided that it would be best for him to step down. He, Felicia and their three children relocated back to his home in Arizona. I then changed the game again by appointing the first woman police chief in Detroit’s history, Ella Bully-Cummings.

  I’ve been asked if I consider any of our accomplishments during those first few years to be paramount, and I really don’t. I do believe, however, that we achieved each of our three goal areas. We did a better job of protecting our children, we made Detroit safer and we cleaned up the town. The city had a new vibe.

  By 2003, we were able to turn our attention toward economic development. We finalized the deals for three permanent land-based casinos in Detroit: MGM, Greektown, and Motor City (majority-owned at that time by Mandalay Bay) casinos. The casino activity had been stagnant since 1999. Part of the impasse was the desire to build the three gaming houses on the city’s riverfront. We successfully changed that plan.

  There’s some behind-the-scenes history to note here. The three casinos had given the City of Detroit $50 million apiece—$150 million total—to buy land on the Riverfront on which to build their permanent locations
. That was during Dennis Archer’s time in office. Beth Duncumbe, Archer’s sister-in-law, headed this project from her position as president of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. The DEGC is a quasi-public entity that spearheads a great deal of development for downtown projects. The leader is essentially hired by the mayor.

  The DEGC spent nearly $120 million on twenty-five acres of land on Detroit’s riverfront. That was it! It was the highest price for land ever paid in the history of the city. If I were still mayor, I’d probably be facing charges for that. Hell, General Motors bought the entire Renaissance Center development, including a hotel, for less than $80 million. The deafening silence around this mess was eerie. The DEGC carried out several disastrous and seemingly shady deals during that period. But hey, Kwame Kilpatrick wasn’t involved, so it wasn’t interesting.

  By the time I arrived, there wasn’t enough land to build one casino. The City had condemned some riverfront properties where businesses were still running, and a lawsuit hovered over this. This land-buying plan killed a thriving, growing riverfront business district. Some of the bar and restaurant owners in the area joined together and filed a suit against the City. On top of that, the casinos sued to get back their $150 million. The suit basically demanded either their land, or their money. To boot, the casinos no longer wanted to build permanent sites, because they were making so much money in their temporary spots. MGM had built theirs just off the Lodge/US-10 Expressway. Greektown had plopped down in Greektown, downtown, next to I-75. And Motor City had completely renovated the old Wagner Baking Company, where Wonder Bread was once made, on Grand River Avenue. As we say in the street, they were straight. For us, though, it meant that the City of Detroit needed to accomplish several things: