Disturbing Details Emerge on Why City Administrator Put AAPD Chief on Two-Week Leave

by P.D. Lesko

Correction: Derek Delacourt, Ann Arbor’s Community Services Area Administrator, responded to say he has no involvement with or jurisdiction over the Ann Arbor Unit of Community Standards.

On Friday February 21, 2020 Ann Arbor’s Chief of Police Michael Cox and his lawyer (Washtenaw Circuit Court judicial candidate) Nick Roumel met in a closed session with Ann Arbor City Council to read a report prepared by a Miller Canfield lawyer hired by the City to investigate why Police Chief Cox had been placed on a two-week paid leave on February 7. The Miller Canfield investigation revealed that the city’s administrator placed Ann Arbor’s Chief of Police on a two-week paid leave over parking tickets. Not Cox’s own parking tickets, but rather because of alleged comments about, and the Chief’s alleged reaction to, an investigation into a scheme to fix parking tickets by employees within the Ann Arbor Unit of Community Standards. One Community Standards employee, a supervisor who is not named in the investigative report, was discovered fixing tickets for his girlfriend.

The Community Standards Unit enforces “parking violations as listed under Chapter 126 of the city code,” according to the AAPD website.

During the February 21 closed session of City Council, a majority of Council members voted to waive attorney-client privilege so that the Chief and his lawyer could read the Miller Canfield report. The report is now public. Chief Cox and his attorney will have an opportunity to reply to the Miller Canfield report. This response, too, will be a record available to the public. Both documents are expected to be released to the public within days, including to the Police Oversight Commission.

The Miller Canfield report suggests that the City Administrator got into a turf war with the Chief of Police over the fall-out and, perhaps, the Chief’s desire to make public, the ticket-fixing scheme. Howard Lazarus asserted citizen control over the AAPD.

When Ann Arbor Chief of Police Michael Cox was placed on a two week paid leave by City Administrator Howard Lazarus on Feb. 7., Lazarus informed just two members of City Council. He then repeatedly refused to provide Council members with written evidence or a detailed explanation concerning why the Chief had been placed on leave. On February 12, MLive.com reported that, “Lazarus…said definitively, however, that Cox is not under investigation for sexual misconduct.”

A report by the AAPD Internal Investigations officer did not include information about how long the ticket-fixing scheme had gone on, document how many tickets had been fixed, or whether a complaint against the employees involved was filed with the County Prosecutor’s Office. The Ann Arbor Independent has filed a series of FOIAs to obtain records related to these questions, including records from the AAPD concerning the parking ticket fixing, and records from the County Prosecutor’s Office.

The investigation and report into the sidelining of the city’s Chief of Police reveal that, based on little more than hearsay, Howard Lazarus placed the Chief of Police on a two-week paid leave. The Chief was given no written reason for the leave, and according to those present, forced to leave City Hall immediately, and not permitted to retrieve his house keys.

The city’s Charter requires the City Administrator to file an explanation with the City Clerk within 24 hours of an employee being placed on leave. A Freedom of Information Act request submitted on February 14, 2020 by Ward 2 resident Kai Petainen for the explanation was denied on February 24. Petainen was shaking and teary in public comments at the February 18 Council meeting as he sharply criticized Lazarus’s dismissal. Petainen Tweeted on February 23: “I will give one complaint regarding Lazarus but still not worthy of a firing. I filed a FOIA for an explanation he was supposed to give City Clerk about Chief Cox. FOIA came back as records didn’t exist. Charter states the record should exist.”

Lazarus subsequently accused the Chief of Police of simultaneously trying to intimidate his command staff, and having tried to show leniency to a Community Standards employee (an elderly woman).

In 30 years of policing, including work in an anti-gang violence unit and in an officer training unit, Boston Police Department Deputy Superintendent Michael Cox’s record is impeccable.

In 2017, when Lazarus applied to be the City Administrator in Austin, TX, the non-partisan non-profit Texas Campaign for the Environment published an open letter to Austin City Council. In its letter, the organization’s Legislative Director alleges Lazarus had violated Austin’s Anti-Lobbying Ordinance while employed as the Director of Public Works in 2009. The letter states, “Rather than pursuing an open process before City commissions and Council, Lazarus attempted to use the procurement process to spring policy decisions on elected officials.”

The City Administrator placed Chief Cox on leave, in part, because Cox allegedly intimidated his command staff. However, the report references no written complaints of intimidation against Cox signed by AAPD command staff. Rather, the report includes multiple snippets of reported speech repeated to Lazarus, and reported by Lazarus and others after the fact.

On February 18, 2020, City Council voted 7-4 to execute a separation agreement with the City Administrator which included an almost $300,000 payment made to Lazarus. It was a payment consistent with the terms of the employment contract approved by Mayor Taylor and the then Council members in 2016 (Lumm, Grand, Ackerman, Eaton, and Smith). As is common in separation agreements, no cause was outlined, and both parties agreed to mutual non-disparagement clauses.

The members of Council who voted to dismiss Lazarus were harshly criticized by candidates running for City Council, as well as Mayor Taylor, the two Ward 3 Council members and Ward 5 Council member Chip Smith (D). Despite being aware of the causes why the Administrator was being dismissed, Julie Grand (D-Ward 3), Taylor, Zachary Ackerman (D-Ward 3) and Smith issued deceptive statements published by MLive which alleged the firing was “political” and done “without cause.”

Council members Grand, Ackerman and Smith called the “firing” of Howard Lazarus “unjust” in a joint signed statement they released on February 19. Grand, Ackerman and Smith, who approved the Administrator’s contract and its golden parachute in 2016, said in their February 19 statement, “using your money to pay him to leave is offensive to our most fundamental values.” The previous three City Administrators’ contracts have contained similar golden parachutes, and each of the contracts were approved by Chris Taylor.

The members of the Council Administration Committee, which the Mayor chairs, were aware of the causes behind the decision to part ways with Lazarus. Council member Julie Grand (D-Ward 3) sits on the Administration Committee. Likewise, the City Administrator sits on the Administration Committee and was aware that a resolution to part ways with him would be introduced at the February 18, 2020 Council meeting.

Lazarus chose to have his separation agreement voted on publicly.

After the Administrator’s dismissal, two City Council candidates posted to social media almost immediately, mimicking the misleading, politicized assertions made by Taylor, Grand, Ackerman and Smith in their MLive statements in which they claimed to “blow the whistle” on their colleagues who voted in favor of parting ways Lazarus “without cause.”

Ward 4 City Council candidate Jen Eyer works for a Lansing PR firm and formerly for MLive. The day after the Council meeting at which Lazarus was dismissed, Eyer posted a comment on social media that suggested the dismissal of the Administrator was unethical. Her factually inaccurate and inflammatory comments were made well before the Miller Canfield and AAPD investigations were completed.

Eyer was even more histrionic on her campaign Facebook page, leveling accusations of corruption. She writes, “and when they couldn’t find a legal cause to fire him….” and “they did the unthinkable and fired him without cause.” Eyer repeatedly misconstrues the legal definition of a separation agreement that does not stipulate cause:

Ward 5 Council candidate Erica Briggs sits on the Planning Commission and directs a small non-profit that advocates against highway road signs. Briggs likewise, posted to social media, calling the vote to dismiss the City Administrator, “unacceptable.” She did so before the city’s investigations were completed and days before the reports were presented to City Council. Briggs Tweeted:

Taylor and Grand are supporting both Eyer and Briggs in their runs for local office. Kathy Griswold (D-Ward 2) responded succinctly to the social media posts of the two candidates for Council: “They’re not sophisticated enough to sit on Council.”

Had the ticket-fixing scandal and the quiet dismissal of the employees involved been made public, that scandal involving Lazarus’s administration of city government would have come ten months after the scandal involving the sudden resignation of Robyn Wilkerson, the former Director of Human Resources in June 2019; it would have come four months after Lazarus’s impolitic comments about Council members made in a job application for a position in Florida. Those comments were made public in October 2019. Among the comments, Lazarus described his position in city government as “vulnerable.”

Because of the lack of written, signed complaints from the Chief’s command staff, and lack of first person accounts in Lazarus’s complaint against Chief Cox, one city employee with knowledge of the situation alleged that the charges against Cox had been “invented.”

In an email to Mayor Taylor and City Attorney Stephen Postema, one Council member alerted the two men to the possibility that the City could face a civil rights lawsuit because, the Council member said, this is not the first time the City Administrator has allegedly “invented” and lodged a complaint of intimidation.

There is a pattern, said the Council member in the email to the Mayor and City Attorney.

In 2019, the City Administrator lodged a complaint in which he accused a City Council member of attempting to intimidate a city staff member. In his complaint, which he presented to the Council member in writing, Lazarus allegedly inaccurately summarized and reported the contents of a passing conversation between the Council member and the staff member. Lazarus’s complaint was refuted by the staff member, the Council member accused, as well as a second Council member who had been present during the entire initial conversation.

Ann Arbor might also face a civil rights suit thanks, in part, to the “whistle-blowing” public statements in support of Lazarus sent to MLive on February 19, 2020 by Council members Taylor, Grand, Ackerman and Smith. The four released their statements prior to Council’s receipt of the investigative reports.

In his February 19, 2020 public statement Taylor writes, “Mr. Lazarus has done nothing wrong. This is a political termination that is bad for Ann Arbor.” Taylor also alleges that Lazarus’s “downfall” was because he would not “[accede] to backroom demands.” In 2009, Taylor (then a new Council member) was party to an Open Meetings Act violation lawsuit filed against City Council members. City Attorney Postema was forced to settle the suit. Council members’ emails revealed they had been vote-rigging and deliberating via secret emails to each other during open meetings.

In response to Taylor’s comments, Kathy Griswold (D-Ward 2) was quoted as saying, “It’s childish for the mayor’s allies to suggest council is showing inept leadership. And I believe that if we had a stronger leader in our mayor, that we would have been able to overcome this.”

Multiple members of the community, including members of the Police Oversight Commission and the president of the Ann Arbor Police Officers Association, Eric Ronewicz, filed Freedom of Information Act requests related to the Chief’s suspension. Ronewicz filed his FOIA on Feb. 10, 2020 and city officials stonewalled him. City Clerk Jackie Beaudry extended her office’s response to the FOIA until March 3, 2020. FOIAs, by Michigan law, must be responded to within 15 business days from the date of filing.

One other issue has been repeatedly touched upon by members of the public on social media: that Michael Cox wasn’t the City Administrator’s preferred candidate for the job of Chief of Police. Ann Arbor Police Department Deputy Chief Jason Forsberg applied for the job of Chief of Police. Prior to being recruited and hired into the AAPD in 2018, Forsberg worked as deputy chief at the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus. He served with the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor Department of Public Safety and Security for 20 years. Community members who have participated in the hiring process for the Chief of Police position allege that Forsberg was Lazarus’s choice for the job, but that City Council members chose to hire Cox, who came from the much more diverse Boston Police Department with an impeccable record and 30 years of policing experience.

It has also been suggested by city staff who asked not to be named because they did not have permission to speak about the incident, that the affair surrounding the Chief of Police’s two-week leave spiraled out of control, because Lazarus had failed to replace Robyn Wilkerson, the former head of Human Resources. Wilkerson resigned due to a text message scandal in June 2019.

In May 2019, a batch of racist, sexist and violent text messages sent by Wilkerson to another city employee was made public by the Ann Arbor Independent. Shortly afterwards, Lazarus claimed he knew nothing about the hostile work environment and extreme dysfunction in Wilkerson’s department. However, it was subsequently reported by The Michigan Daily that “Lazarus knew about the inappropriate text messages…and that the employee who gave her [Council member Jane Lumm] the text messages tried to approach Lazarus first.”

In May 2019 Jane Lumm (I-Ward 2) said, “Obviously, how well HR functions or may not function, HR permeates the organization.” This observation would prove prescient months later, in February 2020, when Chief Cox was placed on leave without warning, without being told why and without any explanation to City Council, the body that the Charter mandates must vote to hire and fire the Chief of Police.

Since 2012, the AAPD has had four police chiefs (Barnett Jones, John Seto, James Baird, Michael Cox).

After Jones left the AAPD, The Detroit Free Press caught him working two full-time jobs 90 miles from each other (Chief of Police in Flint, and Administer of Safety for the Detroit Water and Sewerage department). Jones is presently running for Oakland County Sheriff. During the tenure of AAPD inside hire John Seto, black Ann Arbor mother of three Aura Rosser was tasered and shot in her home. In addition, patrol officer Jason Kitts was allowed quietly to resign after soliciting multiple women for sex in exchange for waiving traffic tickets. James Baird, another inside hire, was hired in 2016 (after serving as interim chief). He left in 2018. Baird, like Mayor Taylor, was vocal in his opposition of the formation of a police oversight commission. Baird left shortly after the citizen oversight panel was formed.