Yesterday, in a Detroit courtroom, the clock ran out on a man named Kwame Kilpatrick, who for the last nine years has used and abused the citizens of his city and his state.
Five years ago, the voters reelected him, after four years in which his conduct had clearly been unbecoming of a mayor. Two years ago, we learned that his lying and his perjury had cost his cash-poor city more than eight million dollars. After months of desperately trying to save his career, he ended up pleading guilty to felonies and resigning from office.
But we weren’t finished giving him more chances. Sympathetic businessmen lent Kilpatrick and his family hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a noble effort to help both Kwame Kilpatrick and the city of Detroit, Compuware’s Peter Karamanos gave him a good job at his firm’s subsidiary in Texas. A six-figure job with enough income to enable Kilpatrick to make his restitution payments and rebuild his life.
Yet he still gave in to the self-destructive impulses that had cost him the mayor’s office. Once again, he settled into a pattern of lies, deceit, and failing to live up to his obligations. Soon, he was constantly being hauled back into a Detroit courtroom.
Every time that happened, the heart of new Mayor Dave Bing would sink, as would those of the other people who are striving to save Detroit and Michigan from financial collapse.
Every time Kwame Kilpatrick was in the headlines, it made it just that much less possible to sell Detroit.
Incidentally, if you live in Grand Rapids or Lansing or Flint and think this has nothing to do with you, think again. When the rest of the nation and the world think of Michigan, they think of Detroit.
Our state’s image is inextricably tied to that of our largest city.
But yesterday, this phase of the show ended. Kwame Kilpatrick delivered a long, rambling speech pleading for mercy.
Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner said he agreed with precisely one thing the defendant said, that it was time to move on.
Time for us all to move on. He called the former mayor on his lies and noted that he had continued to lie in court after having been convicted of lying in court. Then he sent him to prison.
Not the county jail, but state prison. He’ll serve a minimum of eighteen months, and possibly as much as five years. Yes, there will be an appeal, but it is hard to imagine it succeeding.
Prisoners don’t get to face the cameras and hold press conferences. Eleven years ago, a prosecutor told me that as another high-profile criminal, Jack Kevorkian, was led off to prison.
Out of sight; out of mind. Kevorkian, who turns eighty-two today in a tattered little suburban apartment, has largely been forgotten.
Detroit gave Kwame Kilpatrick the keys to their city when he was thirty-one. Today, at age thirty-nine, he’s doing hard time.
Which is exactly what he gave the people who elected him for too many long years.
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