Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[Savonarola]

Meanwhile in Detroit:

Mom says from behind bars: 'I would kill them again'

A daily crime show has released an interview with Mitchelle Blair, the Detroit mother convicted of killing two of her children and stuffing their bodies in a freezer, in which she says: "I would kill them again."

In the video released this week by Crime Watch Daily, the show's anchor, Matt Doran, goes behind bars to speak with Blair.

During the minute-and-a-half clip, Doran asks Blair why she piled the bodies of her dead children, 9-year-old Stephen Berry and, months later, 13-year-old Stoni Blair, in a freezer.

"Well, I only had one deep freezer," she replied. "You mean to take the decision to pile the bodies on top of each other? Where was she going to go?"

Then Doran asks Blair how she sleeps at night.

"I slept well," she said. "Of course at first I cried. It was (expletive) up. I had to let go of all of that."

In response to whether she feels any remorse, Blair responded: "I would kill them again."

Blair was sentenced in July to life in prison without the possibility of parole after she pleaded guilty to the deaths.

It is believed Stephen died Aug. 20, 2012, and Stoni nine months later on May 25, 2013. Their bodies were found in March when court officers went to evict the family from the Martin Luther King Apartments.

[Syt]

How did she kill them, and I'm surprised that there were 9 months between the killings - usually if someone goes berserk they (try to) kill all kids at the same time. And what did Stoni Blair do in the meantime? Was she ok with her sibling being murdered by Mom and stowed in a freezer?

[Savonarola]

How did she kill them, and I'm surprised that there were 9 months between the killings - usually if someone goes berserk they (try to) kill all kids at the same time. And what did Stoni Blair do in the meantime? Was she ok with her sibling being murdered by Mom and stowed in a freezer?

It was a really horrific crime.  She had strangled both of them, one with a t-shirt and another one with a belt.  She had routinely abused them (and her two surviving children).  She got caught only because she was being evicted.

[Syt]

Sheesh.

[Admiral Yi]

Older kid must have had an interesting life for 9 months.

[Savonarola]

Let the beheadings commence!

Hamtramck elects first majority-Muslim City Council
Mark Hicks, The Detroit News 12:46 a.m. EST November 6, 2015
Saad Almasmari ran for a seat on the Hamtramck City Council this year with a simple yet powerful goal in mind.

"I like to serve my community," the 28-year-old Yemeni immigrant said. "I like everything in Hamtramck. ... The thing I like most in Hamtramck is the diversity."

On Tuesday, Almasmari earned the highest number of votes — 1,176, or 22 percent — among the six candidates who sought three, four-year terms on the council.

With his election, Muslims now fill four of the six seats on the panel, he said. It's now believed to be the first City Council in the country boasting a Muslim majority, said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Michigan chapter.

"The Michigan Muslim community is becoming more civicly and politically engaged," Walid said Thursday. "In some areas where Muslims are having an extremely difficult time, we are making progress in this area on a number of different fronts."

The shift in leadership is another signal that Hamtramck, once known as a predominately Polish Catholic community, has in recent years welcomed a more diverse demographic.

Muslims are "a significant population in the city and they've been arriving here and transforming the city for a generation now," said Sally Howell, a University of Michigan-Dearborn associate professor who has studied the group and written a book, "Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past."

"It's good to see them gain representation equal to their numbers on the City Council. That's a great opportunity for them and for the city to imagine a new future."

The election strides come after years of controversy. In 2013, the Al-Islah Islamic Center met resistance from Hamtramck's Zoning Board over its proposed remodeling of its building. And in 2004, some residents heatedly objected to an ordinance the council ultimately approved to allow mosques to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer onto public streets.

The U.S. Census Bureau doesn't track religion, but Howell estimates Hamtramck, which has around 22,000 residents, is roughly half Muslim. As Poles and others left the city in the last several decades, she said, it attracted many immigrants, including those from Yemen, Bangladesh and Bosnia. Between 1990 and 2000, the city's Arab population jumped more than fivefold, while its traditional Polish population dropped by more than a third.

"Hamtramck is famously a city that was known for being a real stronghold for the Polish community," Howell said. "Hamtramck was important to the Poles for the same reason it's important to these Muslim groups today in that they got to have a place where they could be the hegemonic voice. ... People were happy to have Hamtramck as a place that could really represent them. And I think that this is true today for the newer immigrants."

Almasmari relocated to the United States in 2009 and settled in Hamtramck, where his father-in-law lived. He gained citizenship in 2011 and is pursuing a degree in business administration from Wayne State University while running his own ice cream company.

Now on the council, he hopes to secure more financial resources for the city and push to revitalize the area around Jos. Campau.

Almasmari stresses that faith wasn't a selling point during the election campaign, and his three Muslim constituents — Mohammed Hassan, Anam Miah and Abu Musa — are focused on representing all Hamtramck residents.

"Although we are Muslims, we are going to serve everyone regardless of their religion, ethnicity or skin color," he said.

Hamtramck is one of two cities surrounded entirely by Detroit (the other being Highland Park.)  Historically it was the center of Eastern European immigration into Metro Detroit.  Today most immigrants from Eastern Europe move to the northeast suburbs.  The city has gone through a lot of changes since 90s; a lot of the old Polish restaurants and shops are gone (there are still a couple of hold-outs, and one of the bakeries there is *the* place to get a Pączki on Mardi Gras.)

It's interesting that this is the first place to have a Muslim majority city council; instead of the more traditional Arab immigrant cities of Dearborn and Dearborn Heigths.

[Archy]

I wonder why so many Muslims move to the Detroit area.  Is it that they feel at home or that it's still better than the Middle East.?

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder why so many Muslims move to the Detroit area.  Is it that they feel at home or that it's still better than the Middle East.?

Henry Ford shipped in a bunch of North Africans back in the day.

Cribbed from Sav.

[Savonarola]

Hamtramck elects first majority-Muslim City Council

This must be making the rounds on conservative talk radio, because one of my co-workers asked me about it.  He was worried about freedom of religion being suppressed.  I suspect that people who do fret about this have never actually been to a city council meeting.  What could possibly happen?

Ahmed:  If you do not approve the lot split for the property on Washington and Plum Street than I shall put a Fatwa on all of you.
Mahound:  If you put a Fatwa on me than I shall put a Jihad on you; not just you, but on your children and their children's children, verily unto the third generation there shall be Jihad.

[Malthus]

Hamtramck elects first majority-Muslim City Council

This must be making the rounds on conservative talk radio, because one of my co-workers asked me about it.  He was worried about freedom of religion being suppressed.  I suspect that people who do fret about this have never actually been to a city council meeting.  What could possibly happen?

Ahmed:  If you do not approve the lot split for the property on Washington and Plum Street than I shall put a Fatwa on all of you.
Mahound:  If you put a Fatwa on me than I shall put a Jihad on you; not just you, but on your children and their children's children, verily unto the third generation there shall be Jihad.

Well, I have heard in America there have ALREADY been ritual beheadings for violations of various HOA rules - and that's without any Muslims involved! So no wonder they worry about city council meetings. 

[Savonarola]

Ex-star principal tells of her downfall in EAA scandal
Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press Columnist 9:24 a.m. EST December 11, 2015

The first time Kenyetta (K.C.) Wilbourn Snapp broke the law, she had been in a new job for less than a week.

It was 2009. She was in her first stint as a principal, and she was to run Denby High School, the city's worst-performing school that year. The Detroit native was eager to achieve — and eager to please.

"I was the first person to make it in my family, so everybody started coming around," she said. "My grandmother showed up and Food Services hired her.  ... Then comes my uncle tagging along and, I'm like, 'Do I have to give him a job?' "

She had no job available, so she asked her football coach to hire her uncle as an assistant. She paid him using funds from a DPS vendor. That vendor paid Snapp $750 every time she gave him the names of 20 students for a tutoring program. She said she doesn't know whether the program actually existed.

The second time she broke the law, she buried a student's mother. With school funds.

She knew it was illegal. But after the first few times, stealing became easy. Then it became routine. And Snapp, a beloved high school principal by day, became a savvy, well-connected crook around the clock.

"If you needed money, you could get money," Snapp, 40, told the Free Press in a series of exclusive interviews.

She accepted my call because I wrote the story six years ago of how she turned Denby around in 2009. She said she wanted to try to explain why she did what she did.

"There's a network," she said. "It's so deep."

If Kwame Kilpatrick is Detroit's greatest example of a municipal leader who forfeited a brilliant career to be a player,  Snapp, may become the poster child for a home-grown educator who squandered her career for money.

Snapp — who was indicted Thursday and recently told the Free Press that she agreed to plead guilty to charges of bribery and tax evasion in exchange for leniency — is at the heart of a federal corruption investigation into the Education Achievement Authority, the state reform district for the lowest-performing schools. The EAA oversees 15 schools in Detroit.

Federal authorities are examining relationships between school officials and vendors who appear to have been paid for work not done or work billed at rates much higher than contracted. Investigators have spent more than a year sifting through thousands of documents that portray a "family business" with employees helping vendors, vendors helping employees and everyone helping themselves.

Snapp was indicted along with Glynis Thornton, whose company, Making a Difference Everyday, was paid to provide after-school tutoring services for students at Denby and Mumford, where Snapp became principal in 2013, and Paulette Horton, an independent contractor connected to Thornton's company.

The three women were each charged with conspiracy to commit federal program bribery, federal program bribery, aiding and abetting and conspiracy to launder money. Snapp, in addition, was charged with federal tax evasion and Horton was charged with failure to file a federal income tax return.

When Snapp told the Free Press that she had funneled public school funds to nearly 1,000 consultants, local businesses, parents, family and friends, those muffled wails you heard across the city were the sounds of hope dying.

"Let me be honest, I benefited," she said. "I couldn't have $2,000 in my pocket from a vendor ... and not buy gas for the car."

That would be the red Maserati, a gift from a school vendor that became a red flag for federal investigators. After FBI agents raided her Detroit home a year ago, Snapp got rid of the car.

The investigation — and Snapp's comments — come as Gov. Rick Snyder attempts to remake Detroit's education system to improve student achievement.

Former emergency manager Robert Bobb, who was in charge of DPS when Snapp was running her operation, said he began to get phone calls as soon as the indictment was announced.

"I'm totally shocked, quite frankly," he said from Washington, D.C. "I'm shocked over the number of incidents that have happened in Detroit since I've been gone, particularly after I cracked down real hard on people."

He was referring to the nine defendants indicted four years ago for over-billing DPS for a sham wellness program to the tune of $3.3 million. Among them was Stephen Hill, a former executive director of the DPS Risk Management Department, and Sherry Washington, a Detroit art gallery owner. Of nine indicted defendants, one died, seven pleaded guilty, and Washington was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.

What is most shocking, Bobb said, is that anyone would continue to try to scam the district after those indictments.

"That really confirms what I felt early on and what people in the community told me Day One: 'Look out for the friends and family plan,' and the system itself was a pool of corruption."

Dreamed of teaching

Snapp is barely 5 feet tall. Barely. She says her height has always bothered her, it seemed something to overcome. But it didn't affect her dream of being a teacher.

"While most little girls played house, I played school," she said. "It was the foundation for my career path. My mother and godmother were both educators, and family members worked in ancillary roles within the school system ...

"Education was all that I knew."

It wasn't all she knew.

Snapp said her childhood was also filled with pain and loss — an eviction, homelessness, abuse.

Her family, she said, was like many in Detroit with "one foot in poverty and one in a quest for upward mobility."

After graduating from Martin Luther King Jr. High School, she earned a teaching certificate to get her first teaching job at Benedictine High School in 1996. Two years later, she was hired to teach social studies and English at Foch Middle School. In 2003, she moved to Brenda Scott Middle.

Two years later, she was hired as an assistant principal at Finney High, where she soon was noticed by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, an Ohio educator brought to DPS to tackle curricular improvements while emergency manager Bobb tried to pare down a budget deficit that had surpassed eight figures.

Snapp said one day she was called downtown to meet with Byrd-Bennett. She took a seat in her office to discuss a new job.

Byrd-Bennett told Snapp she wanted her to be principal of Denby High but wasn't convinced she could handle the job.

"She said, 'You're a little kid. How can you run a school?' And I said 'I can do this!' " Snapp recalled.

Snapp hit the ground running in 2009, gaining national attention as a stellar principal who turned around the city's worst high school. But, at the same time, she was gaining a local reputation as someone who could ghost-write masterful business plans and grant proposals. It was a little consulting business that turned into criminal operation.

Whenever she needed money for something — for school, for after school, for students or for herself, she just worked with vendors to get it. Soon when other principals needed favors, she alleges, she provided those, too.

Initially, Snapp said, she would ghostwrite business proposals for companies seeking contracts with the school district. Later, she began to hire people at Denby, and then at Mumford High, based on proposals she had ghostwritten.

That tracks with the information EAA officials gave to federal authorities.

Snapp also recalled planning a forum for Mumford's male students. She hired former NBA player Derrick Coleman to speak for a $3,000 fee. She had written the proposal he presented to get the job. But did she get a kickback?

"No," she said, "that greedy bastard didn't even pay me."

Coleman, reached Thursday evening, said it never happened.

"That's a blatant lie," he said.

Byrd-Bennett, the woman who hired Snapp, ultimately became chief of the Chicago Public Schools in 2012. Last October, Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud after steering multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts to a former employer in exchange for $2.3 million.

After starting at Denby High, Snapp ran head-on into two truths: More than a third of Detroit residents were living in poverty, the highest of all cities in the U.S. with populations higher than 300,000.

"We're talking about systemic poverty and what does that look like?" she said. "Yes, I may have a Gucci bag or a pair of Cartier (glasses), but I don't have any money for an emergency. So what did I do? I buried the mama with federal money.

"I'd write more. I'd ask more. And I'd get more," she said.

No matter the intention, if her allegations are true or even partly true ... if corruption is a way of life, an accepted practice among some in the DPS and EAA school districts ... if the city schools have been, as we've suspected, little more than a bank for hundreds of people, then our greatest fears have been realized.

Learned to cheat

In one interview in person, Snapp was petulant and subdued and appeared to be stunned by her circumstances. At times forlorn, and at other times incredulous, she seemed not to understand why she was in trouble for doing something she said so many other people were doing.

She said she learned how to cheat from DPS educators.

It all began, she said, with the principal who gave her her first teaching job.

"I was her protégé," Snapp said. "She would give us gift cards and the best tickets to the Pistons, and we never knew where it came from. And anytime we wanted to buy something that the district denied, she said 'Here, take a Visa.' "

When that principal later died at her home, it was Snapp and her mother who found her body, she said.

"As I'm there . . . I saw gift cards, about $500 worth of gift cards. I used them to help pay for her funeral."

Snapp described how easy it was to make money. She mentioned one businessperson known as "the preferred vendor."

"If you spent a certain amount of money with him ... you'd get a rebate in points," she said.

At the end of every transaction, the vendor would say: 'Well, KC, you have about 500 points. How do you want to use them?'

"I'd say 'Give me some gift cards,' and I'd give them to my staff. Or he'd say, 'It's that time of year. Do you want Pistons tickets?' I gave them away."

It was at Mumford, now an EAA school to which she was assigned in 2013, that Snapp turned vendor spending into an art.

"When I got there, it was like 'Brewster's Millions'," Snapp said, referring to the 1995 Richard Pryor movie whose main character, Monty Brewster, must spend $30 million in 30 days to inherit $300 million.

Snapp went on a spree. "You have to spend almost a million dollars," she alleges that "officials" told her.

Federal prosecutors, who have declined to discuss the investigation, came after Snapp relentlessly, she said.

"They got on me because I was in bed with everybody."

Community leaders, including some of the coalition attempting to make things better, said they knew something was going on.

Tonya Allen, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation,  said she, too, was approached by vendors who wanted to get into  DPS, charter schools and the EAA district.

"They come to me, and I can see that they're trying to curry favor," said Allen. "They're always looking for an entry point to get contracts with the district. I refuse to be anywhere near anything related to that. So yes, I did know it existed, but I've never been close enough to know what it looked like, how it occurred, how may people participated in it.

"One of the things I was really surprised by is that we don't have the systems in place to keep this from happening," she said. "I don't know if it's a role for the commission, but I wouldn't be surprised. We really underestimate how de-stabilized every school is, be it charter, traditional public or an EAA school."

Allen said that, in discussions with educators in DPS, they couldn't offer a vision for the future because they were stuck in their current environments. They didn't feel like they were being supported and they were concerned about mismanagement.

"It seemed like they felt powerless," Allen said. "I think none of us could imagine what kind of environment they're working in every day. I really don't think we can imagine it."

Allen said she didn't want Snapp's contention that she learned from other principals to taint the reputations of all principals.

"There are principals who support families, who pick children up, who pay for things, but they do it out of their pockets," she said. "She could have done that, too. This wasn't about her trying to help poor people. Don't cast that vision on people who are doing good work while underpaid with cut salaries and health care."

A role model

Several employees, parents and students have called Snapp a role model, a savior, a self-esteem builder; some wrote letters to the court asking for leniency.

And why shouldn't her supporters be loyal? The former principal used school funds for everything from teacher parties to prom gowns. She gave cash to staff members she felt didn't get paid enough, and she gave some to students when they asked.

Snapp became a bank. She said the lines between right and wrong got so blurred that soon she didn't bother to separate her money from school funds.

And while she declared several times in interviews that she was a Robin Hood figure, she forgot one simple fact:

Robin Hood was a thief.

"It was wrong, and I have to account for that," Snapp said. "I know it was wrong. But I know I helped a lot of people. I kept a lot of lights and gas going. When I'd drive down side streets and see big orange electric cords from one house to another, I had to help. I knew I was responsible for some things that might come back to haunt me."

Her attorney, William (Bill) Mitchell III, said Thursday that he and his client are awaiting a court date for her arraignment. He declined to discuss whether she still will be allowed to plead guilty for leniency in sentencing.

"She's made some statements, and I suppose several others have made statements," he said. "We'll see what happens. This is the beginning of a process, and we will seek the best possible resolution.  Clearly some of the things she's accused of will not be thought of favorably, but there are things that  she has done that are worthy."

Mitchell also declined to say whether there might be more indictments to come.

"That's really up to the government and they do what they do, and they do what they do in the privacy of government offices," he said. "I would not be surprised ... "

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said she could neither confirm nor deny the ongoing investigation.

So Snapp waits. And the little girl who started high school at 12 and played teacher while other girls played with dolls, who did improve test scores, attendance and graduation rates at Denby and who did change students' lives, is no longer in charge — of her life or theirs.

We might not ever know what more she might have accomplished had she chosen an honest path.

"You could have knocked me down with a broken feather," a heartbroken Keith Johnson, former president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers and Snapp's mentor, said in an interview. "Her destiny was — I hate to say the sky's the limit — but I envisioned her as a superintendent, or ultimately as (U.S.) Secretary of Education. She's just that gifted an educator. If what is alleged and what she's admitted is true, it ends up pretty much destroying what had been a great career."

Snapp was once celebrated.

The next headlines will not be so kind.

She said she became Robin Hood.

That is not what the public will call her.

They will not care that she paid utility bills at students' homes without heat ... or boarded up houses across the street from the school ... or made sure every kid could attend the senior prom ... or helped keep a former student in college  ... or bury two students who were murdered or bought food for students who were hungry.

They will not care that the friends and family she hired at Denby were unemployed and suffering in the nation's poorest city or that she held a joint checking account with one student without family who now has a successful collegiate football career.

"It comes with being an urban principal," Snapp  said. "You get the job and everybody wants to come on board. Keith Johnson refers to it as poverty pimping. But me? I'm a sucker for the underdog."

While she admitted to breaking the law, she said she wants people to know why she did what she did.

"The first time I did it, I couldn't say no."

All she wanted to do was help people.  It's just a wacky coincidence that she ended up with a Maserati for herself.   

[The Brain]

it was like 'Brewster's Millions'," Snapp said, referring to the 1995 Richard Pryor movie

Fucking remakes.

[Savonarola]

Take Toledo, please! Wait. It wasn't like that ...
By Kathleen Lavey, Lansing State Journal 12:47 p.m. EST December 14, 2015

Ah, Toledo. Home of the Mudhens. Maker of glass, builder of Jeeps, birthplace of Tony Packo's Café, where celebrities autograph hot dog buns.

It could have belonged to Michigan.

In fact, Ohio and Michigan went to war 180 years ago over a strip of land containing Toledo, which was not yet incorporated as a city.

"No shots were fired, but people were armed and ready to fight," said Sandra Clark, director of the Michigan Historical Center.

The 18-month conflict ended 179 years ago on Dec. 14, 1836, thanks to federal intervention.

Ohio got Toledo, Michigan got the upper hand, so to speak. The biggest loser? Wisconsin. But more about that later.

The Toledo War was waged over a 468-square-mile strip of land at the border between the two states.

On a frontier where trees and swamps impeded horses and wagons, water was the easiest way to travel. Both Ohio, already a state, and Michigan, a territory wishing to be a state, wanted Toledo's access to the nation's network of canals.

"At that point, everybody was thinking of water as a way you connect, and they're talking about a canal in the Maumee River that comes out of Toledo, which connects to the Ohio River, which connects to the Mississippi River," Clark said. "Nobody is thinking about the Great Lakes as having equal value for shipping."

Everybody at the time pretty much agreed that the Michigan-Ohio border would be an east-west line drawn from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan.

Except the land was surveyed a couple of times. And given the issues of traveling in a straight line around those aforementioned trees and swamps, the surveyors came out with different results.

And that created the disputed area, known as the Toledo Strip.

Ohio, admitted to the union as a state in 1803, claimed it. When leaders of the Michigan Territory decided to petition for statehood, they drew a map including the Toledo Strip.

The stalemate simmered through the summer of 1836, when President Andrew Jackson and Congress stepped in.

The feds were on Ohio's side. If Ohio wanted Toledo, Ohio would get Toledo.

Michigan's consolation prize: the western two-thirds of the Upper Peninsula, carved out of – you guessed it – the Wisconsin Territory.

"It's a lot of land, and this is 1836, and nobody realized what copper and iron were there," Clark said. "There was a lot of opposition to accepting it."

But Michigan's territorial leaders desperately wanted Michigan to become a state. There was federal money about to be distributed, and they wanted some of it. Michigan wanted its own representatives in Congress and its own Constitution.

They stood down. Toledo became Ohio's, and the whole Upper Peninsula became Michigan's.

Sorry, not sorry, Wisconsin.

The rush to prospect for copper in the U.P. began in 1841. Michigan's supply turned out to be among the purest in the world. The first shipment of iron ore left the U.P. in 1846, and they're still coming.

In the end, Clark said, "It was a very good deal."

This is one of the strangest chapters in the history of Michigan.  Both Michigan's territorial governor, Steven Mason, and Ohio's governor, Robert Lucas, raised militias.  The reason that Michigan was so eager for federal funds (and had to accept the deal) was that the territory faced bankruptcy due to the expense of their militia.

[Caliga]

Sav do you know the story about the late 19th century Mormon Kingdom on some island in Lake Michigan?  That one is pretty odd too.

Also, I'm disappointed no article in here about the leaden drinking water in Flint.  Come on dude, don't let us down.

[KRonn]

I never knew about this dispute where Michigan got the upper peninsula, but Wisconsin lost a lot of land from the deal.