Detroit should take a cue from D.C. on handling a sex scandal - Fox 2 News Headlines

By Charlie LeDuff
Fox 2 News

DETROIT (WJBK) -- If Detroit wants a lesson in how to handle a sex scandal among its top cops it should look to Washington D.C.

To review: Retired Gen. David Petraeus fell on his sword after it was revealed that his biographer Paula Broadwell's research went deep under the covers.  Now the CIA doesn't have a chief.

His replacement in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, was due a promotion to Europe until it was found he was swapping randy emails with Jill Kelley, the woman who told the FBI about Gen. Priapic's side project.

Fred Humphries, the FBI agent who uncorked the whole stink bomb, has been reassigned after his bosses found out he was sending half-naked pictures of himself to Kelley, Gen. Allen's pen pal.

Resignations and reassignments and ruined careers. That's how Washington handles things.

Now let's take a look at the Detroit Police Department. Chief Ralph Godbee was allowed to retire after his subordinate and admitted lover, Officer Angelica Robinson, tweeted a photograph of herself sucking on her service revolver. Apparently she was distraught that the chief was traveling with another woman.

But that's where it stopped. No heads rolled despite the fact that high-ranking police officials may have engaged in a cover-up.

Deputy Chief Paul Welles has actually been offered a promotion to assistant chief even though it was a crew under his command that traced Robinson's cell phone without judicial supervision on the day she tweeted the photo and tracked her into Farmington Hills without telling the police there.

Other police officials in the loop that day include the commanding officer of Internal Affairs, who is supposed to be investigating the incident he was part of.

Interim Chief Chester Logan promised answers "sooner rather than later." So where is that report more than a month later?

"Beats me," says Jerome Warfield, chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners, who is blocking the Welles promotion until City Hall pays for an independent and honest search for a new police chief. "We've gotten no answers from either the mayor or the interim police chief."

It's the fox guarding the proverbial henhouse. While Mayor Dave Bing scrounges to find the money for the chief search, he ought to check the cushions for some change to pay for an independent investigation into Godbee-gate.   

Mr. Mayor, take a cue from D.C. and clean house lest the whole fetid affair drag down an already demoralized police force.

It's not as though we'd lose the cream of the crop. The feds are digging into the Internal Affairs office as it is, and murder in Detroit has already topped the total for all of last year.