I must say that the respect I got on the street was nothing like the tone that the newspapers set. I couldn’t believe the difference, and was so heartened by the love that people on the street showed me. Khary and I continued our work on the book, having conversations on the record as often as we could. But that pace was consistently choppy, since my legal and work affairs always got in the way of consistent interviewing. I asked him to spend one Saturday morning riding around town with me so he could see it for himself. I’d told him that people’s response on the street was nothing like the news reports. He was surprised, to say the least.
We rode around town on a day when I knew people would be off work and out in the street. We went to eat, and the owner of the restaurant where we dined refused to let us pay for our meal. Parking lot attendants thanked me for my service, and bristled about me being railroaded.
The most riveting moment we experienced happened when we stopped by my nephews’ basketball game. While sitting in the bleachers, a nine-year-old boy (I know, because I asked him) named Thomas approached me.
“Aren’t you Mr. Kwame Kilpatrick?” he asked.
“Yeah, Brother, I am,” I replied, “and this is Mr. Turner. What’s your name?”
“I’m Thomas,” he said. “When did you get out of jail?”
“A few weeks ago. You heard about that, huh?”
“Yes. My mama thought you did a good job.”
“Did she?” I said, feeling really grateful. “Do you think I did a good job?”
He shook his head up and down, and then pointed to his left, where his family sat. “That’s my mama, right there.”
I waved to his family, and then turned back to the young boy, just as he asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes!” I said, impressed at how personable he was.
“Okay. It was nice to meet you.” Wisdom, as the Bible says, truly does come from the mouths of babes.
“Man, that was tripped out,” Khary said.
The blur began upon my return to Dallas. On one hand, I was excited about my new life. Carlita, the boys and I missed our family in Detroit, but we settled nicely into Dallas life.
At Southlake, we got involved with the congregation at The Potter’s House. As Carlita and I desired, this became our new church home. The Potter’s House was the perfect place for Carlita and me to reset our relationship. We both hungered for a closer walk with God. And our sons, seeing the two of us regularly discussing God, and God’s purpose for our lives, began adding conversations about faith to their rhetoric. Nothing was more fun than when the family would pile in the truck and sing to the music of artists like Israel, Karen Clarke-Sheard or Tye Tribbett, and just ride. Of course, we’d throw a little Michael Jackson and Frankie Beverly in the mix, too. Bottom line, life was good.
My job required weekly travel. I was responsible for a region that included the Eastern Seaboard, and some West Coast and Southern territories. My job was simple—sell this massive health software system to cities, and incorporate it into their healthcare structure. It put me in contact with power players, people who made decisions for entire populations. People like me.
My motivation to succeed in the job was manifold. I had restitution to pay, and I intended to pay it completely. Most restitution in the State of Michigan never gets paid in full. The Probation Department’s goal is to keep ex-offenders honest while collecting as much as they can. Because of this motive, the department can be very lenient to those who remain in close contact. But not with me. I was too visible. Leniency would attract more media scrutiny, which would mean more public outrage. Knowing this, I planned to land two or three huge deals and use my bonus pay to settle the debt early. After that, I fully intended to get on with my life, and learn to live without Detroit.
Simple enough, except the Detroit judicial system had no intention of letting me go away so quietly. I was wrong to think that physically leaving Detroit would remove me from the city’s collective consciousness. Although the sentiment I’d gotten from people in the street confirmed that most were desperately ready to move on and let me go, Detroit news crews soon showed up in my Dallas neighborhood. They photographed my home and ran stories on Detroit newscasts, saying that I was living extravagantly.
These weren’t simply biased stories. They were inaccurate, grossly exaggerated and flat-out untrue. Their reports included line shots in front of stores where they said I spent money. They showed an Escalade, and suggested that I’d spent extravagantly on it, while arbitrarily leaving out the fact that I’d already paid restitution on it. They followed my wife and me to our sons’ football games, through the grocery store and even to church. They picked their tabloids up right where they’d left them.
We tried to move through the days as casually as possible, but this was far from funny. I knew about the stories that were being written back in Detroit and, though I tried to avoid reading them for my own sanity, I was concerned. The editors were reckless, disregarding fact and journalistic integrity. My neighbors soon began telling us about reporters knocking on their doors, asking if they knew who was living among them, and if they knew they had a bad guy living in the neighborhood. But we had great neighbors who knew my story but never judged us. And I didn’t hesitate to tell them upon meeting them, although they’d already heard about me and told us that what went on in Detroit was none of their business. We were welcomed in Dallas, as far as they were concerned. It felt great.
The few people in Dallas we knew who saw the stories online were appalled. Dallas news reporters called and apologized to my wife and me, and promised that they wouldn’t “bother us.” They were in genuine disbelief and expressed disdain toward Detroit’s media outlets. In fact, one Dallas TV news producer came to my house and told me that he was not going to do any more “snake-like reporting for those Detroit assholes.” He didn’t bring a camera. He just wanted to be clear that “we don’t do that type of crap in Dallas.”
He shook my hand, wished me well and left. Considering what I’d experienced at the lens of Detroit’s press corps, it was a remarkable moment. Two Dallas stations sent cards and candy to Carlita, offering words of encouragement and apologetic sentiments for what she’d endured.
I know it sounds like I’m angry with the media. I’m not. But who will tell you these stories if I don’t? The press eagerly characterizes the worst Kwame Kilpatrick possible, but never dares reveal the formula they used to create that guy. They suggested that my lifestyle was so flamboyant that I had to be spending money that should have gone toward restitution. The needling was invasive and biased, and based on a prejudicial premises.
Because restitution required thirty percent of my gross receipts, Compuware advanced me $20,000 a month for my first six months, and $10,000 a month for the next six. So my payments should have been $6,000 a month for the first half of the year, followed by an automatic drop to $3,000. The company did this to help my family transition, and also wrote a letter to Judge Groner, informing him of the reason and timeline. When I started paying $3,000 a month, the press ran stories saying that I was only paying half of what I owed. Note that I’d asked Groner to recognize the salary adjustment and the lower payment.
Worthy wanted to (and did) paint the perception that I was spending restitution money. She complained about money that was lent to me by four of the businessmen I discussed earlier. Peter Karmanos, Roger Penske, Dan Gilbert and Jim Nicholson, friends and staunch supporters of the city, lent me $240,000 to further help me get re-established. While I did set up a comfortable lifestyle for myself, my wife and my sons, I never ducked a payment. I was simply paying my restitution from my earned income. I was also ahead of my payment schedule.
Once the Wayne County Circuit Court received word that I received these loans, however, the prosecutor hit the roof and accused me of hiding income. She was wrong. There’s a clear separation between income and gifts and loans. Some people may say I was wrong or overly demonstrative in doing so, but I was not going to live hand-t
o-mouth. And that’s exactly what the prosecutor wanted—an appearance of poverty and struggle.
Judge Groner will swear to his dying day that I was treated the same as any Michigan parolee, but the rules applied to me were manipulated. Thirty percent of gross wages, alone, was unheard of. Agreements were negotiated and ratified, and were clear. And wages are considered to be monies paid in response to a rendered service, i.e., work. Detroit media, Judge Groner and Kym Worthy wanted my family living in a two-bedroom apartment. They wanted to see me driving my big butt around Dallas in a Chevy Aveo, not a Cadillac Escalade. They wanted me to struggle. I think that would have satisfied my detractors, because it would have made them feel like I was struggling. Never mind that I’d just served four months in jail and languished for another thirty days, jeopardizing my initial job standing.
They hated that I was able to re-establish myself so quickly. In their minds, a portion of every penny that entered my bank account should have gone to the State of Michigan. We fundamentally disagreed on that point, but the restitution agreement should have made it clear. It didn’t hurt, though, that disagreeing gave both the judge and the prosecutor a chance to yank me back into a courtroom. It granted both of them TV time heading into an election year, and it gave Worthy a chance to send her assistant prosecutors after me. All in the name of justice.
The press ran a series of stories investigating my finances and lifestyle. People close to me suggested that I should have just laid low for a while and kept my lifestyle quiet. And while that sounds like a good plan, everyone has a limit, and I already felt that I had been unjustly jailed. Now I had to act poor, just to please an establishment that hated me? And I had to hear people close to me vouch for a bent-back stance? No. I was appalled that the press even had access to my finances. Legally, my records should have been reviewed in a manner that was non-FOIA-ble, meaning they could not be accessed through a Freedom of Information Act request. I was entitled to some privacy. That didn’t happen. They probed my personal spending and publicized expenditures that should have remained private.
The prosecutor then decided to subpoena Carlita’s records. She wasn’t a part of this process. So we had to hire an attorney in Texas to help stop that.
Judge Groner began ordering me back-and-forth to his courtroom. Every time he forced me to fly back to Detroit, I had to take time off work, away from the deals I was working on, away from the resources that would pay my restitution and allow me to go on with my life. Groner was pissed that I didn’t report the loans I’d received, and the Detroit press corps consistently crafted stories that made it seem as if I were hiding money.
I flew back to Detroit for a series of hearings and took the stand to explain why I bought a motorcycle, why I paid for surgery for Carlita, why I leased another SUV, why I spent money on auto detailing, and all the flotsam and jetsam the court deemed significant. It was all framed as excess to attempt to showcase further evidence of my arrogance, and my flippant attitude toward the people of Detroit.
I was not hiding money. I was, however, deeply engaged in the process of reconnecting with my wife and sons. It was a very personal matter, and I approached it by giving them the life I felt they would have had had we not endured such rough personal times when I was mayor. I thank all the men and women who blessed me with their assistance, and I was not going to be angry with those who didn’t share those blessings. What I hated, though, was seeing news cameras following my wife all over the Dallas/Forth Worth area. I hated them probing my sons’ school administrators. The underlying message from the press to their readers and viewers was, You need to hate him. Look how they’re living, compared to how you’re living. Constantly framing me as a picture of arrogance and opulence gave people a lightning rod for their despair. But it made life potentially dangerous for me and my family. Because it was a storyline local to Detroit, I was able to keep it away from Carlita. But otherwise, I refused to stop living my life.
The tone of the news was different between the two cities, as well. The news in Dallas, for example, does its share of investigative reporting, but they lift up their city daily. There’s no political theater. The focal point is the business community and the people, not the members. I don’t even know who their City Council members are. They also don’t allow cameras in the courtroom, not in the State or City courts. The stories are reported on the news, but the sense of theater is absent. There’s a healthy respect for privacy.
I saw firsthand how the mental and emotional capacity of Detroiters is regulated by the press. It’s oppressive. Dallas ran a story in which a reporter said, “New resident Kwame Kilpatrick may be in some more hot water. We’ll follow the story.” And then, they went to the next story—not just my next story.
As I traveled with my employer, I observed this same press tone in other cities. I went to Washington, D.C., and Atlanta on business the week the restitution stories about me first ran. I’d also been to New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles on business, and I took note of two things. One, people’s source of information about me came from local news. Two, their decision, based on what they saw, was basic: this guy got caught up, and racism took him out. Many people, especially the more astute business and political folks I still had regular contact with, looked at it as if the City were falling apart since I’d left. They said things like, “You’ve gotta be glad you’re not in that m----f----r any more.”
I had always spoken positively about the city, but it was hard to disagree with the fact that things had gotten worse. Much worse. Detroit had tenaciously and aggressively managed to revert back to its 1980s image. I had to fight against that backdrop. Though the powers that be in Detroit put my story on simmer over the next year, the prosecutor, the court and the majority of metropolitan Detroit came to the conclusion that I was a crook. The people who believed I was being railroaded were quiet and felt disjointed. So, it seemed as if I had no supporters.
With news cameras on him, Judge Groner opined that the loans I received for my wife and children’s benefit was income for which restitution should have been paid. This became the clarion call and the motivating factor in his endeavor to change the accounting structure surrounding the matter. He decided, therefore, that I violated my parole. He tacked on a few more judgments about money that my wife received while I was in the Wayne County Jail, long before my restitution.
Before finding me guilty of probation violation, however, the judge ordered me to pay the entire $240,000 loan amount within four months. I didn’t have the money, and the court knew it because they had all of my financial information. Still, I struggled and came up with $40,000. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough to satisfy the court.
Judge Groner’s last words to me were, “Mr. Kilpatrick, I suggest you get your affairs in order.”
I knew what that meant. And so, I did. I spent as much time with my family as I could. We laughed. We talked. We prayed. We accepted that the rules of normalcy no longer applied to me, but that God’s will applies to everyone. If this were to be my lot, I would accept it.
On May 25, 2010, I was sentenced to one-and-a-half to five years in prison. The Probation Department recommended that, per guidelines, I be sentenced from zero to seventeen months. Judge Groner dismissed that recommendation. He said that compelling and substantial reasons warranted that he go outside the guidelines. He never stated for the record what these “guidelines” were. He simply sentenced me to a much lengthier sentence. Less than two hours later, I found myself in a Michigan Department of Corrections van, headed to the Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson, Michigan.
Damn. All I wanted to do was go home. But still, all was well.
We completed this book from behind the walls of the Federal Correctional Facility in Milan, Michigan. The prison is one hour from my hometown, which might as well be a galaxy away from my life. As this chapter of my life continues to evolve, I am preparing for yet the biggest battle of my life, which now includes federal charges. It’s enough to make the
head spin.
Prosecutors are working very hard to connect my friends to me. These are my friends, and I pray for them and wish their families the best. In the meantime, you now know my position, and my story. And I hope you find it within yourself to pray for me, my family and my beloved hometown, as we have for you.
chapter 30
Revelation 3: The End… The New Beginning
THE BIBLE says that we are to “work out” our salvation, and yet God “works in us” to accomplish this. I knew God had not forgotten about me in this moment, but I had a whole lot of work to do. So, I spent the next several months working out! I read more than forty books. I scheduled at least one hour of Bible study daily, and at least another hour of general wisdom study. I sought truth from a spectacular array of materials, from East Indian meditation to African spirituality; from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, by John Maxwell, to The Power and The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. I sent off for a correspondence Bible and leadership development course, and completed those assignments. I also completed the Nation of Islam’s Overcoming Difficulty workbook. I snuck in some fiction by James Patterson, Sydney Sheldon and a few urban classics. And lessons came from other fiction like The Shack, The Traveler’s Gift and The Alchemist. But the authors who attracted me most were folks like Eckhart Tolle, Maxwell, and Bishop T.D. Jakes.
I worked out my body, too, four times a week. Why adopt such a regimen? I didn’t want to be like the Children of Israel. They crossed the Red Sea to freedom after 400 years of bondage, finding themselves a mere three days’ travel from the Promised Land. But because they were still bound by their thinking, they wandered around the same mountain for forty years. Imagine, mental slavery kept them from climbing a hill! As crazy as that is, I knew I had an enemy in my head, and I refused to be bound. The next time I walk out of any prison, I will be truly free.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 26