Flint City Council circus continues; justice needed
Time for Governor Gretchen Whitmer to step in to take action
Wednesday, Oct 23, 2024
Anybody seen Eric Mays lately? The man I consider the most popular city councilman in Flint history has been gone 8 months and Flint City Council meetings are still utter chaos.
You would think they can't blame Mays for it.
He's watching from Heaven, yet several of our current cast of "Eric Mays-ists" as he once tabbed them on The Morning Gazette Radio Show — they have actually said all the current mess is his fault for setting all this divisiveness into motion. They have Facebook friends filling social media with the blame game directed squarely at Mr. Mays, too.
I guess that's part of the plot at Flint City Hall to control millions of tax dollars. The way I see it, Commissioner Delrico Lloyd's well written scolding of city leaders last week (See Related Story in Today's Metro Section) needs to be taken to another level. He should use his influence at the UAW International office where he works in Detroit to get his city help from the Governor.
Gretchen Whitmer yelled and screamed about how bad an insurrection in Washington D.C. was on January 6th when Donald Trump didn't want to transfer power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, and it was truly a terrible day in American history. It's shameful how Trump's supporters destroyed property and attacked police.
Yet, nobody in the angry mob there pulled out a gun. Still, police shot at one of them who was unarmed and killed her.
Right here in Big Gretch's own backyard 53 miles east of her office in Lansing, a gun was pulled out in what at least one Flint City Council member calls a "insurrection" on Flint's elected leaders. She says she was a target. So, too, was a lady who led a recall against the 3rd Ward councilman named Quincy Murphy who recently died. The recall lady (Beverly Biggs-Leavy) was lucky her daughter was there to pull out a gun and stop the mob coming at her.
My prediction in typical Flint fashion is that the daughter will be the only person charged despite clearly acting in self defense to protect her mom.
Oddly, Flint police didn't take anybody to jail on the night of the "insurrection" in the city council chambers on the 3rd floor of Flint City Hall. Others who disrupt meetings or talk too long at he public speaker podium have been hauled out in handcuffs. Yet, never has a mob stormed a council meeting from the back of the room after an hour of taunts and wisecracks until the rush up front to stop the proceedings.
They were yelling obscenities and screaming threats as they suddenly bolted forward out of their seats. Multiple videos also reveal that at least the City Council President allegedly knew about it and invited them to come cause trouble. That's what a few of them said anyway. It seemed almost on que that the angry mob descended on the front of the room in a scary scene that I rank as the all-time low in the fall of a once great American city we call Flint.
The folks next door in Flint Township are so sick of being lumped in with "Flint" that they got a state law changed to hopefully fix their name some day and rid themselves of their ties to the "Flint" identity forever.
But back to the Prez for a minute. She likes to be called doctor, by the way.
Her critics say she went to school too long and got too many degrees on our dime. Listening to her babble at council meetings can quickly confirm she's not very smart. Dr. Ladel Lewis is her name. She demands to be called by her educational title and scolds those who call her "Ladel" instead of "Dr. Lawis." No real jobs on her resume, mind you. Some say she was chased out of Maryland where she got herself elected to office prior to running for the 2nd Ward seat in Flint. Sadly, Yours Truly endorsed her. I didn't know about all the stories of how she acted in Maryland. I had no clue she had ever been in Kalamazoo, let alone chased out of town there, too, by many accounts regarding alleged shady behavior.
Who would think she would set up a non-profit for Sarvis Park in Flint and steer thousands of city dollars there from federal ARPA funds and from one developer her and four council friends gave millions to in hopes they build something at the old Buick City site?
I'd invite her on my radio show to defend herself but she hasn't taken my calls since the campaign three years ago. I once corrected her on false information she was spewing on a Facebook group page and she promptly unfriended me. Probably just a coincidence but a fake person then popped up to pretend to be a former sales rep for my company who said I never paid him what he was owed. A deep dive into company records confirmed that nobody with his name ever was employed by us or even filed an application.
Dr. Ladel has also been accused by colleagues on the council of making up fake people on Facebook to go after political enemies while handing out compliments for her. She has denied it was her behind the alleged fake people who did that. An attorney on my case, however, tracked the fake person to an IP address used at a Flint church.
It's a two-year felony in Michigan to make up a fake name on social media to bully someone, and I indeed felt very bullied.
My friend Eric Mays said at the time that Mayor Neeley's Flint police obviously don't investigate those with the power to fire them. It's unfortunate that State Police were also not interested in being bothered with what a desk sergeant there called a "Facebook spat" and advised me to stay off social media to avoid crazy people who probably don't have jobs while they focus on catching real bad guys with guns. The church wasn't worth much money and my attorney figured it would be bad PR to padlock a church and sell it to collect on a libel judgment.
It's absolutely shameful how there's enough evidence on my desk for the FBI to make dozens of arrests at Flint City Hall. As a side note here, I've sent copies of important documents to various high profile journalist friends around the USA for safekeeping in case anybody wants to break windows on my office as they've done on one individual challenging for a city council seat in the 1st Ward. A fire was set at her place, too.
All the documents are tied to cases we've talked about on the radio or in this space. Journalists are not given subpoena powers to finish building iron clad cases. All we can do is plead to the Governor to bring justice to the people of Flint.
Oh wait, she couldn't even do that when politics played a major role in how an entire city was poisoned just over a decade ago and nobody got any prison time despite how many people died here because of the water crisis.
-----------------------------------------------------
Mike Killbreath appears on Metro Flint News/Talk Radio via The Morning Gazette Radio Show weekday mornings from 8 am until 9:30 am. He's an award-winning newspaper columnist and investigative reporter who is the former long-time owner of the local Metro Flint area chain of 14 community newspapers. This fall marks his 50th year as a journalist. He also hosts a new weekly national TV show known as The American Crusaders on cable TV and various OTT TV live streaming platforms.
