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

[Savonarola]

Detroit political "Consultant" Sam Riddle has said that the only difference between Detroit and a third world nation is that there aren't goats wandering the streets of Detroit.  That may soon change:

Detroit council committee not sheepish on livestock grass proposal

Detroit— A Detroit City Council committee Thursday was not sheepish about a proposal to let livestock chomp grass on vacant land in city neighborhoods.

Councilman James Tate introduced the idea of allowing firms to use sheep and goats to trim grass on vacant lots at the request of residents in the Brightmoor neighborhood. One company, City Girls Soap, is pitching a plan to start an urban goat farm in the area for a creamery, cheese cave and a soap-making facility.

The first-term councilman made it clear he does not see the proposal as a way of replacing the city's fleet of grass-cutters. Under the proposal, neighborhoods would need petitions signed by 51 percent of residents in the area, and the city has to determine if the location is feasible.

"In my mind, this is not replacing humans who are working (and) doing the job with sheep, but providing opportunities for potential individuals who want to utilize this as a service," Tate said. "Utilizing sheep and goats is not right for every neighborhood."

Laura DeYoung, executive director of the Cleveland-based nonprofit Urban Shepherds who testified before the council subcommittee, hopes Detroit will proceed with a pilot project. Urban Shepherds is working with St. Clair Superior Development Corp. in Cleveland to create a model for the animal concept.

"Everyone was open to the idea and hopefully it will generate some discussion," DeYoung said. " ... It makes sense as an economic development tool, cost-savings tool (and) reduction of environmental impacts and reduction of maintenance areas of eyesores."

Joe Rashid, outreach coordinator for Brightmoor Alliance, said he sees urban agriculture as a way of dealing with the city's land issues.

"Livestock has provided a great answer for maintenance (and) economic values," Rashid said. "Agriculture is a huge draw in Brightmoor, and we'd love to see that there and throughout the city."

Council member Kenneth Cockrel Jr. said he is open to the idea. "We have all these vacant parcels that are out there," Cockrel said. "Maybe this will be a way to deal with some of that and maybe do something productive with those parcels. I do think it's worth exploring."

But Councilwoman JoAnn Watson was concerned it won't fit into the city's master plan. The city should not be piece-mealing projects together, she said.

"The master plan ought to be the blueprint for what the city moves forward with," Watson said.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130927/METRO01/309270038#ixzz2g7F8pXIF

So did the master plan include bankruptcy and having half the city population functionally illiterate?

[KRonn]

They want to use domestic livestock to trim the city lawns, parks, etc. So how is that cheaper or at least less of a hassle? The animals need to be cared for, someone has to ride herd on them up all the time, their "leavings" have to be picked up. Animals tend to run into the streets causing accidents. They'd be better off introducing a small buffalo herd that doesn't need any tending to, though they'd still be a menace to the roadways.   

[Barrister]

I northern Alberta along the Mackenzie file they have (or had, I was last there 10 years ago) a shepherd and a flock of sheep who grazed along the side of the road in order to keep the vegetation down.

[Savonarola]

They want to use domestic livestock to trim the city lawns, parks, etc. So how is that cheaper or at least less of a hassle? The animals need to be cared for, someone has to ride herd on them up all the time, their "leavings" have to be picked up. Animals tend to run into the streets causing accidents. They'd be better off introducing a small buffalo herd that doesn't need any tending to, though they'd still be a menace to the roadways.   

We'll eliminate the Bridge Card and force city residents to hunt goats to survive.  It's a win-win.   

I think the idea was that private urban farmers would bring their goats or sheep to abandoned lots to graze and then take them back to their pens; not that herds of sheep would roam wild in the city (although, this being Detroit, that's not an impossible outcome for the plan.)

[Savonarola]

To the surprise of no one:

Corruption alleged after Detroit pension deal

$200M loaned from 2006-09 tied to bribes, kickbacks, officials say

Detroit — A Wall Street deal backed by former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that helped push the city into bankruptcy bankrolled a three-year spree of alleged corruption, according to federal court records and pension officials.

The spending cheated Detroit retirees out of more than $84 million, led to criminal charges against six people and compounded the impact of a money-losing Wall Street deal, which could eventually cost the city more than $2.7 billion.

Federal prosecutors allege city pension officials started approving a series of shady transactions with businessmen in January 2006, six months after the Wall Street debt deal started injecting $1.44 billion into the Detroit pension funds.

Flush with cash, pension fund trustees loaned more than $200 million to businessmen accused of paying bribes and kickbacks between January 2006 and April 2009, according to federal prosecutors. The businessmen included a Georgia man charged with embezzling more than $3 million with the help of a former Detroit Lions wide receiver and spending some of the cash on an $8.5 million mansion in Atlanta.

Some of the money was squandered on riskier alternative investments, including real estate and private equity deals that were approved when Kilpatrick and his appointees — including a childhood friend and fraternity brother — held considerable influence over the pension funds.

"Once the deal went through, the dark side found out and that's how all these (expletive) deals went through," Detroit Police & Fire pension chairman George Orzech said.

The money-losing Wall Street deal has exposed the city's pension funds to a possible takeover by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. He says the retirement system is significantly underfunded and wants to cut retiree pensions to help reduce the city's overall $18 billion debt.

The timing of the Wall Street deal and almost immediate decision by pension officials to spend the money on allegedly corrupt investments did not surprise Orr spokesman Bill Nowling.

"This is a shocking coincidence," Nowling said sarcastically. "I think every Detroit pensioner should be demanding from their union leadership and pension leadership, 'Where is that money?' "

It's gone, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which contends the funds were wasted on deals pitched by businessmen accused of plying Kilpatrick and pension officials with private jet flights and trips to Bermuda, Las Vegas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, gift baskets stuffed with cash, casino chips and thousands in cash.

The businessmen, in turn, allegedly received millions in loans from the pension funds for ventures that included real estate, private equity and a used-car dealership.

Complicated transaction

The alleged corruption flowed from a controversial deal in 2005 pushed by Kilpatrick. At the time, he wanted to borrow $1.44 billion to prop up the city's pension funds.

City leaders financed the pension debt by swapping its variable interest rate for a fixed rate, effectively betting the variable interest rates would exceed the fixed rate of about 6 percent.

Just the opposite happened. Variable interest rates plummeted in 2008-09 and have remained low since, costing taxpayers tens of millions in additional borrowing costs, city financial records show.

Orr is trying to end the complicated transaction in a high-stakes fight in bankruptcy court. His financial consultants argue total payments related to the Wall Street deal, including interest, could cost Detroit taxpayers more than $2.7 billion by 2034.

Orzech said pension fund members were against the Wall Street deal in 2005 because of high fees and the complex nature of the transaction.

Robert Brooks, a professor of finance at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, said the IOUs written for the pension funds likely "sped up" Detroit's financial collapse.

"It's incredibly arrogant to think I'm going to go borrow money, invest it in the stock market and then live off the earnings," Brooks said.

The first infusion of cash flowed into the pension funds in June 2005. About $680 million went to the city's Police & Fire pension fund, Orzech said. Approximately $740 million went to the General pension fund.

"The vast majority went into the stock and bond market," Orzech said.

He said a small percentage, about $27 million, went into alternative investments, a growing trend among public pension plans that includes money for real estate, hedge funds and private equity. Alternative investments carry greater risk and potential reward.

Roy Dixon, a Georgia investment adviser with ties to Detroit, wanted some of that money, prosecutors allege. He is charged in a federal indictment with paying a series of bribes to get the cash, including money for Kilpatrick and cash for the ex-mayor's fraternity brother, former city Treasurer Jeffrey Beasley.

In 2006, months after the Detroit City Council approved Kilpatrick's Wall Street deal, Dixon formed the private-equity firm Onyx Capital Advisers, which was based in Detroit.

Onyx wanted to act as a private equity firm and invest pension fund money in a real estate deal in the Turks and Caicos Islands and a Georgia company that sold automobiles to people with bad credit.

That company, Georgia-based Second Chance Motors, was owned by Mike Farr, the former Lions wideout (1990-92). His father is ex-Lion Mel Farr Sr., the "superstar" Detroit-area auto dealer who pitched cars in commercials while wearing a red cape and pretending to fly.

By June 2007, the Detroit pension funds and one in Pontiac agreed to invest $25 million in Onyx. That was exactly one year after Detroit received the final infusion from Kilpatrick's Wall Street deal.

To secure the investment, prosecutors allege Dixon paid bribes and kickbacks to Kilpatrick, Beasley, three other pension trustees and others. Dixon and an unnamed business partner also allegedly contributed $45,000 to Kilpatrick's nonprofit, the Kilpatrick Civic Fund.

Trial coming in March

Dixon, 50, was indicted in December and accused of embezzling more than $3 million. He will stand trial in March and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of charges including bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Dixon's defense lawyer Edward Wishnow did not respond to messages seeking comment.

In court documents, Dixon said Beasley and other pension officials extorted money and gifts from him.

The indictment and a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allege Dixon fueled a lavish lifestyle with money loaned on behalf of Detroit retirees.

In 2008, Dixon was building the stone mansion in Atlanta. The FBI and SEC analyzed bank and financial records and alleged that Dixon had Farr pay three construction companies $521,000 in pension fund cash, according to prosecutors.

"Why were you doing that?" SEC lawyer Robert Moye asked Farr during a December 2011 deposition.

"Mr. Dixon asked me to do that," Farr said. "It had something to do with his construction loan on — I don't know if he didn't have enough — there wasn't enough money in the loan that he had to finish the home."

The sprawling Craftsman-style home is beyond an imposing gate on 2 1/2 acres in the wealthy Buckhead neighborhood north of Atlanta.

The mansion has seven bedrooms, 10 baths and features a three-car garage, a dining room that seats 12 people, pool, exercise room, library and four fireplaces.

Detroit Police & Fire pension trustee Mark Diaz said it is unfair that a businessman who allegedly embezzled money from retirees has a mansion at a time when Detroit pensioners fear they could end up losing their own homes if their pensions are slashed.

"Repulsive, if you want to put a word to it," Diaz said.

The home is headed for foreclosure soon.

A sale is scheduled for November, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The pension fund bribery trial is supposed to start four months later, in March.

Deal 'enormously risky'

The criminal case against Dixon, Beasley and two others alleges a cozy relationship between the Atlanta businessman and pension officials.

In December 2008, Dixon allegedly paid for a Police & Fire pension trustee, Paul Stewart, and his "paramour" to vacation in Naples, Fla., according to prosecutors. While there, Stewart allegedly attended a New Year's Eve party at Dixon's $2.7 million vacation home, which is for sale.

Diaz, the Police & Fire trustee, replaced Stewart in 2011. He suggests money from the $1.44 billion Wall Street deal arrived quickly and was spent quickly, sometimes against the advice of professional investment advisers.

"Unfortunately, it looks like their haste made waste," Diaz said.

When Dixon was indicted last year, prosecutors said the Detroit pension funds had lost the entire $20 million investment in Onyx. Pontiac's pension fund lost $3.8 million.

The Dixon deal is one of several that lost money for the pension funds. In all, the pension funds lost at least $84.18 million on investments tied to the alleged fraud scheme involving Beasley and other pension officials, says the U.S. Attorney's Office.

In July, the city filed the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, which was prompted, in part, by the burden of paying retiree pensions and Kilpatrick's Wall Street deal.

"It was not necessarily a bad deal, but it was enormously risky," Nowling said. "The only entities doing these types of deals were ones that could pay the piper if they lost."

Since being appointed in March, Orr has criticized the pension funds for putting retiree money in alternative investments and being involved in alleged corruption.

"It's frustrating," Nowling added. "We always get made out to be the bad guys. I didn't make these investments. Kevyn didn't make these investments, (Mayor Dave) Bing didn't make them. Nobody here did."

'We trusted people'

The pension funds have created an ethics policy in the wake of the indictments and either replaced or fired officials accused of wrongdoing, Diaz said. That includes the pension funds' lawyer, Ronald Zajac, who is awaiting trial alongside Beasley, Stewart and Dixon.

"We trusted people managing our system back then to do the best job on our behalf," Diaz said. "In spite of the economy taking a turn for the worse, in spite of the alleged corruption and bad deals, we are still at the top of the heap when it comes down to funding levels for pension systems.

"Where would we be had those things not happened?" Diaz wondered. "That's what really kills me."

Five of the eight Detroit Police & Fire pension fund trustees who voted to lend $10 million to Georgia businessman Roy Dixon have either been indicted, sent to prison or accused of taking cash or trips during a corruption scandal involving the pension funds. They include:

Marty Bandemer: A former Detroit Police union president allegedly received $5,000 in cash from pension fund businessmen during a 2007 birthday party at the Atheneum Suite Hotel, according to court records. Bandemer also allegedly received $15,000 in casino chips from a pension businessman and a free trip from another to the Bahamas in 2008. Bandemer has not been charged with a crime.

Jeffrey Beasley: A former city treasurer and fraternity brother of ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with taking bribes and kickbacks in a federal indictment in February 2012.

DeDan Milton: This longtime friend and executive assistant to Kilpatrick admitted taking about $16,000 in kickbacks in connection with two city land sales. He was sentenced to three years and six months in prison and released last month.

Alberta Tinsley-Talabi: She took a Caribbean trip, campaign cash and a donation from Dixon while supporting his $10 million city pension fund deal, according to prosecutors. She was later elected to the state House of Representatives and has not been charged in the ongoing corruption case.

Paul Stewart: A former vice president of the Detroit Police Officers Association. He allegedly received a $5,000 casino chip bribe; a Christmas basket stuffed with cash; $2,500 during a trip to New York City and $2,500 during a trip to Florida; and trips to the Bahamas and Naples, Fla., with his mistress — all from people doing business with the pension fund, according to the indictment.



From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130930/METRO01/309300024#ixzz2gQXF9xvs

With all the ink spilled over alternative investments it's surprising that they formed such a small portion of the investment portfolio.  It's less of a surprise that so much was lost through bribery and incompetence; that's the Detroit way.

[Savonarola]

Belle Isle to be run as state park, will get $10M redo
Council must pitch cash-saving Plan B if it rejects deal
Detroit— After more than a year of political wrangling, Gov. Rick Snyder's administration moved forward Tuesday with plans to convert Belle Isle into a state park and pump millions of dollars into repairing the island's ailing facilities.

In a move that surprised Detroit City Council members, Snyder and his transportation and natural resources directors inked a deal with Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to lease Belle Isle for 30 years with the possibility of two 15-year extensions.

Under the deal, Detroit will not receive any direct monetary payment for the lease, but state operation of Belle Isle is expected to save the cash-strapped city $4 million to $6 million annually, officials said. The state also plans to apply for grants to invest $10 million to $20 million in the park's aging infrastructure.

The deal also gives the council, which was largely sidelined when Orr took over City Hall in March, the chance to approve the lease or offer an alternative plan that would save the same amount of money.

Starting Jan. 1, Detroiters and other state residents would be required to have Michigan's $11-a-year Recreation Passport on their vehicles to enter the park. Pedestrians, bicyclists and individuals using public transportation could get onto the island for free.

The president of the Belle Isle Conservancy said the lease agreement is "a very important step" toward keeping the park in the public's hands at a time when city assets are being targeted for liquidation in Detroit's historic bankruptcy.

"The other aspect that may be forgotten is this better ensures that Belle Isle remains in the public sector," conservancy president Michele Hodges said. "That's what we all want."

Orr and Snyder have suggested the city seek such partnerships to help it manage and improve its assets as part of Detroit's ongoing restructuring.

Under the state's emergency manager law, the City Council has 10 days to approve the lease. If the lease is rejected, the law gives the council seven days to suggest an alternative that would save the same amount of money or more.

If the council comes up with an alternative plan, the state's Emergency Loan Board, which is composed of three Snyder aides, has 30 days to decide which proposal "best serves the interest of the public in that local government," according to Public Act 436.

If the council takes no action within 10 days, Orr has the power under the law to carry out the contract.

"This state-city partnership will provide a clean, safe park environment and enhance Belle Isle for citizens while still allowing the city to retain ownership of one of its jewels," Snyder said in a statement.

Mayor Dave Bing, who has fought the City Council over the plan to convert Belle Isle into a state park, said Tuesday that Detroit cannot afford the upkeep of the island and the lease is the city's best option to restore the historic park to its early 20th-century "grandeur."

"Detroit's current financial condition prohibits the city from investing in the much-needed restoration of Belle Isle," Bing said in a statement.

But the surprise announcement Tuesday set off an emotional backlash from some council members and political activists who sank an earlier, similar proposal to have the state operate Belle Isle.

"It's an absolute treasure, and Belle Isle is ours," Councilwoman JoAnn Watson said Tuesday. "It flies in the face of all the public pronouncements of the state trying to help the city. It sounds like a rape to me. It should never be touched. It's a disgrace before God to have this outrageous seizing of an asset."

The Department of Natural Resources plans to apply for grants to spend $10 million to $20 million in improvements for the island park's aging infrastructure and facilities, said Snyder spokeswoman Sara Wurfel.

In June, the Legislature appropriated $2.5 million to the DNR for the 2014 fiscal year to manage the park. Under the lease deal, park revenue from special events, permits and rental fees will be used to maintain and improve park facilities.

The Belle Isle Conservancy, which was officially created in January 2012 and has invested $2 million in upgrades on the island, views itself as an advocate for the park and park users, Hodges said.

"If we saw this as a threat, we would call it that," she said. "This is not a threat, this is an opportunity."

Under the deal, the city still would own Belle Isle, while the Department of Natural Resources will manage the park. The Michigan Department of Transportation would assume responsibility for the Detroit River island's roads and bridges, according to the lease.

The DNR's law enforcement division and the Michigan State Police would handle security on the island, freeing up 22 Detroit police officers, according to the governor and mayor's offices.

If the lease is approved, a 90-day transition period would follow before the DNR starts managing the park and making immediate improvements, according to the agreement.

The lease also calls for the creation of a seven-member advisory committee to advise on implementation of improvements, master planning and public safety for the park. Three members will be appointed by Snyder, one by the City Council, two by Bing and a chairman, jointly appointed by the governor and mayor. At least three of the members shall be city residents, it says.

City Council members first announced the lease Tuesday morning during the council's session, with some saying the contract should have been first brought to council members for consideration.

Councilwoman Brenda Jones and Watson questioned Orr's and Snyder's motives to sign the lease after months of putting off questions about their plans for Belle Isle.

"To continue to do as they please to do in this city is a true disrespect," Jones said. "There's no transparency. ... It's a crime to this city and the citizens of this city."

Council President Saunteel Jenkins promised to hold a public hearing on the lease.

A prior proposal to lease the island sparked an outcry from residents and divided the council before the panel ultimately voted 6-3 against placing the controversial proposal on a January agenda. The decision prompted Snyder to withdraw the offer.

That deal called for the DNR to operate the park and would have freed up $6.2 million in annual operating costs for the city. It called for a lease of 30 years at a time, with an option for the city or state to opt out in 10-year increments.

Political analyst Eric Foster said a lease is a good solution to improve Belle Isle, but it does not solve the city's problem with maintaining its parks system.

"Ultimately it's a good thing for the park," Foster said. "But the core question ... is: What about the other parks across the city that are still the city's responsibility that have closed or have tried public-private partnerships that haven't worked?"

The Rev. Charles Williams II, a Detroit civic activist who has challenged the legality of Orr's appointment, said Tuesday he is still opposed to any lease of Belle Isle, particularly if it was hammered out behind closed doors.

"It's obvious to us any takeover of Belle Isle faces deep opposition from the community," Williams said. "In this situation, it's because there is not transparency about the process."

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131001/METRO01/310010072#ixzz2ga01mZut

I had though rape was something different, Joann. 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Yeah, but this isn't rape rape, as Whoopi would say.

[Savonarola]

That'll learn him  :

Detroit man killed shortly after telling vehicle to slow down
Candice Williams
The Detroit News

Detroit — Police have arrested a man in his 30s for the death of a 23-year-old man fatally shot after he told a speeding vehicle to slow down.

Around 8 p.m. Monday in the 13000 block of Braile, the victim yelled at the driver of a white truck to slow down as the driver drove past at a high rate of speed.

A short time later, police said an unknown red vehicle drove up and the driver began firing shots. Police said the two vehicles are possibly connected.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131002/METRO01/310020075#ixzz2gbHVQHDo

[Savonarola]

Six decades in Detroit: How abandonment, racial tensions and financial missteps bankrupted the city
Joel Kurth, Mike Wilkinson and Louis Aguilar
The Detroit News

It was called a city of magic, and many believed the best was yet to come.

For a week in July 1951, Detroit put down its tools to reflect on its magnificence. The city that in four decades transformed from an unremarkable Midwestern community into a prosperous urban powerhouse was celebrating its 250th birthday.

A million people lined Woodward for a parade. A musical written for the occasion, "City of Freedom," ran for 11 days. The city marked the anniversary by creating the Detroit Historical Museum and launching a fundraising drive for Cobo Hall.

"The magic of Detroit is the way it sprang apparently full grown, fully prepared, into a world-wide metropolitan eminence, virtually overnight, after two centuries of somnolent obscurity," John C. Manning, editor of The Detroit Times, wrote in the anniversary's program.

Detroit was something new and hopeful. Its 185 war plants cranked out arms that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II. Its population soared because of a promise: Sacrifice your body to the assembly line, make enough to realize the American dream.

But as Mayor Albert Cobo lit a cake with 250 candles and sent balloons into the summer sky, Detroit was already in decline. President Harry Truman capped the celebration with a speech outside City Hall assuring residents that layoffs rippling through the city were a "temporary situation."

They weren't. The nation was on the brink of a recession. The auto industry was consolidating. Racial tensions were festering. The slow descent that ended 62 years later in the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy had begun.

Many of the forces that propelled Detroit to such heights — autos, the might of unions, migration from the South and inexpensive housing — also contributed to its fall.

"Detroit is a boom town on a massive scale — great economic strength, home to the most innovative industry in the history of the world and the most concentrated wealth of its time," said Kevin Boyle, a Northwestern University professor who grew up on the east side.

"It was always a city built on money. People came to Detroit for jobs, not the natural beauty or the great weather. There was never a commitment to place. It was to money. And then the boom ended."

Many now wonder how a city that embodied so much of what was so right with America could go so wrong. Gov. Rick Snyder has said the answer lies in the past, arguing Detroit's finances are "a problem 60 years in the making."

In six decades, Detroit lost more than 1 million residents and its total property value shrank from $37 billion to $9.4 billion in 2012 dollars. Over that time, the city's median wages went from among the best in the nation to among the worst. More than two-thirds of city residents now live in poverty and as many as 50 percent are unemployed.

The Detroit News is spotlighting the decade-by-decade changes through Lakewood Street. The block in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood near the border of Grosse Pointe Park was shaped by many of the issues that hit Detroit: race, job loss, crime and civic corruption.

In the 1950s, Lakewood was a beacon to blue-collar families who worked in factories or for the city. Today, it is home to drug houses, empty lots and a handful of residents who place their faith not in the city but in a retired cop nicknamed Jack Rabbit who patrols the block.



The 1950s: Rise of the suburbs
When they came to Detroit, Hassel Ledbetter's family didn't have a car. But they could afford a two-story home on Lakewood.

His father, Hassel Ledbetter Sr., was the son of a Tennessee farmer and moved north after high school to Detroit and its promise of high wages for assembly-line work at Chrysler's plant on Conner Road.

Lakewood buzzed with activity. Its wood and brick homes were modest, but meticulously maintained. Jefferson Avenue was a short walk away and teemed with stores selling shoes, clothes, food and candy.

Mothers stayed home, while fathers went off to jobs at Cummins Diesel, U.S. Rubber, American Motors and nearby Chrysler and Hudson plants.

"It was a normal, almost prototypical neighborhood," said Ledbetter, who is now 76.

The city was so crowded that Ledbetter's newspaper route had 100 customers on three blocks. Detroit prided itself on world-class services, from the beaches of nearby Belle Isle and a network of streetcars to libraries with well-stocked shelves whose books on the American West Ledbetter devoured.

"I practically lived there," he said.

The neighborhood, like many in Detroit, had grown around factories. Many were sprawling, chaotic places typified by the Packard Plant on East Grand, which employed more than 30,000 workers during the height of World War II.

By 1950, 36 years after Henry Ford began paying workers $5 a day, Detroit's population had quadrupled. Some 350,000 moved to the city seeking work during the war.

Afterward, the auto industry deemed multi-story plants inefficient. Manufacturers favored sprawling, single-story facilities that extended assembly lines and covered hundreds if not thousands of acres.

From 1945 to 1960, car companies built 33 plants in Metro Detroit. None was in Detroit. The city had no space because of the population explosion and was landlocked since its last annexation in 1926.

"(There was) no room to rejuvenate the manufacturing base on a single-story platform," said John Mogk, a Wayne State University law professor who studies land use and ran for mayor in 1977.

The east side was the hardest hit, losing 70,000 jobs in the 1950s, as competition and consolidation forced closure or mergers of automakers such as Hudson and Packard.

Government policies encouraged suburban growth. The city's congestion, deteriorating housing and new highways made it easier for residents to leave.

Most blacks had nowhere to go. They were confined to pockets of the city, hemmed in by federal housing policies and activist groups that enforced segregation.

In the 1920s and 1930s, neighborhoods such as Black Bottom thrived with hundreds of black-owned businesses. By the 1950s, the neighborhoods had begun to decline and blacks were increasingly relegated to housing projects.

New arrivals brought old prejudices. They erupted in 1943, when a shoving incident on Belle Isle ignited a three-day riot between blacks and whites that left 34 dead.

"You had a system that pits against each other immigrant whites and blacks from the South," said the Rev. Richard Sauerzopf, who studies Detroit for Michigan State University's Global Urban Studies Program.

"In Detroit, the solution wasn't to make it work. It was to leave."

By the end of the 1950s, the suburbs were in full flower. Northland Center in Southfield, then the world's largest shopping center, had opened in 1954. Two years later, Detroit's water department began expanding lines to farm fields to expand city revenues.

By decade's end, 1 of 4 white residents would leave the city. On Lakewood, the surrounding neighborhood lost 2,000 of its 13,600 residents in the 1950s.

Blacks lived about five blocks away. There were only seven total in the neighborhood. But as layoffs mounted, Ledbetter said neighbors asked: "How long before blacks move in and lower property values?"

"There were an awful lot of whites who didn't like blacks," said Ledbetter, who added he never heard his parents disparage African-Americans.

The 1960s: Race tensions boil over
A unique sound from Detroit — Motown — was on the airwaves. And Lakewood proved equally harmonious to David and Carol Angeleri when they moved a few doors down from the Ledbetters in 1963.

"It was one of the most beautiful neighborhoods a kid could grow up in ... ," he said. "We look back at it as if it was almost a utopia."

Upon graduating from Southeastern High School, David Angeleri faced traditional career choices: factory life, the military or perhaps college. Angeleri opted for a job with the city, beginning as a clerk.

It paid less than auto plants, but provided stability and decent benefits. He concluded factory work "wasn't for me" after seeing his uncle careen from overtime-stuffed paychecks to months-long strikes and layoffs.

At the time, the city governmenthad about 23,000 workers. They operated four city-owned hospitals, two zoos, meat and dairy inspections, welfare rolls and "everything else that dawned on people to do because the City Council sat around thinking, 'What can we do for the people to keep getting elected?' " said Edward Rago, a former budget official who began working for the city in 1964.

But tensions were rising, inside City Hall and out. Crime was up. Police were cracking down. A year before the Angeleris moved in, a young, charismatic mayor, Jerome Cavanagh, took office and inherited a $28 million budget deficit.

He pushed through the city's first income tax on residents and commuters. His predecessor, Louis Miriani, had passed a massive property tax increase. So began a series of cash infusions that would bridge the gap for about a decade until the next crisis, Rago said.

It continued for decades until Detroit had the highest tax rate of any big city in America.

"People kept leaving, but City Hall never downsized as we dropped off. Once jobs are created, they are hard to get rid of," Rago said.

The city's racial tensions couldn't be solved with more money. Motown may have brought blacks and whites together nationwide, but it couldn't do the same for its namesake city.

Blacks flooded to Detroit to work in auto plants through World War II, but typically got the worst jobs in foundries. The barriers remained after work.

From 1938 to 1968, Federal Housing Administration policies barred loans in neighborhoods with "inharmonious racial or nationality groups." That made it virtually impossible for blacks to move into white areas. Those who did were often met by mobs who feared black neighbors would depress home values, Boyle said.

"Detroit's great growth took place at the same time that segregation was created across the North," said Boyle, whose book, "Arc of Justice," chronicled Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black Detroit physician charged with murder for defending his home against angry whites in 1925.

"What makes Detroit different is the intensity, the scale and force that didn't hit a lot of other cities," Boyle said. "The worst part of (segregation) is that it made people who weren't racist behave in racist ways: perfectly decent people caught up in these complex forces."

Beginning in the 1950s, the city began demolishing culturally rich neighborhoods such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley on the east side. Eventually, the land became Interstate 75 and the Lafayette Park high-rise complex.

It was called urban renewal. It was known as Negro removal and thousands were forced from their homes, said the Rev. David Eberhard, a Lutheran minister who moved to Detroit in 1959 to operate Riverside Lutheran, about 2 miles from Lakewood.

"If you don't want racial tensions that come with integration, then don't disturb the neighborhoods," Sauerzopf said. "They displaced hundreds of thousands of blacks and did it overnight. It was absolutely disastrous."

Blacks' frustration over police tactics, unemployment and the pace of the civil rights movement led to riots in Buffalo, Cincinnati and Newark in summer 1967. Detroit faced similar problems and Cavanagh warned "the city could explode."

It did on July 23, 1967, when police raided an unlicensed speakeasy.

Mayhem and fires spread through the city. Eberhard rode up and down Jefferson — past Lakewood — telling kids to go home. He slept on the floor of his church with the window open, listening to gunfire.

"We'd been through Devil's Nights before and I figured that, for most of these kids, it was just mischief," said Eberhard, who became pastor of Historic Trinity Lutheran Church on Gratiot after Riverside closed.

"I was naive."

Call them riots or rebellion, but the civil disobedience was the deadliest in the nation in at least 50 years. The five-day disturbance left 43 dead, 1,189 injured and 2,000 buildings destroyed.

On Lakewood, the Ledbetters were caught by the tug of history. Jobs continued to move to the suburbs and in 1966 his father was transferred to a new Chrysler plant in Trenton.

The family moved to Taylor, whose population tripled from 1950 to 1970 to nearly 70,000. The home on Lakewood languished for more than a year until it was sold to a real estate company two months after the riots.

The company flipped it to a black family. Ledbetter's former neighbors were furious, tracked down his family and made threatening, anonymous phone calls.

The 1970s: A divided region
Five years later, about half the white residents had left Lakewood when Joseph Hunter bought his brick and white clapboard house.

Moving to Lakewood in 1972, the 25-year-old from Alabama sensed a loss among fellow blacks. That year, Berry Gordy Jr. moved Motown Records to Los Angeles. Friends spoke wistfully about clubs in Paradise Valley that were bulldozed.

But neighbors knew each other and got along. High branches arched a canopy over Lakewood. Lawns were mowed and sidewalks shoveled.

"All but one of the spaces on my street were filled up," said Hunter, who is now 66.

Hunter quickly found work installing bolts on Plymouth Volares and Dodge Aspens at Chrysler's Dodge Main plant. The complex, which made the first Dodge in 1914, had become a shadow of itself. At its peak during World War II, it employed 40,000. When Hunter started work, he was one of 8,000 left.

Detroit was hammered by the 1973 oil crisis and competition from smaller, foreign cars. The federal government undercut profits by mandating fuel economy standards in 1975. The Big Three responded with flops — the Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega.

High-profile efforts to rejuvenate the city had mixed success.

The Renaissance Center was supposed to revive downtown when it opened in 1977, but was lambasted as a fortress that suffocated surrounding businesses. The People Mover was announced in the 1970s as the hub of a regional transit system, but funding cuts reduced it to a 3-mile loop around a moribund downtown by the time it opened in 1987.

"I wouldn't say the decline was inevitable," said Bettie Buss, a former budget analyst who worked for the city from 1969 to 1986. "Other manufacturing cities were able to pivot to a new economic base, but the longer you let things go and don't make the hard decisions, it became inevitable."

She and others said a regional government approach could have helped the city. Detroiters may have been moving to the suburbs, but the region's population was stagnant at about 4 million, creating opportunities for partnerships.

Instead, relations continued to sour.  The city's first black mayor, Coleman A. Young, took office in 1974. That year, the city had 714 homicides, up nearly 600 in 10 years, and became known as the Murder Capital of America.

Young's inaugural speech addressing the problem became notorious.

"I issue an open warning to all the dope pushers, to all the rip-off artists, to all muggers," he said. "It is time to leave Detroit. Hit Eight Mile Road."

Many blacks took it as a livelier version of the same anti-crime speech mayors had made for 20 years. Others heard something altogether different: An invitation to white residents to leave.

So began a long-running suburb-city battle that featured Young as a star player until his retirement in 1993.

"Coleman Young was the most unpopular person in Oakland County," said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who came to prominence in the 1970s as a private attorney representing opponents of a busing plan in Detroit and Pontiac.

"He turned off the suburbs with his vitriolic media comments. More than acerbic, they were downright nasty."

Young's backers said whites mistook the mayor's strident defense of Detroit as race baiting. They point to his efforts to expand businesses, shrink the city's deficit and launch a string of high-profile projects including Joe Louis Arena and the expansion of Cobo Center.

"Coleman knew that blacks in Detroit never owned anything, they worked for someone else. He wanted to change that," said Eberhard, the Lutheran pastor who was elected to the City Council in the 1970s.

"He fought like hell for the city. People didn't like him because he cussed and was black."

Young was elected amid an uproar over efforts to end segregation in Detroit Public Schools. An initial plan would have bused children from 53 districts outside Detroit into the city and send Detroit children into the suburbs.

The plan was scrapped. A second plan, for Detroit residents, would have sent children across the city to racially balance schools.

The Angeleris had moved to Coram Street on the northeast side and could see their children's elementary school from their front porch. The plan — which would have sent them to schools across town — was too much.

Save for one year of kindergarten for their oldest daughter, they sent their children to Catholic schools.

"We resented that. We were already paying taxes and we had to do this to keep my kids safe," Carol Angeleri said.

By decade's end, 414,000 whites would leave, making Detroit a majority black city.

Most whites left Lakewood as well. Hunter suffered one layoff after another as the auto industry foundered. He was transferred to Chrysler's Lynch Road assembly plant that made the Chrysler New Yorker, Dodge St. Regis and Plymouth Gran Fury.

The jeweler, shoe store and bakery on Jefferson closed.

In 1979, Chrysler announced it would permanently shut Dodge Main and Lynch Road.

"I wasn't worried," Hunter said. "All of Chrysler couldn't just go away."

The 1980s: The crack wars
On Jan. 7, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act, authorizing a $1.5 billion bailout of the automaker.

The money allowed Chrysler to bounce back from near death with the introduction of the K-Car and, later, the first minivan, the Dodge Caravan.

It was made in Windsor, Ont. No one came to Detroit's rescue.

Most plants in the city and state laid off workers. Statewide, unemployment was 17 percent. Among blacks in Detroit, it was closer to 40 percent. By 1981, Ford Motor Co. stock plummeted, prompting speculation of bankruptcy.

Young fought to keep jobs in the city by partnering with General Motors Corp. to use eminent domain in 1981 to clear land in the Poletown neighborhood for General Motors Corp.'s $500 million Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly Plant.

The plan forced 4,200 people from their homes, demolished 140 businesses and led to a 29-day sit-in at Immaculate Conception Church that ended when police forcibly removed 20 protesters.

As Detroit continued to bleed jobs, a new industry was born near Lakewood. One block from Joseph Hunter's house, in an abandoned home on Newport, a marijuana dealer named Billy Chambers introduced a new product: crack cocaine.

Like generations of Detroiters, Chambers and his three brothers migrated from the South — Marianna, Ark. — to make money. Like Henry Ford before them, they perfected mass production and distribution. Their products: $5, $10 and $20 rocks of crack.

By 1987, Chambers controlled or supplied half of Detroit's 1,000 crack houses. One of their top lieutenants appeared on a video dipping his hand into a laundry basket full of dollar bills and exclaiming, "money, money, money!"

The dealers were so flush they handed out $1 bills to residents. It was lousy compensation for the toll crack took on the city. By 1987, emergency rooms in city hospitals reported 4,500 cocaine-related admissions. After years of decline, the city's homicide rate peaked that year at 63.5 murders per 100,000 residents.

Lakewood was a war zone.

"Old people are robbed as they walk to the bank on Jefferson," remembered Hunter, who worked for a Mopar parts plant in Center Line after Dodge Main closed.

"Crackheads were like zombies. They just stole and did crack."

Family life was changing fast. In 1970, 70 percent of Detroit children had both parents at home. Ten years later, just less than half did. Mirroring trends nationwide among the poor, that number eventually fell to 30 percent today.

As jobs diminished and families split, household incomes fell 25 percent from 1970 to 1980 to $36,500 in today's dollars. Detroit typically lagged the nation in educational achievement, but by the 1980s, teens could no longer quit high school one day and get a good job at a parts supplier the next.

As options waned, violence increased. By 1988, the Chambers brothers were indicted and imprisoned. That left Detroit's crack industry wide open and drug gangs fought and killed for turf.

The media called an empty apartment complex on Lakewood "the crack house that can't be cracked." It was raided by police, and then reopened. It was firebombed but operated like a drive-through bank teller.

"I could see a little tube come out from behind the plywood," to a waiting customer outside, Hunter said. "They would drop some cash in the tube, push the tube back in behind the plywood and the tube came back out again with something."

Hunter's wife began sleeping on the floor, afraid of stray bullets from a drive-by shooting.

The elms lining Lakewood began to rot. Neighbors left and weren't replaced. In one decade, the block lost half its 105 occupied homes.

The 1990s: New hope, old problems
By 1993, the only work on Lakewood was bulldozers demolishing vacant houses. As the houses went down, the trees went with them.

As empty spaces expanded, city crews sporadically cut grass but did such a poor job that Hunter and neighbor Joann Thomas began to do it themselves.

The neighborhood was falling fast, with more vacant homes than occupied ones.

"My mortgage was paid off, so I wasn't going anywhere," said Thomas, who moved onto Lakewood in 1978 and worked for General Motors.

"People think all this mess happens all at once. But it happens piece by piece and you don't really understand how much it's changed."

At City Hall, the writing was on the wall as well, said Buss, the former city budget official. Under Mayor Dennis Archer, the city had five years of budget surpluses. SUVs launched another comeback for the auto industry. But long-range forecasts made it clear a storm was looming.

In 1950, the city had 1.8 million residents and 8,500 retirees. In 40 years, the number of retirees doubled, while the population fell by half and the tax base by a third. The city's workforce didn't keep pace with the decline, falling 13 percent to 19,903 from 1960.

"After a while, the numbers got so dire there was a decision not to do the numbers anymore," said Buss, who left the city in 1986 and continued to consult the city for private planning groups for another 25 years.

"I would make a presentation and (city officials) would follow me and say, 'We have a plan. It's going to fix everything.' Then they would just borrow more money. It was just pathetic."

The budgets became more fluid as the city's tax base shrank. Instead of raises, mayors since the 1970s gave unions concessions, Buss said. The perks made it harder to fire workers, provided premium health care and allowed dozens of employees to work full-time on union issues.

The city had a handful of unions in the 1960s. Most had little power. That began to change in the late 1960s after the Michigan Legislature passed laws allowing for binding arbitration in police and fire unions and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees began aggressively organizing city workers.

By the end of the 1990s, the city had 48 unions.

Part of City Hall's resistance to meaningful reform was the boom-bust mentality of the auto industry, Buss said. The city had been on the brink so many times before and always bounced back.

"It was so easy. The auto industry was the goose that laid the golden egg for us," Buss said.

"It formed a lot of cultural expectations of decent wages for low-skilled jobs. It affected the wages and fringes in the public sector. It created a strong union environment and a whole series of union requirements about what a good job was."

The city's influence in Lansing had fallen with its economic clout.

In 1970, Detroit was home to 60 percent of the region's jobs and 20 percent of those in the state. By 2000, one-third of the region's jobs were in Detroit and only 6 percent of the state's jobs.

As the '90s closed, Gov. John Engler signed a series of laws that would have been unthinkable when Detroit was Michigan's economic engine. In 1999, state Republicans erased residency rules for municipal workers in Detroit and other cities and removed the Detroit Public Schools' Board of Education amid accusations of mismanagement.

A year earlier, the state agreed to a deal that gradually lowered Detroit's income tax in exchange for more revenue sharing. Within a few years, the state would rescind its promise for more money.

The city, though, had a new lifeline: casinos.

And Lakewood had one as well: James "Jack Rabbit" Jackson, a retired Detroit police officer who took it upon himself to keep the neighborhood safe when police couldn't.

The 2000s: Flash, then crashThe 21st century dawned with new promise and false facades.

Dozens were thrown up, along with wiring and furniture, in abandoned storefronts on Woodward Avenue to convert them into temporary bars for Super Bowl XL in 2006. They were abandoned again after the game, but the good feelings lingered.

Downtown hadn't looked so good in years, with three new casinos that provided the city some $172 million a year, two new sports arenas, Comerica Park and Ford Field, and a revamped riverfront.

"There was a swell of excitement," said Reginald Hartsfield, a business consultant and nursing home operator. "It was good for business."

A new mayor with a diamond stud earring, Kwame Kilpatrick, took office in 2002 promising rebirth. On his agenda: rebuilding Lakewood and the surrounding neighborhood.

In 2005, Kilpatrick agreed to a deal with former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, who promised to spend $258 million building 3,000 houses on 1,200 acres. In return, Detroit spent millions of dollars acquiring land, razing homes and rebuilding roads.

Known as the New Far East Side Development, it built no homes but provided work to contractors including a friend of the mayor, Bobby Ferguson.

By then, Lakewood had become a street of empty spaces. From Hunter's porch, he had a clear view to the next block, Newport, which also was mainly empty. Even the Chambers brothers' first crack house had been demolished.

The street was riddled with potholes, but that didn't stop Jack Rabbit Jackson. He started patrolling the neighborhood in his flat-bed tow truck in 2001, a few years before the city shut the 5th police precinct nearby and eliminated 1,900 police officers citywide.

"When I started, a lot of other streets were under siege," said Jackson, 65, who retired from the force in 1984. "It was homeowners versus the drug dealers and criminals. And the good people needed some help."

Jackson helped build a network of neighbors, businesses and community groups.

On occasion, he carries a gun during patrols but prefers a video camera. He filmed drug dealers working in abandoned homes, burglars casing houses, chop shoppers dismantling cars and leaving behind stripped frames.

More than once, he waited in his home certain a car outside was a revenge-seeking drug dealer. They were likely deterred by surveillance cameras on Jackson's porch and scurried back into the shadows.

"You ask anybody around here, they trust Jack Rabbit just as much as the police to stop things around here," said Thomas, 68, who is retired from GM.

She and others lost faith in the city to provide basic services. By mid-decade, police response times averaged up to an hour or more, ambulances routinely broke, firefighters lacked equipment and 40 percent of the streetlights didn't work.

That's partly because the influx of casino money was a short-term fix for long-term problems.By 2005, the city faced a $230 million budget shortfall and had more retirees, 20,000, than workers, 17,000.

Kilpatrick borrowed big, $1.4 billion in 2005 and 2006 to fund the city's pension systems, then $130 million in 2006 to pay its bills.

"You don't borrow yourself into a positive position," said Patterson of Oakland County. "It was pure mismanagement and unbridled spending."

The bottom fell out in 2008. In September, Kilpatrick resigned facing charges he lied under oath during a police whistle-blower trial.

A month later, the stock market crashed, dragged down by a wave of subprime housing loans. That year, some 4,000 homes per month would go into foreclosure in Detroit, the most in the nation.

As Kilpatrick sat in jail and the nation teetered toward depression, executives from General Motors and Chrysler Corp. flew in corporate jets to ask Capitol Hill for help for their companies.

Both went through bankruptcy but rebounded, aided by an $80 billion government bailout, dramatic restructurings and Fiat's takeover of Chrysler.

Four years later, the city followed suit, declaring bankruptcy in federal court downtown.

The filing came four months after Kilpatrick stood in the same courthouse and heard jurors find him guilty of public corruption. He and Ferguson were convicted of enriching themselves by fixing bids on public works projects.

Among them: Ferguson's repairs of water mains along Lakewood for the New Far East Side revitalization project that stalled before a single house was built.

The rebirth may have never happened, but Lakewood residents got some good news in 2011. City crews replaced streetlights that hadn't worked in years.

They worked for a few weeks. Then they went off and Lakewood again went dark.

Epilogue: What remains
Those whose lives were shaped by Lakewood are left trying to reconcile memories and reality.

Like thousands of autoworkers' sons, Hassel Ledbetter escaped the factory. A love of learning, fostered at the Detroit Public Library branch on Kercheval, propelled him to leave Michigan. He got a doctorate in physics in the 1960s from the University of Illinois and is now an engineering professor at University of Colorado at Boulder.

He returned a few years ago. The neighborhood he remembers is gone. His house at 1295 Lakewood is a vacant lot owned by Mike Kelly, Detroit's biggest land speculator. Only 18 of the 100 homes on Ledbetter's childhood paper route remain.

"I was stunned," Ledbetter said. "My mind just cannot grasp that and the reasons it could be allowed to happen."

Safety fears forced the Angeleris to leave the city for Warren in 1993, when David retired as a fire dispatcher. Their old home on Coram now sits in the most murderous ZIP code in America, 48205. It's patrolled by their son, a Detroit police officer, and son-in-law, a firefighter.

The couple said they're still loyal to Detroit, but wonder if it's loyal to them. They worry how bankruptcy would affect David's $30,000 annual pension — and wonder how a city that not long ago was full of people, houses and taxpayers could be in this situation.

"We didn't see this," David Angeleri said. "Like all retirees we're devastated."

On Lakewood, years of disinvestment and tumult have faded to calm.

Eleven occupied homes remain between swaths of scrub. The surrounding neighborhood's population has fallen to 1,700 from 13,600 in 1950. Joseph Hunter leaves a rusted car in the driveway of the empty house next door to make it seem occupied. He drinks only bottled water because the new pipes laid to revive the neighborhood make tap water taste like sewage.

People treat the street like a dumping ground for trash, but Lakewood is primed for a comeback, Hunter said. He's just not sure he'll be alive to see it.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said.

Joann Thomas spends her retirement mowing acres of vacant fields surrounding her home. Some weeks, she's out there every day.

"At night, all you hear is crickets," she said. "There's whole families of deer now and possums. I wouldn't mind some neighbors, but there's no more trouble. It's beautiful."

The factories are long gone. So are the small shops. Even the empty homes have been picked clean by scrappers. There is little crime now because not much remains.

There is little left to steal on this block of what was once called a city of magic.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131004/METRO01/310040001#ixzz2gmkgzUZ9

Some issues are glossed over, but this is a pretty good account of Detroit's decline throughout the past 60 years.

I've been by the neighborhood they're describing.  We were building a cellular tower there, and one of our site acquisition specialists (an older gentleman) had grown up in the area.  He kept taking us through the back streets to get to different potential site locations.  Even in broad daylight that was a frightening place.

[Savonarola]

The high cost of corruption: How Kwame Kilpatrick's crimes deepened Detroit's crisis

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was a spender, a schemer and a liar.

And taxpayers paid for it, by the millions.

Over seven years, Kilpatrick's public corruption schemes, lavish lifestyle and ethical missteps cost taxpayers at least $20 million, a tab the financially strapped city was in no position to pick up but did anyway — usually without knowing.

On Thursday, Kilpatrick will be sentenced for 24 corruption convictions. As he heads to federal prison for what could be decades, one important question lingers: How much did his extortion, kickback and bribery rackets contribute to the city's financial crisis and its filing in July for the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history?

"Kilpatrick is not the main culprit of the city's historic bankruptcy, which is the result of larger social and economic forces at work for decades," federal prosecutors said in court documents. "But his corrupt administration exacerbated the crisis."


In purely monetary figures, the cost of Kilpatrick's ring of corruption is staggering:

■ There's the $8.4-million settlement the city coughed up in the 2007 police whistle-blower trial.

■ Another $9.6 million in illegal profits was pocketed over the years through crooked water and sewer contracts, the government says.

■ A $500,000 state grant that was meant for kids and seniors instead went to Kilpatrick's contractor friend, Bobby Ferguson, and Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick. Taxpayers also paid $42,000 to lease two Lincoln Navigators for the former first lady.

■ Kilpatrick misused his city-issued credit card, charging more than $210,000 in his first three years in office for perks like a family trip to Las Vegas, spa visits, a hotel room for the babysitter and an $850 steak dinner. The mayor's petty cash fund also was abused to the tune of $144,000, which covered things like Lions football tickets, a Rolling Stones concert, health club membership and $43,000 worth of meals.

■ Tax dollars aside, there's also the $84 million in losses to troubled city pension funds. Six individuals, including Kilpatrick appointee and former fraternity brother Jeffrey Beasley, face criminal charges in that case. Kilpatrick wasn't indicted, but he is named as a coconspirator.

■ The cost to taxpayers for prosecuting him and providing him with a public defender won't be known until his appeals are exhausted.

But much more difficult to quantify is the nonmonetary cost of corruption: the betrayal of the public's trust. The honest contractors who were elbowed out of deals, even though their bids were lower. The businesses that refused to participate in pay-to-play schemes and just stayed away — or went somewhere else.

"The numbers don't tell the gravity of the situation," said Reid Schar, the former federal prosecutor who successfully prosecuted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. "When you have public corruption cases, the things that are very difficult to gauge and are not captured are, 'How much of public confidence is eroded by what the person has done? ...

"How do you put a value on a company that didn't bid or get the job?' You don't know."

In 2002, for example, Kilpatrick killed a plan to add a House of Blues restaurant at Ford Field because the company that proposed it refused to hire Kilpatrick's father and codefendant as its minority partner. Kilpatrick had pledged $10 million in city funds but changed his mind when the company refused to hire his dad.

In 2006, Ferguson used his relationship with the mayor to pressure a company into giving him 40% of a contract to renovate the Detroit police headquarters. The company offered 30%. Ferguson declined. The company then bowed out of the deal.

In 2001, minority contractor William Hayes was stiffed out of a $24.7-million sewer repair job that Kilpatrick steered to Ferguson instead. Six years later, Hayes closed his 40-year-old excavation business, claiming later that Ferguson and Kilpatrick made it impossible for him to compete for water and sewer contracts.

"He helped put me out of business," Hayes told the Free Press in March, referring to Ferguson. "It said right in the text messages. He told Kwame to put me out."

Meanwhile, Kilpatrick padded the city payroll with friends and family, including a cousin who admitted stealing nearly $20,000 from the Manoogian Mansion restoration fund. City payroll records show that more than two dozen of Kilpatrick's appointees were relatives or close friends who got an average 36% in salary increases while other employees got 2%.

The government is seeking at least 28 years in prison for Kilpatrick and up to 28 years for his longtime friend and partner in crime, Ferguson, who got $127 million in city contracts while Kilpatrick was mayor. Prosecutors said at least $73 million of that work was obtained illegally.

The defense is challenging the sentencing guidelines, saying the high end of Kilpatrick's sentence should be 15 years. The defense will make its own sentencing recommendation on Monday.

Schar, who got a 14-year conviction for Blagojevich, said the government's request for Kilpatrick is noteworthy, but not surprising.

"The courts are becoming less tolerant of the behavior and are willing to punish them more severely," Schar said of corrupt politicians.


For example, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who preceded Blagojevich, got 6½ years for 18 public corruption convictions in 2006. Five years later, Blagojevich got 14 years on similar counts. And last year, Jimmy Dimora, a county commissioner in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, got 28 years in prison.

"You're beginning to see (public corruption sentences) move up. ... The trend is definitely up," Schar said. "It seems clear that because these types of cases continue nationwide, the lesser sentences are not proving a sufficient deterrent."

Prosecutors in Detroit agree. "Unfortunately, the prosecutions and resulting penalties in past public corruption cases in this region have not been sufficient," they said in court documents. "They clearly did not dissuade Kilpatrick and his associates from using the mayor's office to engage in a brazen six-year crime spree."

"Kilpatrick is more culpable — and his misconduct more pervasive — than any other public corruption defendant sentenced in recent memory," prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo, later adding: "None of the other public officials disrupted his community as profoundly as Kilpatrick did."

Todd Haugh, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, says he believes Kilpatrick's criminal record is especially damaging. He has been to jail three times: once for obstruction of justice and perjury in the text message scandal and twice for probation violations, including one that took place in the middle of his public corruption trial. He took a cash wire money transfer from a pastor in Chicago and never reported it to his parole officer.

"I can't imagine that he's not going to get a very stiff sentence," said Haugh, a white-collar crime expert who helped amend federal fraud sentencing guidelines, which stiffened public corruption penalties in 2004.

"That's a problem under the (sentencing) guidelines. It shows that someone has a history of doing the wrong thing, and that's something judges care about," said Haugh, adding that the monetary cost of Kilpatrick's crimes also is noteworthy. "This is a lot of money. We're not talking about a couple thousand bucks here. We're talking about pretty big amounts."

Kilpatrick and Ferguson have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Ferguson has long maintained that he earned every contract he got. And Kilpatrick has argued that he didn't have as much say over contracts as the government claims, and that he never forced anyone to give Ferguson work.

Kilpatrick's lawyer, Harold Gurewitz, argues that Kilpatrick's suggested punishment is based on crimes that were never proved. He also said Kilpatrick's criminal history was overstated, and Kilpatrick was never the leader of any conspiracy.

"I have faith in the judicial system," said Gurewitz. "All we can really hope and pray for is that the system works in the way that it's intended."

When U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds sentences Kilpatrick, she will have several factors to consider, including: the purpose of the punishment, the harm that was caused, deterrence, whether the defendant can be rehabilitated, and how other similar defendants have been punished to ensure there's no disparity.

Haugh noted that Edmunds also can consider the city's bankruptcy filing. "That's like a CEO cooking the books and the company goes bankrupt. ... I don't know that there's a reason the judge can't consider that."

Edmunds also heard plenty at trial. There was minority contractor Avinash Rachmale, who said that he gave Ferguson $1.7 million for no work because he feared having his contracts killed. Contractor Thomas Hardiman said he lost two contracts worth $15 million combined because he wouldn't give Ferguson a big enough cut. Past mayoral employees said they were hit up for cash twice a year to buy Kilpatrick Christmas and birthday gifts. And Emma Bell, Kilpatrick's fund-raiser, said that she gave the ex-mayor more than $200,000 in cash kickbacks because she felt pressured.

"It struck me as such a brazen case," said Richard Winters, a veteran government professor at Dartmouth College who has researched and written about political corruption.

"I can't believe that the courts will ignore that anecdotal evidence," said Winters, referring to allegations of pay-to-play schemes that shoved certain businesses out of deals.

Winters noted that public corruption doesn't always deter economic development. For example, Illinois and Chicago have had plenty of public corruption, including four convicted governors — yet Chicago is thriving.

Unfortunately, Detroit's not in the same boat. The city says it's bankrupt.

"I would be hesitant to lay something as big as that at the foot of (Kilpatrick)," said Schar, the Blagojevich prosecutor. "But if I wanted to subtly address this, I'd say, 'We're in bankruptcy. There may have been ways to avoid that.' "

This is pocket change as compared to the damage Kwame did through the bond sales and investments.  As it turns out Kwame's incompetence was more costly than his crimes. 

I did like the part about extorting city employees for Christmas presents.  The Detroit Christmas:  Tidings of comfort and joy... or else! 

[Savonarola]

There's a mayoral campaign in Detroit right now between Mike Duggan a white carpet-bagger and Benny Napoleon the native son.  Duggan, an attorney and businessman, has run a reform campaign.  Napoleon, on the other hand, has plans to invade Ontario and use the plunder to eliminate Detroit's insolvency.

Just kidding, Napoleon hasn't actually run much of a campaign; and it's starting to look like Duggan may walk away with election.  Napoleon's latest advertisement is the grammatically challenged "We must have forgot":

http://detroitforward.net/

Given Benny's surname I thought all the Detroit Gloire in the video was appropriate.

[garbon]

Hey Sav, I wanted to say thanks for posting that article on the history of Detroit. Interesting!

[Savonarola]

Going, going, gone:

Kilpatrick sentence: 28 years
Judge on ex-mayor: 'This man chose to waste his talents'


Detroit — Kwame Kilpatrick has been sentenced to serve 28 years in prison for crimes of racketeering and conspiracy committed during his six years as the mayor of Detroit. That sentence was just handed down in U.S. federal court by Judge Nancy Edmunds.

Edmunds said she was required to issue a sentence that is "sufficient but not greater than necessary" for a criminal enterprise that ran from Kilpatrick's time in the state House to the mayor's office. She described the former mayor as a larger-than-life character who helped himself to a jet-setting lifestyle. A significant sentence, she said, sends the message that corruption won't be tolerated.

Kilpatrick appeared stunned on hearing his sentence, and a few in the courtroom crowd could be heard saying "Oh no." If he serves the entirety of the 28 years, the 43-year-old would be 71 when he walks out of prison.

After declining to testify on his own behalf during the trial, Kilpatirck spoke before Edmunds made her ruling. It was an emotional and occasionally apologetic speech that included the omission: "I really messed up."

"We've been stuck in this town for a very long time dealing with me," he said. "I'm ready to go so the city can move on."

His speech touched on a variety of subjects from his time in office and beyond, including:

■His affair with his former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty: "I was mad at people for finding out."

■His own shortcomings: "It was pride and ego that took over. I couldn't lose."

■His resignation from office: "I didn't realize then that I beat down the spirit and energy and vibrance of what was going on in the city."

■His father, Bernard Kilpatrick: "He's a real good man."

■Stealing money from the city: "I've never done that..."

■The City of Detroit: "I want the city to be great again," and to have a feeling "like it had during the 2006 SuperBowl."

■His mother Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick's term in office: "I killed her career."

It did not take long for reactions to being coming in. Within minutes of the sentencing announcement, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson took to his Twitter account, writing:

"What bothers me most is the sacrifice of a potentially brilliant career.#KwameKilpatrick"

"They guy was intelligent, charismatic and greedy as hell.#KwameKilpatrick."

"This is the end of a long Greek tragedy.#KwameKilpatrick."

Barbara McQuade, the U.S. Attorney who oversaw Kikpatrick's prosecution said: "This is an historic day in City of Detroit... It's a powerful sentence and it sends a powerful message, I think, that the people of Detroit won't tolerate this abuse of the public trust."

As for Kilpatrick's speech in court, McQuade had a mixed review.

"At the end of the day he did not e accept responsibility for stealing from the people."

Prior to Kilpatrick's address, his attorneys went to bat for him, saying he should not be punished for the sins of the city's last 50 years. Their client, they said, hopes to use his ability and talents productively in the future. Kilpatrick's legal team had pushed for their client to receive no more than 15 years and had asked the judge to send him to prison in Texas where his wife and children now live.

Given their turn, prosecutors called Kilpatrick's collected misdeeds "one of the most significant cases of public corruption... in the entire country..."

The former mayor arrived in the courtroom just after 10 a.m., handcuffed and in khaki prison attire. During the early portion of the hearing, he appeared subdued, sitting with his elbows on the defense table as his attorneys argued he should receive no more than 15 years.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys haggled over the estimated $9.6 million in profits reaped by Kilpatrick and co-defendant contractor Bobby Ferguson in their racketeering scheme. After hearing roughly 20 minutes of arguments on that key point, U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds set a conservative estimate of $4.6 million for sentencing purposes.

Family members, many of whom sat through large portions of his trial, were not on hand, including wife, Carlita, and his parents, Bernard and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

Jurors found Kilpatrick, once the city's favorite political son, guilty of 24 counts of misconduct — including racketeering and conspiracy — during his time in office. Today, seven months after the verdict, he faced the possibility of a prison term that could have kept him incarcerated for the remainder of his life.

The courtroom at the Theodore Levin federal courthouse in downtown Detroit began filling up with attorneys and observers more than an hour ahead of the 10 a.m. start time for Thursday's sentencing. Kilpatrick arrived at 9:25 a.m. in the company of the U.S. Marshall's Service after being transported from prison in Milan.

That final decision will be made by Edmunds, who oversaw the trial involving Kilpatrick and co-defendants Ferguson and Bernard Kilpatrick — a trial that ran for six months.

Andrew Arena, director of the Detroit Crime Commission and former head of the Detroit FBI, said Kilpatrick and Ferguson did themselves no favors.

"What's not helping these guys was the fact they were committing crimes during the trial, hiding money," he said. "(The judge must) send a message. These sentences (of public officials) used to be 10-12 months. I think now the court is trying to send a message that this is unacceptable."

At 43, even if Kilpatrick, who served as Detroit's mayor from 2002 until 2008, receives the minimum sentence prosecutors are requesting (28 years), he would be into his 70s by the time of his release. Ferguson's sentencing is scheduled for Friday.

Legal experts and lawyers who have tangled with Kilpatrick aren't expecting the former mayor to be apologetic if he speaks on his own behalf.

"He could tell the judge where the missing millions are," said Bloomfield Hills lawyer Norman Yatooma, who sued Kilpatrick and the city for $150 million on behalf of the family of slain stripper Tamara "Strawberry" Greene. "What he will do is insist on his innocence and talk about how he was discriminated against by the judicial system — and get everything that he's got coming to him."

Kilpatrick and Ferguson were convicted of charges related to running a criminal enterprise and dipping into the city treasury to fund lifestyles that included custom-made suits, private jet travel and luxury resort stays.

In court documents filed earlier this month, prosecutors wrote: "Kwame Kilpatrick was entrusted by the citizens of Detroit to guide their city through one of its most challenging periods. The city desperately needed resolute leadership. Instead it got a mayor looking to cash in on his office through graft, extortion and self-dealing."

Of Ferguson, they wrote: "It was Ferguson, rather than Kilpatrick, who was the 'boots on the ground' of the extortion enterprise, directly issuing threats to the local business people."



From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131010/METRO01/310100078#ixzz2hLai97bq

[derspiess]

The man is a legend.  Most mayors couldn't be more corrupt if they tried.

[garbon]

Good.