Detroit

Culture of corruption festers on

BY BRIAN DICKERSONFREE PRESS COLUMNIST

If you imagined that Detroit could wash the stink off its politics by exiling Kwame Kilpatrick to Texas, the latest text message dump will set you straight.
The exchanges made public Monday make it clear that Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty were only the most conspicuous symptoms of a political culture that was rotten to the core. They also remind us that some of the leading exponents of that culture continue to hold public office in Michigan, although they have probably become more cautious since Kilpatrick's spectacular flameout.
Ruth Carter was then-Wayne County Prosecutor Mike Duggan's communications chief when Kilpatrick appointed her as the city's legal counsel in 2002. Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed her to a seat on Detroit's 36th District Court in 2006, before the text message scandal broke.
But Carter was in the middle of the scrum three years earlier, when ex-Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown went public with the allegations that Kilpatrick had fired him for pursuing an internal affairs investigation that threatened to embarrass him. And she's prominent in the text message banter released Monday, which exposes her as one of Kilpatrick's most shameless sycophants.
A modest proposal
Incessant apple-polishing seems to have been Carter's price of admission to hizzoner's inner circle. But what really got my attention was the casual way in which the city's top lawyer entertained the idea of using the criminal justice process to discredit Kilpatrick's most dangerous critic.
In a message exchange that took place the same day Brown went public with his whistle-blower claim, Kilpatrick aide Derrick Miller asked Carter if Duggan could somehow bring criminal charges against Brown.
You might have expected Carter, herself an ex-prosecutor, to dismiss the suggestion out of hand.
"Are you nuts?" she might have told Miller. "Duggan can't prosecute someone for embarrassing your boss!"
Instead, Carter told Miller she had already discussed the idea with Duggan, but added that her ex-boss seemed "skittery" about targeting Brown. She added that Duggan had recommended settling with Brown to avoid a whistle-blower claim, "to which I replied: NO F------ CHANCE!" Settling with the ex-deputy chief, Carter explained, "would surely look like a cover-up."
What might have been
Duggan told the Free Press he has no recollection of discussing criminal charges against Brown, but acknowledges that he might have advised her to settle with Brown.
Carter didn't respond to my phone and e-mail queries seeking elaboration of her text messages to Miller.
But just imagine how different the last years might have gone if Carter had followed Duggan's shrewd advice to cut a deal with Brown.
Kilpatrick would still be mayor of Detroit. The text messages would still be secret.
And Carter would be a young judge on the way up, instead of an outed apparatchik whose political career just hit a brick wall.

(Keep electing those Democrats, Detroit. It's certainly helped you be the raging success you are, as a city.Number 1 in murders.Number 1 in general violent crime.Number 1 in unemployment.Number 1 in foreclosures.Number 1 in bankruptcies.Don't do anything different - you might ruin your stellar track record.) hat tip: JR Today.