Kwame, U of M Football and other thoughts.

On the Freep's homepage today were several interesting stories which I feel the need to comment on. There was the former hip hop mayor being sentenced to five years for probation violations. An announcement from the current mayor's office which declared that tv crews will no longer be there to film raids by it's police force. U of M's football coach is deflecting blame for violations of rules by his football team and finally more young people being murdered in the city.

Kwame's cash and luck ran out and without any political clout none was forth coming. A Detroit judge today sentanced Kwame Kilpatrick to prison for five years for hiding cash and misusing cash from his former political life, both violations of his probation. Here's the rub, on one hand it appears as if the justice system has worked in Detroit, but in reality Kwame simply no longer had the cash on hand to make things go away. I know that seems cynical and snarky but if anyone has any idea of how things work in Detroit, you know I'm right.

Rich Rodriguez is an embarrassment. I'm not talking about his record as Michigan's head football coach or his arrogance or even for the violations that Michigan has just admitted to. I'm talking about the fact that he refused to take full responsibility for the violations. Rodriguez is in charge of a great college football program. More importantly he is a leader and mentor to the young men of the program. In the report released by U of M, Rodriguez say's he is partly to blame for the violations and his staffers are partly to blame. What? His staff works for him, they do what he tells them to do. When something goes down, a leader steps up and takes responsibility. It's like telling your neighbor that your dog is mostly to blame for shitting in his yard, but that you'll accept some responsibility. From the way he left W. Virginia to the way he's run his program, to his lack of leadership, Rich Rod has shown he is devoid of the honor, class and character that is required to be the head football coach at the University of Michigan.

A little girl was killed sometime last week by a Detroit police officer during a raid on a house to arrest a suspected murderer. The police immediately claimed that it was an accident caused by a woman in the house grabbing the officers gun. Generally, it's an issue of who do you believe, the police or the woman who claims she never touched the officer or his gun. The difference this time is that a tv documentary film crew was on hand. According to reports (mostly from the media whore Jeffery Fieger) the film paints a different picture of what happened. The police officer (again according to Fieger) kicked open the door and threw a flash bang into the room where the girl was sleeping, as it exploded the officer fired a shot into the room, thus killing the girl. Now we haven't seen the tape but if that's what happened, it sounds like at a minimum a manslaughter charge for the officer. So, today a spokesman from Mayor Bing's office made a statement saying that tv crews will no longer accompany police on raids. Why not? What are you afraid of? If it were not for the tv crew we would have only the police report to go on. There would be a dead little girl and no way to prove what really happened. The message I get from this declaration is, "our police department is so corrupt and/or ill trained that we do not want proof of their corruption or incompetence". Mr. Mayor, you can not improve the police department or the citizens opinion of it by pretending nothing's wrong. Mayor Bing, seems to be a good man for the citizens of Detroit but this is misguided decision.

Somewhere down the homepage, in small font is a story about another teen murdered in a drive by shooting. Over the past several weeks small children and many adults have been killed in the city of Detroit. Murders are so common that they don't get front page status. Only interesting murders get any type of coverage. It's sad, it's tragic, it's violence in the United States.