Personal Issues

Do you turn a blind eye when your boss orders you to cover up his immoral activity? Or do you turn him in?

Kwame Kilpatrick's security force was put into action when he was cheating on his wife. A couple of the boys in blue took a look at the allegation that mayoral security was securing a secret tryst, and for that, they got fired.

The officers filed suit, claiming that they were sacked because they were running a legitimate investigation. It's illegal for a sitting mayor to manipulate his taxpayer-financed security force. They get paid to protect his body, not his reputation. Examining an illegal activity is not grounds for termination, and the city of Detroit agreed. The settlement was somewhere in the vicinity of $8 million.

There was no romance, insisted Mr. Kilpatrick. It's a lie, claimed his chief of staff, Christine Beatty. Under oath, they both swore they weren't having an affair.

What of the text message from him to her? "I'm madly in love with you" isn't exactly a request with any sort of business relationship. "I am madly in love with you, too" is not what one expects to hear from a chief of staff addressing His Honor the Mayor.

Pity that the mayor signed off on the settlement with an eye to keeping the text messages out of the public eye. Wouldn't you know that the public got wind of them anyway, and now all of Detroit knows about the affair. And about Mr. Kipatrick's whopping great lie.

Kwame Kilpatrick has now been charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and official misconduct. He would have been ahead of the game if he'd just admitted to the wife that he had strayed. Sure it's a tangled web that he wove, deceiving one and all, only to get caught by his own words.