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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:41 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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10:55 am ET
Jun 18, 2009
Criminal Law
Did Detroit Fudge The Numbers To Avoid the Murder Capital Tag?
By
Chris Herring
detroitTwo weeks ago, Baltimore took the title that no city wants to win: The 2008 murder capital of the United States.
Of cities with 500,000 people or more, Baltimore reported the most. With 234 homicides — 37 per 100,000 city residents — Maryland’s largest city outpaced Detroit, which reported 33.8.
Or did it?
A Detroit News story claims that the Motor City’s police department intentionally underreported its number of homicides. The story suggests that was intentional on the part of city officials.
The article, which accuses Detroit police of an intentional “chronic undercounting” of homicides, pointed out that police there count murders differently than almost every other major city in the U.S.
Rather than report anything and everything that might classify as a homicide, Detroit police take a wait-and-see approach on killings that they think may have been accidents, suicides or acts of self-defense.
Most other cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia included — simply follow what the medical examiner says and reports them to the FBI as homicides.
Detroit police dispute that method.
“There’s homicide and there’s murder,” said Detroit Police Dep. Chief James Tolbert. “Now when the medical examiner still says it’s a homicide and we go on about our investigation and (in the course of) our investigation we present documents to the prosecutor’s office, they can say it’s self-defense. It’s ruled medically a homicide. But in the eyes of the prosecutor’s office they will not charge anybody with this.”
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy disagrees with that approach. “It is very, very clear in the language,” Worthy said. “Lawful self-defense is still a homicide and it still has to be counted as a homicide and it still has to be reported to the FBI.”
“What’s happening here is they’re excluding justifiable homicides when they shouldn’t be. Period.” said Worthy, whose jurisdiction includes the city of Detroit.
In any case, the Detroit News found that Detroit’s actual homicide rate in 2008 — 40.7 per 100,000 — was higher than Baltimore’s, making Motown the deadliest city in America. Also see here for a recent WSJ story on Detroit’s other urban woes.
Photo: Getty Images |
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Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:45 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:52 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Police Commission refuses to approve DPD budget without actuals
Posted: May 09, 2013 10:39 PM CDT
Updated: May 09, 2013 10:39 PM
DETROIT (WJBK) -
The Detroit Police Commission made it clear Thursday night that despite whatever happened in the past, they want DPD to show them the dollars before they approve a budget.
Everybody needs money, and Detroit doesn't have enough of it. So you can understand why the commission is demanding answers to a few logical questions.
"How much did we really spend versus how much we budgeted?" said Chairman Rev. Jerome Warfield.
He said the department should be able to answer those question with the click of a mouse.
"What the actuals will show us is exactly what we spent on manpower, what we spent on overtime, what we spent on service contracts," Warfield said.
So why hasn't department brass turned it over? The commission has asked for it every year for the past three years and never received it.
"How do we project and plan for the future if we're not basing off of actual numbers," Warfield said.
Especially since the Detroit Police Department takes the biggest bite out of the city's budget -- $350 million. This year, commissioners say they won't approve a budget until the department shows them the money.
"We cannot do our job unless we have that basic information," Warfield said.
So what's the hold up? As of Thursday's commission meeting, this was the only answer.
"We have a Budget Operations in the police department, and it's their job to get the information that the board requested. I'll go back to the chief and express the concerns of the board, and they will get the information to the board as soon as they can," said Deputy Chief James Tolbert.
"This time we said, you know what, we're going to hold off sending that over until we get that information," Warfield said.
The commission is going before City Council next week to explain their concerns, and they are hoping this move shows the police department that they are serious.
Warfield also said Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr knows about this and stands with the commission. He made it clear that he wants the department to show the actuals before the commission approves the budget. |
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Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:57 pm |
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Magistrate: Detroit Destroyed Potential Email Evidence
August 4, 2011 8:44 AM
DETROIT (AP) – The City of Detroit destroyed potential email evidence that was ordered preserved in a lawsuit filed by the family of an exotic dancer whose killing is unsolved, a federal magistrate said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen issued the findings Wednesday related to the lawsuit from Tamara Greene’s family. Whalen said if the case goes to trial a jury should be told the city “intentionally, willfully and recklessly” destroyed potential evidence.
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday by The Associated Press to city attorney John Schapka.
Whalen also recommended that another judge overseeing the case order the city and John Johnson, the city’s former Law Department director, to reimburse Norman Yatooma, the Greene family’s lawyer, for fees related to the court dispute about the missing email.
Johnson described Whalen’s findings as “outrageous” and said the magistrate “contorted facts to substantiate his conclusions.”
“He makes several leaps to get where he wants,” Johnson told the Detroit Free Press.
Yatooma called Whalen’s findings “the single most significant occurrence in this case to date.”
“This ruling is epic,” he told The Detroit News.
Whalen said there is no doubt that the city allowed email to be purged even after the suit was filed in 2005 and after an evidence preservation order was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Rosen in 2008. Whalen, however, also questioned the potential value of the email to the case.
The civil suit claims city and police officials stymied an investigation into the 2003 shooting death of Greene, 27. She was rumored to have performed at a never-proven 2002 party at the city’s mayoral mansion at the time Kwame Kilpatrick was Detroit’s mayor.
The city and Kilpatrick have denied the claims.
CBS Detroit |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:51 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:55 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Tamara Greene attorney says he's taking Kwame Kilpatrick coverup lawsuit to Supreme Court
Gus Burns | fburns@mlive.com By Gus Burns | fburns@mlive.com
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on April 30, 2013 at 9:45 AM, updated April 30, 2013 at 9:55 AM
DETROIT — Tamara Greene, the dancer who died in a hail of gunfire in a drive-by shooting, has become a victim of Kwame Kilpatrick and his administration's corruption, says the deceased 27-year-old's attorney.
Norman Yatooma was audibly disappointed last Thursday after the $150 million lawsuit he filed against ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the city for the alleged coverup of his client's death was not reinstated by the 6th Circuit Appeals Court.
Representing Greene's children, Yatooma's lawsuit was previously dismissed by U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen in 2011 for lack of evidence and appealed.
This is the second time on appeal Rosen's ruling has not been overturned.
"Much of the feedback seemed quite positive," Yatooma said. "My clients were very disappointed, but as I told my clients, we're going to keep fighting this case until we run out of courts and we have one left," the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yatooma says Kilpatrick, convicted of 24 crimes of corruption in March, and those working under his administration destroyed and manipulated evidence during Greene's murder investigation.
He says to throw out the case based on lack of evidence — when the defendants are the ones who eliminated that evidence — makes "a joke out of the legal system."
The city was fined $200,000 for improper handling of emails and other documents, said Yatooma, but that's an insignificant for a city as large as Detroit.
"You'll never hold a major municipality or corporation liable again," he said. "If they can intimidate with their own police and they can destroy evidence... and still get a dismissal."
Detroit Police Sgt. Marian Stevenson, the homicide detective on Greene's case, claimed the "talk through Homicide" was that Greene's slaying was connected to the Manoogian Mansion incident.
Stevenson claimed that case notes from her computer files, four floppy disks disk, a video from Greene's funeral that depicted two Detroit police officers in attendance and other documents vanished from the file.
The investigation was later reassigned to another investigator.
Yatooma says six officers lost their jobs or were demoted in connection with the Greene case.
When it came to the investigation into the shooting death of Greene, Kilpatrick "obstructed anything and everything that got in his way," said Yatooma in March.
"The homicide file was completely and utterly destroyed," said Yatooma, emails vanished and "six officers who were investigating him or Tammy Greene were all demoted, terminated or otherwise threatened."
"Whether the party happened or not" is not the issue in the Tamara Green case, said Yatooma, it's the lengths Kilpatrick and his administration went to in their attempt to ensure its existence — and Greene's slaying — were never fully investigated.
Depositions taken from former Kilpatrick mistress and aide Christine Beatty and former Attorney General Mike Cox during the discovery portion of the Greene lawsuit have been sealed and unavailable to the public.
Yatooma said the depositions will remain sealed unless their confidentiality is challenged by the public.
Greene's case stems from the fabled, oft-denied but never-proven party at the Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002.
Greene, 27, also known by the stage name "Strawberry, was a stripper. It's alleged she attended the Kilpatrick party and got into an altercation with the then-Mayor's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, who was unhappy with her presence and proximity to her husband.
Greene was gunned down in a drive-by shooting the following April.
•Read the full appeal's court opinion |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:57 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Yatooma says Kilpatrick, convicted of 24 crimes of corruption in March, and those working under his administration destroyed and manipulated evidence during Greene's murder investigation.
He says to throw out the case based on lack of evidence — when the defendants are the ones who eliminated that evidence — makes "a joke out of the legal system."
The city was fined $200,000 for improper handling of emails and other documents, said Yatooma, but that's an insignificant for a city as large as Detroit.
"You'll never hold a major municipality or corporation liable again," he said. "If they can intimidate with their own police and they can destroy evidence... and still get a dismissal."
Detroit Police Sgt. Marian Stevenson, the homicide detective on Greene's case, claimed the "talk through Homicide" was that Greene's slaying was connected to the Manoogian Mansion incident.
Stevenson claimed that case notes from her computer files, four floppy disks disk, a video from Greene's funeral that depicted two Detroit police officers in attendance and other documents vanished from the file.
The investigation was later reassigned to another investigator.
Yatooma says six officers lost their jobs or were demoted in connection with the Greene case.
When it came to the investigation into the shooting death of Greene, Kilpatrick "obstructed anything and everything that got in his way," said Yatooma in March.
"The homicide file was completely and utterly destroyed," said Yatooma, emails vanished and "six officers who were investigating him or Tammy Greene were all demoted, terminated or otherwise threatened."
"Whether the party happened or not" is not the issue in the Tamara Green case, said Yatooma, it's the lengths Kilpatrick and his administration went to in their attempt to ensure its existence — and Greene's slaying — were never fully investigated.
Depositions taken from former Kilpatrick mistress and aide Christine Beatty and former Attorney General Mike Cox during the discovery portion of the Greene lawsuit have been sealed and unavailable to the public.
Yatooma said the depositions will remain sealed unless their confidentiality is challenged by the public. |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 10:00 am |
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untanglingwebs
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| Tolbert was in charge of Homicide at the time the cover up occurred. |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 10:01 am |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVyNH3OIw0
The second dancer files documents that she was at the Manoogian mansion party that allegedly never was. The computer of Beatty, Kilpatrick and an attorney were aid to have been thrown away after the court ordered them saved in the lawsuit. |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 10:07 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoZR7D8uGik
The alleged killer was never prosecuted for the murder of Greene. He states he passed a polygraph and the second victim said he was not the shooter. The Detroit Police had the case still open. The alleged killer called Detroit investigator Carlyle a "dirty cop" and said Carlyle lied in the documents against him. |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 10:18 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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The Detroit News Metro and State
March 14, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Who killed Tamara Greene?
Charlie LeDuff
The Detroit News
Zoom
DETROIT -- Her real name was Tamara Greene, an arresting, thick-bodied stripper known as Strawberry. By now her death is the stuff of Detroit legend, a whodunit of sex and politics and power.
The most incredible plot is a simple one: She is said to have danced at a party at the mayor's mansion and was executed because she knew too much.
The party, of course, has never been proven, and the facts about Greene, as told by investigators, friends and family members,reveal something far less sinister. A portrait emerges of a woman who ran with bad men and died with two black eyes.
Greene, 27, was Detroit murder victim No. 113 in 2003. There were 366 homicides in the city that year, just half of those resolved. At first, her death was considered an ordinary blue-collar murder -- a drive-by job -- in a city with too many of them. She died in a hail of bullets, slumped over her steering wheel, her eyeglasses broken, the car still in drive, creeping down the street.
Her murder case went cold; a suspect was never publicly identified.
Then the mayor's spectacular political troubles began, and Greene became the mystery woman whose noir life took on mythological proportions. It begins with a former homicide investigator who says he is convinced that the disgraced mayor and his cronies in the Police Department are crooks and killers.
The case of her death was resurrected earlier this month, when that investigator, former Detroit Police Lt. Alvin Bowman, claimed that police brass squelched his inquiry into the supposed party at the Manoogian Mansion in late fall 2002 and Greene's murder in April 2003 because he got too close to making a connection. The Detroit Police Department has reopened the case as has the Wayne County prosecutor.
"I suspect that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer," Bowman said in an affidavit. Reached by telephone, he elaborated: "She wanted money to stay quiet and they wouldn't give it to her."
And yet no evidence from the early-morning crime scene suggests that any police officers were involved. According to police reports, the medical examiner's findings and investigators, it is most likely that Greene was done in by Detroit's wild streets.
In early April, two weeks before her murder, Greene had danced for a corroborated party of men. That party was held at the Residence Inn in Southfield, a run-down motor lodge modeled after a Swiss chalet. The party was attended by known drug dealers, hooligans and other all-stars of city life, authorities say.
Greene got into an altercation with a small man -- 5 1/2 feet tall -- with a big ego and a record for trafficking cocaine. He wanted sex. She refused. He punched her once in the eye, then punched her once in the other eye.
That's when Greene's boyfriend, Eric "Big E" Mitchell, stepped in, according to statements both Mitchell and a stripper named Taquela Anjema Bates gave police. The two men had an altercation, the bigger man winning. The Southfield police responded to the fight, but by then, the principals had left.
Nevertheless, the glove had been thrown. Disrespect had been committed.
The addresses and phone numbers for Mitchell and Bates have gone stale. Mitchell recently re-emerged in Romulus, where he was arrested on felony drug charges. The Residence Inn is under new management and has a new name. A lot changes in six years.
Greene led a 'wild life'Tamara Greene grew up on Detroit's east side, graduating from Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School in 1994. She had her first child, Jonathan Bond, when she was 17 years old. She gave birth to her second child, Ashly, when she was 19 and her third, India, when she was 26.
The first two children live with their fathers and the youngest with Greene's brother.
A $150 million federal lawsuit has been filed on Jonathan's behalf, charging primarily that police executives sank the investigation, preventing her murderer from being caught. The lawsuit does not claim that City Hall played a role in her death. Taris Jackson, the father of her second child, has followed with a claim on Greene's estate should any money be forthcoming from the oldest child's suit.
It is unclear when Greene took to the street life, began stripping or working as an escort. Her price, according to confidant and lawyer Dennis Mitchenor, was $500 "just to look" and hundreds more "to touch," he said. Voluptuous and regal, Greene would quickly become a superstar in the sex-charged world of politics, business and the streets.
"God gave her that body and she knew how to use it," Mitchenor said.
"If there was a high rollers' party, she was definitely the girl to be there. It was a wild life, though. She changed (cell) numbers like a drug dealer."
Greene had a taste for dangerous men, according to those who knew her. She ran under the aliases Veronica, Linda and Laurie, and of course her professional name Strawberry. She served as a front for check-kiters, drug kingpins and the like. She drove a $70,000 BMW leased under her grandmother's name and freely lent it to her coterie of suspicious men, thus allowing them to drive around unmolested by police.
"I didn't know the full extent of what she was doing, but she didn't deserve this," said her grandmother, Bertha Powell, of Columbus, Ohio. "Tammy was not a bad person. She told me she got beat up at a party. I told her to come home and let her face heal. Of course she didn't come."
Boyfriend was shot, tooA week after the party with the 5 1/2 -foot drug dealer, the BMW was shot up, a car Greene had loaned to her paramour, Mitchell. No one was in the car that time. Powell would eventually assume payments of the car and sell it at a substantial loss.
Constantly in need of money, Greene accepted a dancing engagement the week she was beaten.
"You can't dance tonight, you've got black eyes," Mitchenor remembered telling her. "She said she had to do what she had to do. She did the party in sunglasses. It was something of an occupational hazard."
In the early morning of April 30, Greene and Mitchell left the All-Star club on Eight Mile where she worked as a stripper. It was 3:40 a.m. The couple idled outside his home on Roselawn near West Outer Drive in the Bagley section of Detroit. A large white SUV turned the corner, a hand holding a pistol out the window.
Mitchell saw the man.
"Light-skinned," he described the shooter to police that morning, like the short man he had the fight with a few weeks before. Mitchell, 6 feet tall and 265 pounds, ducked for cover into the foot-well of the Buick Skylark. He said nothing to Greene. She was struck three times, according to the medical examiner's report: once behind the left ear, once through the jaw, and once through the left arm and chest. Mitchell was struck by five bullets, including once in the neck, according to official reports.
Mitchell staggered around the street, knocked on a neighbor's door (the neighbor threatened to shoot him), then made a call to a friend. The hit man never returned to finish him off. Hardly the mark of a professional.
Ex-cop stands by his wordsStill, Bowman, the former Detroit police lieutenant, insisted it was a professional police job. He pointed to the fact that .40-caliber ammunition was used.
"I stand by what I said. Police-issued Glocks use .40-caliber ammunition," he said in a rambling telephone interview.
Glock does, in fact, manufacture handguns that fire .40-caliber ammunition, but so does Smith and Wesson and a slew of other gun manufacturers. Bowman said he did not remember if ballistic tests have been made on the casings to determine the specific brand of gun. In fact, they have not.
Greene was struck 18 times from a moving vehicle, Bowman said. Yet the medical examiner's report shows she was struck just three times and just 12 bullets casings were found at the scene, according to the police report that morning.
With all the discrepancies, is it not possible that he could be wrong? Bowman was asked. It is his theory, after all, that the street corners and the corridors of power intersected at Tamara Greene's doorstep. It is his theory that has launched a thousand barstool conspiracies.
There was a prolonged silence. Then Bowman offered this: "To be perfectly honest, it's like an octopus's tentacles that spread all over. Once you see it, once you connect the dots, it's obvious."
You can reach Charlie LeDuff at (313) 222-2620 or Charlie.LeDuff@detnews.com">Charlie.LeDuff@detnews.com.
The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20080314/METRO/803140383#ixzz3XUCdxW3Y |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 10:27 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| There can be no doubt that the missing e mails,stolen files, and disputed autopsy indicates this was a botched homicide investigation. How many more could there be? |
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Thu Apr 16, 2015 10:31 am |
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untanglingwebs
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Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:48 am |
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untanglingwebs
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Old 10-02-2009, 06:43 PM
Task force to investigate Tamara Greene murder
Mark Hicks / The Detroit News
Friday, October 2, 2009
Detroit -- City police are moving the investigation of slain exotic dancer Tamara "Strawberry" Greene to a multi-jurisdictional violent crimes task force, giving it greater priority in a bid to solve the 6-year-old case.
"Most people don't feel that it was closed because there were no other leads, but for political reasons," Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans said Thursday. "The job of the department is to make sure the public knows we're going to do what we do, when we need to do it. That's the right thing to do."
Evans couldn't immediately say how many officers would be assigned to the case, or what methods the task force, which includes representatives from the FBI, Michigan State Police and other agencies, might pursue to expand an investigation.
But he said moving the case to the task force would "give fresh eyes" to the case.
Controversy has raged over the investigation into Greene's death in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003. Greene was linked to a rumored, but never proven, party at the Manoogian Mansion when Kwame Kilpatrick was mayor.
Greene's family sued top city officials, including Kilpatrick, and police officials in 2005, alleging they obstructed the investigation of her unsolved killing for political reasons. That case, in which tens of thousands of text messages sent and received by Kilpatrick and other city officials were subpoenaed for private review by federal magistrate judges, could go to trial next year.
Norman Yatooma, an attorney representing Greene's family in the lawsuit, welcomed the move. He said if the task force "begets justice for Tammy Greene's killers and answers for Tammy Greene's family, then all of the toil and all of the text messages -- all of the effort and all of the affidavits -- will be well worth it."
Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, said her office's investigation of Greene's murder is "ongoing," but declined to say whether the task force would affect it.
Lawyers for the city couldn't be reached for comment.
Mayer Morganroth, an attorney representing former Kilpatrick Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, who is named in the Greene family suit, said he was "in favor of anything that could be done to find the guilty party."
Kilpatrick and other top city and police officials have denied the allegations.
There have been other actions involving the investigation:
• Last week, Odell Godbold, a former sergeant in charge of the Detroit Police Department's "cold case" unit, filed a lawsuit in Wayne Circuit Court against the city and three of his former supervisors, alleging they "protect(ed) an elected official by covering up information regarding the official's connection to Greene."
Godbold alleges he learned that Greene and an off-duty Detroit police officer who moonlighted as a stripper performed at a 2002 party at the Manoogian Mansion. It was the officer, not Greene, who was assaulted at the party and received a three-week leave of absence to recover from her injuries, the lawsuit alleges.
• In June, an Oakland County judge set aside a default judgment she had granted to Cenobio Chapa, a former Detroit emergency medical technician who claimed he lost his job after coming forward with information related to Greene's case. In an affidavit, Chapa said he saw an injured woman at Detroit Receiving Hospital in fall 2002 who said she had been assaulted by Carlita Kilpatrick, Kwame Kilpatrick's wife.
• A civil lawsuit filed by Douglas Bayer, another former city paramedic who lost his job after he said he witnessed a disturbance outside the hospital related to the rumored Manoogian party, is pending in Macomb Circuit Court. The federal lawsuit was expected to go to trial later this year.
Bayer told investigators he saw a large crowd outside the hospital when he arrived for a call, and a man he later concluded was a member of the mayor's executive protection unit attempted to prevent him from taking his patient to the emergency room.
• A former homicide detective, retired Lt. Alvin Bowman, alleged in a lawsuit that he was transferred out of the homicide department for attempting to investigate Greene's killing. Bowman said in an affidavit filed in the Greene case that he believed Greene was killed by a Detroit police officer. Besides the caliber of handgun used, Bowman has not revealed what evidence he has to back up that claim.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091...394/1409/METRO
#2
Old 10-15-2009, 06:23 PM
Post Detectives try to avoid testifying in slain stripper case
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Detroit -- Three Michigan State Police detectives asked a federal judge today to quash subpoenas ordering them to testify in a lawsuit brought by the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara "Strawberry" Greene.
The officers, Det. Lt. Curt Schram, Det. Sgt. John Figurski and Det. Sgt. Mark Krebs, were involved in a 2003 state police investigation into a rumored but never proven stripper party at the Manoogian Mansion Detroit mayoral residence.
The investigation was shut down by Attorney General Mike Cox, who declared the party at the home of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick an "urban legend."
Greene, who was linked to the rumored party, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003. Her family is suing Kilpatrick and top city and police officials, alleging they obstructed the investigation of her still unsolved killing for political reasons.
Kilpatrick and the other defendants deny the allegations.
In a court filing today, the Michigan State Police detectives who investigated the Manoogian party said they have been subpoenaed to provide testimony and records in the Greene lawsuit and they want the subpoenas quashed.
"Deponents were involved in an investigation of then Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2003 unrelated to the Tamara Greene homicide," the officers said in court papers filed by a lawyer from the state attorney general's office.
"Deponents object to the production of any documents and to any questions to elicit testimony about ... information obtained during that investigation pursuant to the use of investigative subpoenas," the detectives said. "Such information is confidential and may be disclosed only under those circumstance authorized by law."
Norman Yatooma, the Birmingham attorney representing Greene's family, could not immediately be reached for comment.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091...-stripper-case
#3
Old 11-30-2009, 07:21 PM
Alert For detective, Tamara Greene a girl caught in 'dope beef'
Last Updated: November 19. 2009 5:32PM
UPDATED at 5:10 p.m.
Ferndale -- "It's a B.S. scenario straight out of Hollywood," the homicide detective told the lawyer. "This ain't Hollywood, it's Detroit."
It wasn't exactly Detroit. The men were sitting in Ferndale. In a bar. On gay night. In a corner booth near the window. Underneath the painting of Marilyn Monroe. Hanging on a blood red wall.
It was late spring, the evening was cold and wet. The meeting between the men was arranged by this reporter at the request of the detective, Mike Carlisle.
Carlisle was good at his job. In his 20 years on the Detroit Police force, Carlisle captured a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes, a fetishist who wore his victims' shoes and a gang of punks who mowed down a woman's cockapoo.
Carlisle was also the last man in charge of tracking down the killer of Tamara "Strawberry" Greene, the stripper at the center of the fabled wild Manoogian Mansion party hosted by then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
The lawyer was Norman Yatooma, the flamboyant counsel for Greene's family, who is suing the city for $150 million in federal court, claiming the disgraced Kilpatrick covered up the investigation of her murder because Greene danced at the party and was beaten silly by his wife Carlita.
No evidence of a party has ever come to light. Nor evidence of Greene taking a beating with a high-heel shoe. Nor is there evidence that Greene's death in a drive-by shooting on April 2003 was a hit ordered by City Hall.
Carlisle, who retired from the department a year ago, wanted a meeting with Yatooma. He had some information.
Yatooma arrived late. Despite the wind, his copious and well-groomed hair was still in place. "Is this a gay bar?" he inquired.
Close enough, said the reporter.
"I thought so," Yatooma said, sliding into the booth.
He ordered a hot tea. Carlisle got a beer in a frosty mug.
After some small talk Carlisle cut to the chase. Yatooma was chasing the wrong dog, he said.
"I don't want to get into a pissing match in the newspapers," Carlisle said. "I believe there was a party, but there is not a scintilla of evidence that Strawberry danced at the party, much less that Kilpatrick had her killed."
Yatooma countered that he didn't care who killed Greene or if she danced at the party. "All I have to show is that there was a party, somebody got injured and they covered it up. There's my obstruction and I've won my case."
Reached Thursday, Yatooma said he never made that statement or others at the meeting.
"What I have to prove has been well published countless times. And I've been consistent in this regard with everyone who has reported on this, with your paper and in our pleadings. I do not have to prove there was a party. I do not have to prove someone was beaten at that party," he said. "And I'm offended by the notion that ...I don't care about who killed my client's mother."
Back at the bar, Carlisle went on to tell Yatooma that he believed that a female cop, moonlighting as a stripper, was beaten by Carlita in late September 2002. He remembered having gotten a "cop down" call at home that instructed him to rush to the Manoogian.
"Halfway there, I was told to turn around," Carlisle recalled. "If you subpoena my overtime requests from then, it'll give you a lead."
"Those records would disappear the day I ask for them," Yatooma countered, popping his knuckles, looking over his shoulder, then sipping his tea.
Carlisle handled the Greene case twice. Once in the summer of 2004 until police brass shut it down. When the text message scandal broke that would eventually bring down Kilpatrick, Carlisle was reassigned the case and was told by police brass to take it wherever he needed to take it.
The facts led him to a feud between two men with long records for drugs and violence, he said.
Carlisle believes Greene's killer is Darrett King, a street tough known as Little D. He said as much in court. Carlisle was not able to arrest King in the murder of Greene before he retired, but he was able to send him back to prison on an old case of attempted murder at an east side gas station.
"Do I think Kilpatrick made the case go away?" asked Carlisle, who was smoking like a damp log. "Yes. But not because he had anything to do with Strawberry's killing. As far as her murder goes, she was just a working girl caught in the middle of a dope beef. Like I said, this ain't Hollywood."
"Is it possible the mayor hired this drug dealer to kill Tammy Greene?" Yatooma asked.
"Is it possible?" Carlisle asked with an arch of the eyebrow. "Anything's possible. I guess even life on Mars is hypothetically possible."
"Are you willing to give a deposition?"
"Yes. That's why I'm here."
"Do you have a lawyer?"
"I don't need a lawyer," Carlisle said.
"Why wouldn't you need a lawyer?"
"Because I know the truth and I'll tell it."
• • •
It is half a year later and Carlisle -- the man perhaps most intimate with the Strawberry Greene case -- has never been deposed by anyone.
Meanwhile, Yatooma released a sworn deposition earlier this month from a state police investigator who says some 911 dispatch tapes or police computer files went missing from a sealed box in Detroit Police headquarters when he was looking into the rumored party back in 2004.
Beyond his claim of missing tapes, the investigator -- State Police Detective Sgt. Mark Krebs -- offered no hard evidence or any reliable witness to the party.
To date no one has.
Yatooma said Thursday that depositions in the case have only recently gotten underway.
"Carlisle is one of a number of investigators who we plan to talk to throughout the discovery process in regard to that homicide investigation," he said. "I don't need his offer and I don't need Charlie LeDuff as a facilitator."
Carlisle wanted to meet again to express his disgust that he hasn't been deposed.
He sat in the same corner this week with a frosty mug and an ashtray. He ordered a salad to go.
"Sooner or later, someone is going to have to subpoena me," he sighed through a Marlboro, the portrait of Marilyn staring down upon him.
"People are trying to get rich off a broke town. Damn be the truth."
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091...in--dope-beef-
#4
Old 12-18-2009, 05:45 PM
Post Exotic dancer Greene wasn't treated at DMC, hospital group says
Last Updated: December 18. 2009 2:42PM
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Detroit -- No woman named Tamara Greene or Tamara Bond was treated at any Detroit Medical Center emergency room in 2002, a lawyer for the hospital group said in a court filing today.
Tamara "Strawberry" Greene was an exotic dancer linked to a rumored party at the mayor's Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002. She was shot to death in Detroit on April 30, 2003, and Greene's family is suing former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and top city and police officials, alleging they obstructed a police investigation into her still unsolved killing.
Kilpatrick and the other defendants deny the allegations. A central facet of the party rumor, as detailed in court filings in the case, is that Greene required hospital treatment after she was assaulted at the Manoogian party by Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita. That's why hospital records have become an issue in the case.
Charles Raimi, an attorney for the Detroit Medical Center, said recent subpoenas for medical records filed by Greene family attorney Norman Yatooma contain too little information for the hospital to respond to them while still complying with privacy laws.
"Plaintiffs' Dec. 9, 2009, subpoenas to Detroit Receiving and Sinai-Grace provide nothing more than the names 'Tamara Greene/aka Tamara Bond,' " Raimi said in a court filing. "Health care providers require, for a proper medical records search, such identifying information as a social security number, home address, date of service, etc."
Greene's son's name is Jonathan Bond, and she sometimes used the last names Bond or Bond-Greene.
Raimi said an earlier records request filed by the Greene family attorneys in August 2008 provided a social security number and a birth date for Greene.
"A search using just the social security number ... revealed no record of anyone using that social security number ever being treated at a DMC hospital," Raimi said.
"A search of the names Tamara Greene and Tamara Bond ... revealed no patient with such a name and a birth date matching the one supplied by plaintiffs' counsel," he said.
"A search for all records of all patients ... revealed that no person named Tamara Greene or Tamara Bond was treated at any DMC emergency room anytime during the year 2002," Raimi wrote. "The search did reveal other patients named Tamara Greene or Tamara Bond treated during the full period of the database across the DMC system, but the birth dates and treatment dates of those individuals make it clear they could not possibly have been the record of the Tamara Greene sought by plaintiffs' counsel."
Raimi said the DMC could do further checking if the social security number or date of birth provided in 2008 was not correct.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091...tal-group-says
#5
Old 12-31-2009, 06:43 PM
Arrow http://www.detnews.com/article/20091231/METRO01/912310454/Lawyer-in-slain-dancer-case
Lawyer in slain dancer case wants court to make Kilpatrick provide records
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Detroit -- A lawyer wants a judge to order former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to produce records sought in connection with a lawsuit brought by the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara "Strawberry" Greene.
Norman Yatooma, the lawyer for Greene's family, said in a court filing he is still waiting for Kilpatrick to produce e-mails, correspondence and other records requested from him Nov. 18. Under federal court rules, Kilpatrick was supposed to respond by Dec. 16, Yatooma said in documents filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit late Wednesday.
"This court should enter an order compelling defendant Kilpatrick to respond ... and granting plaintiffs their reasonable costs and attorney fees in bringing this motion," Yatooma said in the court filing.
Greene, who was shot to death in Detroit on April 30, 2003, was linked to a rumored stripper party at the mayor's Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002.
Greene's family is suing the city, Kilpatrick and top city and police officials, alleging they obstructed the investigation into her still unsolved killing for political reasons.
Kilpatrick and the other defendants deny the allegations.
James C. Thomas, Kilpatrick's Detroit attorney, said today he is surprised that Yatooma filed the motion because Kilpatrick and other defendants in the case "have granted extensions of time very liberally to Mr. Yatooma."
"He did not need to file that motion," Thomas said. "We have been in discussions with his office. We have agreed to provide (the responses) to the Yatooma firm. They have not yet been provided but will be in due course.
"I don't need an order from the judge to respond."
The records request seeks e-mails, correspondence, 911 tapes, police personnel files, city communication contracts, Detroit Fire Department run records and other documents. It was sent not just to Kilpatrick, but to the city, Kilpatrick's former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, and all other defendants in the case.
The city of Detroit submitted its responses late, on Dec. 18, "evasive and incomplete as they are," Yatooma said in the court filing.
Beatty filed her responses Dec. 21, he said.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091...rovide-records
#6
Old 01-18-2010, 05:19 PM
Arrow Judge gives Kilpatrick, city week to yield records in slain dancer lawsuit
Last Updated: January 18. 2010 2:47PM
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Detroit -- A federal judge has given the city of Detroit and former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick seven days to turn over records sought in connection with a federal lawsuit brought by the family of a slain exotic dancer.
And Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen warned in an order issued late Friday that more foot-dragging will not be tolerated in the case.
"In light of the disturbing trend ... that at least certain of the defendants appear to be consistently failing to provide timely responses to discovery requests ... the court cautions the parties and their counsel that any further failures to provide timely and appropriate responses to discovery requests will be met with escalating rounds of sanctions, up to an including dismissal of claims or the entry of judgment," Rosen said.
The judge granted three "motions to compel" production of certain records filed by Norman Yatooma, the Birmingham lawyer representing the family of slain dancer Tamara "Strawberry" Greene.
Greene was killed in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003.
She had been linked to a rumored stripper party at the mayor's Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002.
Her family is suing the city, Kilpatrick, and top city and police officials, alleging they obstructed the investigation of her still unsolved murder for political reasons. The federal lawsuit was filed in 2005 and has yet to come to trial.
Records sought include e-mails, correspondence, 911 tapes, police personnel files, city communication records, Detroit Fire Department response records, and other documents.
James C. Thomas, a lawyer for the former mayor, said in December Kilpatrick has agreed to provide the records he has and Yatooma did not need to file the motion.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...dancer-lawsuit
Reply With Quote
#7
Old 01-21-2010, 07:13 PM
Arrow Judge denies request for more time to depose Cox in stripper lawsuit
Last Updated: January 21. 2010 5:32PM
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Detroit -- A federal judge today denied a request to extend the length of Attorney General Mike Cox's deposition in a federal lawsuit over a slain exotic dancer.
Witnesses in civil lawsuits can only be deposed for seven hours without a court order to extend the deposition.
On Dec. 11, Cox was deposed all day in the lawsuit brought by the family of dancer Tamara "Strawberry" Greene against the city of Detroit, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and other top city and police officials. But because of numerous interruptions, only a little over three hours of the seven-hour deposition time was used.
Norman Yatooma, the lawyer for Greene's family, asked Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen to extend the time for questioning Cox beyond seven hours when the deposition resumes Monday.
But in an order today, Rosen said no.
Greene, who was linked to a rumored stripper party at the mayor's Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003.
Her family is suing the city, Kilpatrick and other city defendants, alleging they obstructed the investigation of her still-unsolved killing for political reasons. Kilpatrick and the other defendants deny the allegations.
Cox, who is not a defendant in the case and is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, investigated the rumored Manoogian Mansion party in 2003 and declared it an urban legend. He did not investigate Greene's killing.
"The attorney general volunteered to stay late and finish this back in December and is looking forward to returning on Monday to help the court," said Cox spokesman John Sellek.
Rosen said in his order that it's true Yatooma was impeded and delayed in his questioning of Cox on Dec. 11, but said Yatooma "shares at least some of the blame" for the lack of progress that day because he "devoted significant time to matters that were either irrelevant or outside the scope of the Attorney General's personal knowledge, as well as to questions that had previously been asked and answered."
Rosen said he's not prepared to issue a "blank check" to extend the time for the deposition.
"The Attorney General is not a party to this suit and, while his testimony may be relevant to some of the issues in this case, the court cannot say, at this juncture, that he is a critical witness who played any sort of central role in the alleged events that form the basis for plaintiffs' claims," Rosen said.
"Moreover, the Attorney General is a high-ranking government official with a number of important demands upon his time."
If at the end of seven hours Yatooma still feels he has specific questions he needs to ask, he can make a new motion, Rosen said. However, "a properly focused inquiry, in the court's view, is unlikely to exceed the seven-hour limit," he said.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...ripper-lawsuit
#8
Old 01-28-2010, 06:25 PM
Arrow Judge orders Detroit to turn over records in stripper case
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Last Updated: January 28. 2010 5:22PM
Detroit -- A federal judge today ordered the city of Detroit to turn over additional records to an attorney representing the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara "Strawberry" Greene.
Greene, who was linked to a rumored stripper party at the mayor's Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002, was shot to death in Detroit on April 30, 2003. Her family is suing the city, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and top city and police officials, alleging they obstructed the investigation of her still unsolved murder for political reasons.
The defendants deny the allegations.
Today, U.S. Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen gave the city until Feb. 4 to turn over records including:
• "Run sheets," activity logs or other records related to Greene's shooting.
• Certain other activity logs of the Detroit police and the emergency medical services division of the fire department, with the caveat that any medical information and patient names are for attorneys' eyes only.
• Certain inter-office communications between Christine Beatty, who was chief of staff to Kilpatrick, and three current or former top police officials, including former Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings.
• The personnel file of James Tolbert, who was then a Detroit police commander and is now a deputy chief.
• Detroit EMS records for every Friday, Saturday and Sunday between Sept. 1, 2002 and Nov. 30, 2002.
• City contracts with wireless cellular or text messaging service providers.
• Written material related to Gary Brown, Harold Nelthrope and Walt Harris, three former officers who sued the city and Kilpatrick for whistle-blower violations.
• Police overtime requests from Sept. 1, 2002 to Oct. 31, 2002.
Whalen also told the city to turn over to Birmingham lawyer Norman Yatooma, who represents Greene's family, certain computer data tapes "as soon as technically possible."
He denied a request for police and fire dispatch logs from Sept. 1, 2002 to Nov. 30, 2002, based on the city's assertions that such records do not exist. But he told the city to certify that "it has made a diligent and good faith search for the records."
Whalen denied Yatooma's request for e-mails for all city employees for specified time periods as "overly broad and excessively burdensome."
Last year, judges pored through hundreds of thousands of city text messages that were filed with the court under seal before determining that 36 of them might be relevant to the lawsuit. The contents of those 36 messages have not been revealed.
The city and Kilpatrick were earlier ordered to turn over records in the case. Yatooma recently filed a motion for default judgment, saying the records Kilpatrick provided were incomplete and the city provided no response by the court-ordered deadline.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...-stripper-case |
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