VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

Toronto’s Union Station is flooded in water. Royal Bank Plaza concourse flooded, June 2012 (You Tube commentary on video above):

 At about 12:30 p.m., water inundated Toronto’s Union Station, one of Canada’s busiest transportation hubs. More than three dozen people were trapped on a street car in the Harbourfront tunnel when the flooding began. They have since been rescued and evacuated. Subway services have been suspended on a portion of the Yonge-University-Spadina line — but GO train services continue to operate.

A sewage back-up, mixed with a heavy influx of rain, has caused significant damage. Power has been shut off as crews work to clean and sanitize the station, which is expected to remain closed until Saturday. Witnesses said the water came down “like a monsoon” Water also flooded the lobby of neighbouring Royal Bank Plaza as well as part of the PATH system linked to Union — prompting the closure of the underground walkway at 2 p.m.

Toronto hired EMA in 1996; now DWSD wants to use company too 

By Diane Bukowski 

August 22, 2012 

DETROIT – The city of Toronto was virtually underwater in June due to backed-up sewage lines affecting its subways, homes and streets. Such floods have been common over the last decade, according to media reports, since EMA, Inc. revamped Toronto Water.

EMA Group CEO Terrance Brueck

Now the EMA Group wants to re-do the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department using  a plan similar to the “Works Best Practices” Program (WBP) they initiated in Toronto in 1996. The EMA Group is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has a subsidiary, EMA Canada Inc. with offices in Toronto and Winnepeg.

EMA Vice-President Brian Hurding told the Board of Water Commissioners (BOWC) Aug. 8 that EMA wants to reduce the DWSD workforce by 81 percent, and force the remaining workers to do the jobs of many others by merging classifications.

DWSD Director Sue McCormick, hired Jan. 1, 2012

DWSD Director Sue McCormick told the BOWC why she had selected EMA.

“They utilize significant employee input,” she said. “They have conducted desk audits and reviewed technological and business processes. They have track records in 400 communities of producing results that achieve or exceed projected savings. They never compromise safety or quality and maintain regulatory compliance.”

Hurding, who works out of EMA Canada’s Toronto office, touted Toronto Water as his company’s prime success story.  He presented slides featuring laudatory quotes from Toronto Water managers.

Toronto hired EMA Canada in 1996. A 1999 memorandum from Toronto City Auditor Jeffery Griffiths to the city council detailed a proposed Phase II EMA contract for the Works Best Practices (WBP) Program, costing $14.5 million.

Flooded basement bathroom in Toronto, June, 2012.

“The WBP Program is a long term improvement initiative undertaken by the Water and Wastewater Services Division of the Works and Emergency Services Department,” Griffiths wrote.  “The objective of the program is to ensure that the Division provides the most cost effective and efficient service to its customers. Phase 1 of the project focused on the design of new work practices, new technologies and organizational change.

EMA has already carried out Phase I of its Detroit plan. Phase II is set for a BOWC vote soon.

“Phase 2 includes full implementation of redesigned work practices and organizational units, integrated business and operations systems and technologies, detailed design, and construction and commissioning work for new process control systems across the major water and wastewater operating facilities,” Griffiths said. “Staff estimates that annual savings of approximately $36 million will be realized upon completion of the project.”

Cars underwater during June, 2012 flood in Toronto resulting from faulty water/sewage system.

Hurding told the BOWC that after 10 years, DWSD will realize a total savings of $.9 billion.

Frank Morrissey, former Chair of CUPE Local 416’s water and wastewater division, retired in 2004.

In Toronto, by 2002, Frank Morrissey, who was chair of  the water and wastewater division of Local 416 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and preventive maintenance coordinator at the Ashbridges Bay water treatment plant, told the group Water Watch that the city’s sewage system had deteriorated in the wake of EMA’s work.

He spoke during a campaign to stop eventual privatization of Toronto Water, which was partially successful but resulted in an altered governance structure with less accountability.

He said recommendations to transform the system into a “public corporation” were “a stepping stone on the bridge to privatization. It sets the system up as ripe for the plucking.”

Water Watch wrote, “Wastewater, often less scrutinized than what comes out of the tap, has already come under the cost-cutting knife. Morrissey says corporate pressure has ratcheted down standards for sewage treatment at the Highland Creek plant. An American consulting firm, EMA, has deployed a cost-reduction scheme that cut staff and drastically reduced the quality of the plant’s discharge.

“With the city’s higher standard, any system failure meant the plant’s discharge would still meet the province’s requirements. Now, failure means contaminated water. ‘The effluent used to be treated to a higher standard than the provincial minimum, and that meant security. But we’ve got no margin any more,’ says Morrissey.”

Damage to roadways occurred as a result of the June, 2012 floods in Toronto.

According to a report from Watergy, under EMA’s Works Best Practices Program,  “the utility revamped its management structure to empower line workers to maximize efficiency in operations. Facilities have been divided into distinct geographic areas that are managed in a business unit fashion by a team of line staff. The teams meet on a daily basis to discuss operational and maintenance strategies. Team supervisors provide oversight and regularly meet among themselves to discuss interteam collaboration on efficiency projects. This team structure has helped optimize operational performance and provide a more rapid response to redressing inefficiencies.”

That process is very similar to what EMA proposes to use in DWSD.

In 2005, the Toronto passed a $1 billion 10-year plan to address ongoing problems, still working with EMA.

Gag photo shows current Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, a right-wing advocate of privatization, helping to empty water from Toronto’s Union Station.

Fast forward to 2012. Continuing reduction in staff, training, vehicles and other supplies was detailed in a previously confidential  budget release after CUPE Local 416 voted to accept the changes early this year. Toronto;s Mayor Rob Ford has led an anti-public worker campaign since he took office.

Another view of Toronto’s Union Station under water in June, 2012 after 16 years of dealing with the EMA Group.

By June, 2012, Toronto’s water and sewerage infrastructure had deteriorated so badly that massive flooding of basements, streets and even the city’s world-renowned subway system took place. As shown in the video at the end of the story, a similar flood happened in 2009.

Toronto Post reporter Vidya Kauri wrote regarding this year’s floods, “It is believed a backed-up storm sewer may have caused the flooding. Heavy rains may have contributed to water pumping issues.”

Kauri said that two feet of water put Toronto’s Union Station completely out of operation, while the system ran bus shuttles through the city to make up for service interruptions in other stations.

“Toronto fire spokesman Adrian Ratushniak confirmed that fire crews ‘assisted passengers from track level and in some cases had to lift them through water,’  but added there were no reports of injuries,” Kauri wrote.

Michelle Berardinetti, Toronto Ward 35 Councillor

“I could smell for sure what I thought was sewage,” pedestrian Michael Tomlin told the Post. Tomlin was about to enter the station but turned back when he saw the gushing water.

“Police blocked vehicle access along Front St. from York St. to Bay St. while crews worked to clean up the mess,” Kauri added. “Parts of the PATH underground walkway connected to the station were also closed due to flooding.”

The paper also interviewed numerous homeowners whose basements flooded in four major regions served by Toronto Water, which it said are “often shut down during major storms.”

One homeowner, a Toronto City Councillor, told the Post her home has flooded six times in the last nine years.

“Ward 35 Councillor Michelle Berardinetti visited the homeowners wearing thick galoshes that almost came up to her knees.” said the Post. “Sewage backed up into her home near Danforth Ave. and Kennedy Rd. as well, and she is worried about the presence of E.Coli.”

EMA website graphic: out to conquer the world.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford also visited homeowners.

As he stood in one basement with four inches of sewage, he told Kauri, “My heart bleeds for these people to have to go through this. They fix up their basement. A lot of people live in their basement. You come home to have sewage in your basement and all your furniture ruined, your chairs are ruined, your TV’s ruined, then you start over again. You know how frustrating that is.”.

It is unclear jjust how drastic Toronto’s staffing cuts have been. But in light of the massive floods and sewage back-ups Toronto’s residents experienced in July, it appears the reduction of an astounding 81 percent of the DWSD workforce portends a similar nightmare for residents of the six-county DWSD service area.

VOD contacted EMA Vice-President Hurding at his office in Toronto for comments on this story, but to date he has not returned the call.

You Tube video below of similar Union Station flood in 2009.

Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant on W. Jefferson.

Former Head Engineer Weighs in on DWSD Restructuring Plan

Friday, August 17, 2012 

From: DWSD Update – Digesting the Detroit Water Department

Posted by Peter J. Cavanaugh

Published by Cavanaugh & Quesada, PLC

As he did following Judge Cox’s rulings last November (here), Former Head Water Systems Engineer, Dennis L. Green, P.E., recently weighed in on DWSD’s plans to dramatically downsize its staff size. Mr. Green, who retired from DWSD in 2009, wrote a Letter to the Editor published by the Detroit Free Press (here) on August 16, 2012:

During my 41 years with Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Engineering, I had some contact with EMA consultants. While one of the better consultants technically speaking, I question the choice of an organization having limited experience and ties to the area for planning the future of the DWSD.

Like most consultants I dealt with during my tenure, they are salesmen first, businessmen seeking profits second, and engineers last. Nearly all consultants I dealt with stick to the conventional wisdom, because it avoids the risk of error from their limited and superficial knowledge of the client.

Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson’s Aug. 9 tirade (“Intolerable waste in the Water Dept.”) says he has taken their report as gospel. Atlanta tried massive outsourcing of its water operations, and it led to a collapse of service, requiring a costly reconstruction of its department. Are we about to repeat the proverbial unlearned lesson of history?

The proposed solutions I’m hearing are platitudinous clichés once you get past correcting the obvious outrageous practices. Outsourcing is just another way, and an inefficient way, of turning DWSD into a for-profit operation by divvying it out piecemeal on short-term leases as service contracts, yet we are told to believe that adding profit mark-ups and the administrative costs of bidding and administering outsourcing contracts reduce the total cost.

The staggering overhead of contracting is invisible if city workers are not unshackled from the city’s own stupid rules and allowed to compete. For example, my unionized staff saved DWSD more than a million dollars over the consultant’s proposal for designing the wholesale water metering system contract, even doing it on overtime at time-and-a-half so as not to interfere with our regular duties, but I’ll bet my pension that is not in EMA’s report, because they probably told the client what they thought it wanted to hear. The anti-union rhetoric declared the verdict before the trial.

Dennis L. Green, P.E.

For more about DWSD Update, click here

Click on http://www.freep.com/article/20111108/OPINION04/111080324/Letters-real-problem-Detroit-s-Water-Department for earlier letter from Dennis L. Green, P.E.

For power point presentation on EMA report, click on Crains EMA report (earlier versions published by Detroit Free Press and News were seriously flawed.)

Video shows Milton Hall taking several steps back before cops opened fire.
“It appeared to be a firing squad dressed in police uniforms.”–Mother

Death follows police taser killing of another Saginaw man

(VOD–where was the coverage in Detroit’s daily media? There was extensive coverage nationally as can be seen from links at end of story.)

August 18, 2012

Milton Hall

Saginaw, Michigan (CNN) — Three days before Independence Day, Milton Hall died in a fusillade of police gunfire outside a strip mall.

He had been arguing with officers in a parking lot next to a shuttered Chinese restaurant when he was shot, in full view of passing motorists and while he was holding some sort of knife. Saginaw County Prosecutor Michael Thomas said later that the squad of police confronting him opened fire “because apparently, at this point in time, he was threatening to assault police.”

Thomas’ office and the Michigan State Police are investigating Hall’s death. Saginaw Police Chief Gerald Cliff said Hall was “known to be an assaultive person” with “a long history” of contacts with law enforcement, “not only with police from our department but with the county.”

Milton Hall’s high school classmate Doloris Mixon at prayer vigil.

Hall’s cousin, Mike Washington, acknowledged Hall had been jailed for minor offenses like vagrancy in the past, but, “He was not violent.” And Hall’s mother is growing impatient with the probe and questions why police opened fire so furiously on her son, whom she said was mentally ill.

The chart blog: Mental health

“It appeared to be a firing squad dressed in police uniforms,” Jewel Hall told CNN from her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico. “There was another way. They did not have to kill him. He had not done anything. He was not violent. He was not a murderer. He was not a criminal.”

Jewel Hall said her son had once trained as a civil rights activist, been an avid reader and played football. He had lived in Saginaw for 35 years and received Social Security disability payments for a mental illness, but, “He knew his rights.” “Everybody knew him. The police knew him well,” she said. “So that’s another question: they knew him, so why? Why did they kill him?”

WJRT: Community questions police shooting

The July 1 shooting happened in a parking lot on West Genessee Avenue, a busy commercial strip on the north side of Saginaw.

Prayer vigil at site of Milton Hall’s execution by Saginaw police.

In a video purchased by CNN, shot by a motorist from across the street, the 49-year-old Hall is seen arguing with a half-dozen officers. For more than three minutes, he walks back and forth, and at one time appears to crouch in a “karate stance,” according to the man who captured the scene.

Police said Hall had just had a run-in with a convenience store clerk. On the video, he tells police, “My name is Milton Hall, I just called 911. My name is Milton, and I’m p—ed off.” When an officer tells him to put the knife down, he responds, “I ain’t putting s–t down.” He appears unimpressed by a police dog, telling officers, “Let him go. Let the motherf—ing dog go.”

Finally, he turns to the left of the frame, where another officer had moved out of view a short time earlier. It’s then that the police open fire with a reported 46 shots in a five-second hail of bullets.

“I’m stunned that six human beings would stand in front of one human being and fire 46 shots,” Jewel Hall said. “I just don’t understand that. It’s a lot of pain in that because it only takes one shot, so the question is why?”

She questioned why none of the cameras in the police cars at the scene recorded the shooting — “none of them work.” “So that’s the question I have and the community has is, what’s taking so long?” she said. “Why is not being transparent?”

Lou Palumbo, a former Long Island police officer, told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that the video is “a perceptive nightmare” for a police department and could reflect a lack of training by the officers. “This wasn’t a scenario where he was discharging a weapon in their direction,” he said.

Saginaw City Councilman Norman Braddock at town hall meeting.

But Palumbo added that the shooting may yet be determined to be justifiable. “One of the things the public has to understand, an individual wielding a knife at you at about 20 feet can be on top of you in a split second,” he said. “The public doesn’t know this because they don’t do this for a living.”

Neither state police nor the prosecutor’s office would comment on the investigation. In a written statement to CNN, the state police said, “Our focus is on conducting a complete and thorough investigation, rather than a hasty one.”

But Saginaw City Councilman Norman Braddock, who also has criticized the pace of the investigation, said the probe should be a “top priority.” When CNN showed Braddock the video, which he hadn’t seen before, he said, “This is disturbing.”

“I can see what people are traumatized at, looking at something like that,” Braddock said. “We need answers.”

Jewel Hall said her family is conducting its own investigation into the shooting, “and at the end of that investigation we will decide what next steps to take with our legal advisors.”

Sign News One’s  petition “Police Brutality in Black America: A Special and Urgent Concern,” at Change.org.

Updates below: Federal investigation launched, community protests

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2012/08/justice_department_civil_right.html

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2012/08/community_continues_to_ask_for.html

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2012/08/things_could_get_out_of_hand_w.html

http://www.abc12.com/story/19205660/protest-regarding-shooting-of-milton-hall-takes-place-in-saginaw

http://newsone.com/2031568/milton-hall-shooting-saginaw/

http://newsone.com/2024867/police-brutality-against-blacks-eric-guster/

Funeral program: http://paradisefuneralchapel.com/node/760

Former African National Congress youth leader Julius Malema addresses miners Saturday at the Lonmin mine in South Africa, where 34 miners were killed this week. He said police had no right to shoot them. / Themba Hadebe/Associated Press

 By Michelle Faul
Associated Press

August 19, 2012

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Miners and their families welcomed expelled politician Julius Malema on Saturday as he told the thousands who gathered at the site where 34 miners were killed last week that South African police had no right to fire the live bullets that killed them.

Malema, the former youth leader of the governing African National Congress, arrived as family members continued to hunt for loved ones missing since Thursday’s shootings. Women said they did not know whether their husbands and sons were among the dead, or among the 78 wounded or about 256 arrested by police on charges from public violence to murder.

“They had no right to shoot,” Malema said, even if the miners had opened fire first.

Malema is the first politician to address the miners at the site during a more than weeklong saga in which 10 people were killed before Thursday’s shootings — including two police officers butchered to death and two mine security guards whom strikers burned alive in their vehicle. He said he had come because the government had turned its back on the strikers.

South African President Jacob Zuma

Strikers complained earlier that President Jacob Zuma had not come to hear their side of the story when he flew to the Marikana platinum mine on Friday, cutting short his part in a summit in neighboring Mozambique so that he could visit wounded miners in the hospital.

Zuma said he was organizing a commission of inquiry to get to the truth about the shootings.

Malema, who was expelled in April after accusations that he sowed divisions in Zuma’s African National Congress party, charged that some top-ranking ANC members had shares in the Lonmin platinum mine and implied that they had no interest in seeing miners earn higher wages. About 3,000 drilling operators at the mine, 40 miles northwest of Johannesburg, have been demanding an increase from the minimum wage of $690 a month to $1,560.

Malema called for Zuma and his police minister to resign or back the striking miners’ wage demands — a call that brought cheers from the rally.

“President Zuma presided over the massacre of our people,” Malema said.

When Malema arrived, the women ululated their welcome, and men who had been sitting stood and clapped. There were more cheers when Malema persuaded police at the scene to withdraw several hundred meters with their armored cars.

South Africans are in shock over the killings. The police said they acted to save their lives after a group of miners armed mainly with machetes and clubs charged at them, and at least one miner shot at them.

Police responded with automatic gunfire and pistols.

Video replayed by TV stations reminded South Africans of apartheid-era scenes of white police officers opening fire on black protesters. This time, the police were black, but the scene has South Africans debating the failure of the ANC to deliver on basic promises to provide better lives with homes, jobs, health and education.

The Lonmin miners live in corrugated iron shacks without running water or electricity. Some ask why their government, running Africa’s richest nation, has not been able to improve their lot nearly 20 years after the ouster of apartheid.

The ANC’s youth wing, which Malema once led, argues that nationalization of the nation’s mines and farms is the only way to redress the evils of the apartheid past. Zuma’s government has downplayed those demands.

In video above, the CEO of Anglo-American Platinum (Amplats), which owns the  Marikana platinum mine, strongly opposes South Africa’s declared intention of nationalizing the mining industry, despite the utter squalor in which miners have been forced to live for decades.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/08/19/decades-of-squalor-on-a-south-african-mine

Industry leaders have been fighting militant unionists’ demands for better wages and working conditions for months, as indicated in article below.

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-23-amplats-loss-making-shafts-labour-militancy

According to the company’s website, “Anglo American Platinum Limited is the world’s leading primary producer of platinum group metals (PGMs) and accounts for about 40% of the world’s newly mined platinum. The Company is listed on the JSE Limited and has its headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa.”

http://www.angloplatinum.com/default.asp

The miners’ deaths, which Amplats is blaming on “inter-union” violence, actually result from Amplats’ greed for profits. While complaining of falling profits in the platinum industry, it is buying out the Oppenheimer family’s shares in the De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer.

http://uk.fashionmag.com/news-212716-Anglo-American-to-buy-Oppenheimers-out-of-De-Beers

Claressa Shields Gold Medalist Winner In Boxing at The 2012 London World Olympics

A No Struggle, No Development Production!
By Kenny Snodgrass, Activist, Photographer, Videographer
Author of 1} From Victimization To Empowerment… www.trafford.com/07-0913 eBook available at www.ebookstore.sony.com
2} The World As I’ve Seen It! My Greatest Experience! {Photo Book}

YouTube: I have over 300 Video’s, over 101,100 hits averaging 3,000 a month on my YouTube channel @ www.YouTube.com/KennySnod

FREE DETROIT! NO CONSENT!

 A No Struggle, No Development Production! By KennySnod * * *

Standing Up For Democracy! Stand Up For Democracy has designated Aug. 15, 2012 Democracy Day in Michigan! We oppose emergency managers because they rob us of our right to elect our own local representatives and deny democratic self -rule at the local level. We are asking our State Legislators to remember that they were elected by the same people who will vote in this referendum on Nov. 6th and demand that you abide by their decision. – –

A No Struggle, No Development Production! By Kenny Snodgrass
Activist, Photographer, Videographer
Author of 1} From Victimization To Empowerment… www.trafford.com/07-0913  eBook available at www.ebookstore.sony.com
2} The World As I’ve Seen It! My Greatest Experience! {Photo Book}
YouTube: I have over 300 Video’s, over 101,100 hits averaging 3,000 a month on my YouTube channel @ www.YouTube.com/KennySnod

Posted by: Jack Gerson

August 16, 2012

Joyce Parker, emergency manger for Ecorse and Highland Park Public Schools, stands in front of Ecorse City Hall on July 20, 2012. Parker was appointed in November 2009 by then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Ecorse’s $14.6 million deficit was eliminated during Parker’s tenure via across-the-board cuts, grant funding and the sale of special bonds. She now is part time in Ecorse until the state decides the emergency over. Photo by E.L. Conley

Two weeks ago, Highland Park Michigan announced that it is outsourcing its three schools to a for-profit charter school company, Leona LLC. The decision to privatize was made after a state takeover of the schools: in May, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager for the school district, Joyce Parker, and it was Parker who made the decision to privatize Highland Park’s schools.

“This could be the new model for public education,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a national research and advocacy group that supports school choice. “It stands to be a lab of innovation where people can see that thinking outside the box is not so scary.”

This all sounded eerily familiar. Then I remembered: Philadelphia, 2002. Management of 38 schools was outsourced, including 20 to for-profit charter school company EdisonLearning. This was done shortly after the state of Pennsylvania took over the Philadelphia school system. The outsourcing back then was going to be an experiment “to see if the free market could educate children more efficiently than government.”

School workers, parents and students led massive protests against cuts in education funding across Pennsylvania this year.

The results of that experiment were clear: the outsourcing flopped (as reported in a 2007 Rand Corporation study) and Philadelphia had to undo the privatization. (Outsourcing schools to for-profit education management firms was also tried and failed in Britain in the past decade – for example, in the London borough of Islington [population about 250,000], whose school system was turned over to Cambridge Education Ltd.)

Well, maybe charter school corporations fare better in Michigan than in Pennsylvania? Actually, no. A study published last March by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education found that in Michigan, charter schools spend an average per pupil of $774 more on administration and $1140 less on instruction than public schools.

Also last March, Bridge Magazine published the results of a study by Public Sector Consultants which showed that in Michigan, public school students outscored charter school students on statewide reading, writing, and math tests. These results are consistent with numerous studies, which show on average test scores of students at charter schools are no better, and more often than not worse, than those of students at public schools.

So:
• Charter schools in Michigan spend more money on administration and less on instruction than public schools. Their scores on standardized tests are lower – and standardized tests are the benchmark that the corporate privatizers themselves have held up as the measure of success.
• Outsourcing public schools to private management failed its “laboratory experiment” in Philadelphia.

Detroit school workers rally in 2002, during the early stages of the decimation of the DPS district under state control.

So why does the Center for Education Reform’s Jeanne Allen hail outsourcing school management as “the new model for public education”? Why do she and other privatizers insist on the need to treat students like lab rats in yet another “laboratory experiment” doomed to failure? Why are Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, Oakland and other large urban districts following New Orleans down the path of school closures and charter school proliferation, when charter schools are outperformed by public schools?

Because their goal isn’t educating. It’s fully disenfranchising the public from any control of education. It’s imposing a system that rewards march-in-line obedience and penalizes inquiry and creativity, one that marginalizes and criminalizes students from low-income families, especially students of color. It’s wringing profits out of tests, test prep, textbooks, software, cyber learning, tutoring, schools, school management, after school programs.

That’s privatization. Commodifying or re-commodifying everything. Air. Water. Social Security. Medicare. Public education. Taking back from the public what has been public for generations. If we let them.

Related documents and stories:

RAND study Philadelphia charter schools

http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2012/03/in_michigan_charters_results_n.html

http://bridgemi.com/2012/03/charter-schools-different-road-but-still-bumpy/

Cortez Davis

State AG Schuette, Wayne Co. Prosecutor Worthy try to block Cortez Davis re-sentencing

By Diane Bukowski 

August 16, 2012 

DETROIT – Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and State Attorney General Bill Schuette are attempting to block one of the state’s first juvenile lifer re-sentencings, that of Cortez Davis, since the June 25 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama. That ruling outlawed mandatory juvenile life without parole. The two have additionally asked the Michigan Supreme Court to weigh in on Miller as a whole.

Michigan has at least 360 juvenile lifers, the second highest number in the nation.

A network established by prisoner advocacy agencies has recruited over 150 attorneys to represent all of them,  pro bono if need be, in re-sentencing hearings. The attorneys took special training in the issues involved on July 27 and are targeting a core group for immediate re-sentencing hearings, those who have served the longest terms, and who were not the “principal actors” in the crimes involved.

Ironically, Davis, 16 when he was convicted of felony murder during a robbery, could be considered a poster child for nearly every aspect of the Miller decision.

Davis was not the shooter, faced “horrific” circumstances in his early life, and has thoroughly rehabilitated and educated himself while in prison, even getting married, according to a motion for relief from judgment filed by his attorney Clinton Hubbell, of the law firm Hubbell Duvall, PLLC.

“There are two issues, whether Miller is retroactive, and whether re-sentencing is appropriate,” Hubbell told VOD. “They [Worthy and Schuette] are hoping to narrow down what Michigan trial courts can do under Miller.” 

But, said Hubbell, “I don’t see them with a lot of legal traction. Our position is that Miller is pretty obviously retroactive. It was not decided in a vacuum, but as a culmination of other Supreme Court decisions outlawing the death penalty and life without parole for juveniles in non-homicide cases. There has to be a re-sentencing. Miller says the sentencing judge has to take into consideration a list of things, essentially that the defendant’s whole life must be put in front of the judge before sentencing.”

A hearing in front of Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Vera Massey Jones was scheduled for September 14, 2012 on Davis’ motion for relief from judgment. But Worthy and Schuette intervened, asking the Michigan Supreme Court to rule that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is not retroactive for juveniles in Michigan and that Davis should not be re-sentenced.

The Michigan Supreme Court has not yet granted leave to appeal in the case, despite numerous filings by Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Timothy Baughman.  Baughman earlier got the Court to ban judges from trying to remedy racially-imbalanced juries.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy (l) testifies at earlier Senate subcommittee hearing.

Schuette’s release says in part, “Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy noted that the Supreme Court decision ‘affects more Wayne County families of murder victims than anywhere else in the State. I urge a prompt determination of the reach of the Miller decision by the Michigan Supreme Court. This will help avoid further trauma to those who lost their loved ones, some many years ago, and rightfully thought that the criminal justice system had provided them some degree of closure.’”

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette

Schuette called all juvenile lifers “teen-age murderers” in the release. However, according to a study by the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), most juvenile lifers were not the actual killers, as in Davis’ case.

“We are not victimizing the community or anyone else with these re-sentencings,” Hubbell said. “The individuals in question did not actually commit the offense for which they were sentenced, first-degree murder, and they had diminished culpability as juveniles.”

Attorney Clinton Hubbell represents Cortez Davis.

Davis’ sentencing judge first refused to give him life without parole, but the prosecution successfully appealed.

During Davis’ re-sentencing in Detroit’s now defunct Recorders Court, the judge said, “I think he’s salvageable . . . . I believe somebody’s been throwing this young man away from the day he was born. . . . And maybe when the [legislature], because they’re beginning to take a look at it, that they may change it. Though it will be years from now, but they may change it. . . .They’re going to find out how unjust it is to do this. So don’t give up hope. You may not be in there for the rest of your life.”

Legislative efforts during the administration of Gov. Jennifer Granholm, however, went nowhere. Worthy and other county prosecutors testified strenuously in front of a Senate sub-committee against “second-chance”  bills that would have made juvenile lifers eligible for parole.

Families and other supporters of juvenile lifers lobbied state legislators in Lansing May 6, 2009.

Davis’ motion for relief from judgment describes the “horrific” circumstances of his life before he went to prison.

“Davis’ mother was 16 years old at the time he was born, and she already had his two-year-old sister,” the motion says. “Mr. Davis’ father passed away in 1986 when Mr. Davis was nine years old, from drug use, at which time his mother turned to drug dealing and use. She began to neglect Mr. Davis and his siblings by failing to keep food in the house.”

Child Protective Services removed the children from the home twice, sending them to live with their grandmother. That placement failed when Davis’ sister was molested by an uncle.

The motion goes on, “Davis dropped out of school in 1993, in the 8^thgrade to support himself and his siblings. At one point, Davis was homeless. Davis’ maternal grandmother stated that Davis’ mother introduced Davis to selling drugs from their home.”

Cortez Davis completed numerous courses with the Blackstone Institute to obtain a certificate in paralegal studies.

An earlier Supreme Court decision, Graham v. Florida, held that “juveniles are more capable of change than are adults, and their actions are less likely to be evidence of ‘irretrievably depraved character’ than are adults.”

Davis has thoroughly rehabilitated himself since his incarceration, says the motion.

In addition to obtaining his G.E.D., Davis has taken 52 classes, including construction trades, and numerous courses from the Blackstone Career Institute involving the study of law. He qualified for a “Paralegal Certificate” in August, 2010.

He completed basic and advanced training in American Sign Language. He has also served as “Warden’s Forum Representative” and has applied to serve as a “youth mentor” in the Thumb Correctional Facility where he is incarcerated.

The extent of Davis’ current skills can be seen in a motion he filed pro se in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Michigan. (Click on Cortex Davis fed – COA Pro Se Mtn for Reconsideration July 21, 2009.)

He cited numerous legal precedents and the 1980 Michigan Supreme Court decision in People V. Aaron, which outlawed the use of “felony murder” charges.

Gracie Hines, the mother of juvenile lifer Bobby Hines, speaks at earlier press conference in Lansing. Hines is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed by attorney Deborah LaBelle in U.S. District Court.

“Movant was not afforded his due process constitutional protection as a juvenile where he was arrested without a warrant and held in police detective custody unlawfully for four days without the assistance or benefit of counsel,” Davis wrote, using the third person. “He was not given fair notice of the charges against him where he was compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case, that’s contrary to the U.S. Constitution V, VI, and XIV, Lucas v. O’Dea 179 F.3rd 412 (6th Cir. 1999).”

His motion contended that he did not receive “effective assistance of counsel” because neither of his attorneys filed pre-trial motions to challenge the legality of his arrest, involuntary statement and juvenile waiver. Many of the nation’s juvenile lifers have faced similar problems with court-appointed attorneys, since most are poor and could not afford their own attorneys.

“Life without parole is the most severe penalty permitted by Michigan law and shares some characteristics with death sentences that are shared by no other sentences,” says the motion filed by Hubbell. “Since Michigan currently does not execute convicted felons, it is the most severe penalty available. While the state does not execute the offenders, life without parole alters the offender’s life by a forfeiture that is irrevocable. . . The sentence means denial of hope, that good behavior and character improvement are immaterial, and whatever the future might hold in store for the mind and spirit of the offender, he will stay in prison for the rest of his days.”

To print or save this story, click on Michigan Challenges U.S. Supreme Court on JLWOP VOD

Related stories and documents:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/07/02/us-supreme-courts-juvenile-lifer-decision-brings-hope-to-thousands/

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/19215742/pa-high-court-fast-tracks-juvenile-lifer-appeals

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/mother_of_juvenile_lifer_pasto.html

Miller v Alalbama decision

Cortez Davis Successive Motion for Post Judgment Relief-signed

Schuette Worthy re Miller case

Second Chances Juveniles serving life without parole in Michigan prisons

The Rest of Their Lives Updated- Life without Parole for Youth Offenders in the United States 2008 Update

Attorney Clinton Hubbell contact: clint@hubbellduvall.com

Attorney Deborah LaBelle’s office is coordinating the defender network for juvenile lifers. Phone: (734) 996-5620 Fax: (734) 769-2196 e-Mail: deblabelle@aol.com

Greg Murray

By Greg Murray

August 17, 2012

(This is the first of a series of columns on the Assessor’s Office.) 

The City of Detroit is at it again. One step forward, two steps back.

Everyone knows the City of Detroit needs every penny it can get.  What some do not know is that there are divisions within Detroit’s departments that are charged with generating revenue.  One would think that those departments and divisions would be given priority when it comes to providing them resources need to keep the money flowing.  But one would be mistaken.

The city of Detroit’s Assessors office is out of paper.  Completely out of paper.  They need paper to make the city’s cheddar, so to speak.  The division cannot function without paper. You might think it is a small thing, but what business can function without paper?

This office within the City of Detroit’s Finance department is tasked with generating and defending millions of dollars in property tax assessments.  Yet, the workers in this office cannot get printer paper for its office because the vendor has not been paid and will not allow new orders.  That stops the business of the office dead in in its tracks.  A scramble is on right now to get some paper into the office at some point next week. Re-read that last sentence. 

Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh (l) and Mayor Dave Bing (r).

How does this happen when Bing’s administration just rammed two personal service contracts down City Council’s throat for the division’s two management-level assessors who retired after 20 years with the city on July 20, 2012?  These two, who will now be paid a total of more than $250,000, ran the office that cannot now get a basic office resource such as paper. Who would not find this situation unconscionable and why should not those two persons be held accountable?

Starving a department of the resources necessary to conduct business is an age-old management strategy to negatively affect the performance of the department and thus justify contracting out the functions to other parties “to improve operational efficiency.”  Where have we heard this before (Detroit’s  Workforce Development Department, Department of Health and Wellness Promotion, and the Detroit Human Services Department)?

Assessor’s Division is in charge of property taxes which provide revenue to the city.

Sounds like a tactic right out of Bain Capital’s alleged playbook.

Bing’s administration has been in office long enough to ensure payment to vendors for services to key department and divisions.  The assessor’s office is such a division.  The assessor’s office determines the property tax for homes and businesses and answers taxpayer appeals of those assessments to the Michigan Tax Tribunal, which affects revenues the city should receive for property tax assessments. The revenue this department brings in helps prop up Detroit’s annual budget, and any slowdown in its operations can actually worsen the overall deficit.

In the corporate world, someone’s head would roll. Someone in management should be fired or, at the very least, disciplined.  The two high level assessors who ran the office for years and who just retired just to get cushy personal service contracts in the same division should be held accountable for what appears to be a history of their department’s bill’s not being paid.  Just where does the buck stop?

Posted: 06/25/2012 7:30 pm Updated: 06/26/2012 2:08 am

Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh has made headlines of late after releasing a workout video chronicling his battle to lose weight and develop six-pack abs – all while the city is on the brink of financial collapse.

Charles Pugh in abs video

The City of Detroit has entered into a controversial consent agreement with the State of Michigan to avoid bankruptcy because of structural long-term debts estimated at $12 billion. Detroit’s 2012-13 budget under Mayor Dave Bing slashed $250 million in spending, including eliminating 2,500 city jobs. In a city where fires break out on a daily basis, almost one in five sworn firefighters will be laid off by late July.

But Pugh, a rumored candidate in Detroit’s upcoming mayoral election, is dealing with a possible PR nightmare after publicly fighting with a journalism intern who questioned his leadership abilities on Twitter — even going so far as to threaten the young man’s unpaid job.

It all began two days ago, when, according to auto blog Jalopnik, Automotive News intern Josh Sidorowicz tagged @Charles_Pugh in a critical Tweet that referenced a recent column by the Detroit News’ Laura Berman.

Though Berman praised Pugh’s devotion to healthy living and exercise, which helped him lose 60 pounds since 2011, she signed off with a rebuke: “If only he would channel that same missionary spirit to saving the city he’s been elected to help lead.”

Tweeted Sidorowicz: “Wow, love this little piece. Too bad @Charles_Pugh has been such a disappointment for the city of Detroit so far.”

Pugh responded with a barrage of Tweets arguing with Sidorowicz, who questioned whether Pugh’s “celebrity status and personal agenda” were overshadowing the needs of a cash-strapped city.

Pugh bristled with new skinny guy, ripped abs-having confidence, pummeling the hapless intern like an unfortunate water boy bullied into the ring so the champ can enjoy a human punching bag for a change.

“@Charles_Pugh: @Automotive_News I’d appreciate a word to your intern Josh Sidorowicz about his offensive posts to my page. It doesn’t represent you well”

According to Sidorowicz’s Twitter account, he’s a senior at Michigan State University who sent over 2,600 Tweets, though his bio notes, “Views reflected on this account are my own and do not reflect those of my employer or other affiliates.” Continue reading →