This article was made possible by donations to the Ann Arbor Independent FOIA Fund. Click here to donate. Washtenaw County charged a fee to release the pubic records used in this article.

by P.D. Lesko

At an April 1, 2023 panel discussion about community violence intervention (CVI) sponsored by the Washtenaw County Democrats, Chair of the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners Justin Hodge implied he has been unfairly “criticized.” Hodge complained about County residents who have questioned and spoken out in public against the Board of Commissioners’ July 2022 vote to award $1.2 million in federal money to a group of felons who submitted a fraudulent grant application. The felons received $1.2 million in ARPA funding thanks to a unanimous vote of the County Commissioners seated in July 2022. According to Hodge, “no politician likes to see negative things written about them. It [the criticism] has gotten so bad, the Sheriff had to issue a press release.”

Hodge referred to county residents who have questioned and criticized the fraudulent $1.2 million grant to Supreme Felons, Inc. as uniformed “naysayers.” Other panel participants claimed critics don’t “understand the mission” of Supreme Felons, Inc.

Between 20-30 people showed up to the community violence intervention panel discussion moderated by Sheriff Jerry Clayton. There were around another 30 people who watched a livestream of the panel. Around one-third of the in-person attendees were elected officials, including Sheriff Clayton, County Commissioners Caroline Sanders and Annie Somerville, and Ypsilanti Community Schools Board of Education President Dr. Celeste Hawkins. A video of the panel discussion on YouTube had single-digit views as of April 3, 2023.

Sheriff Clayton began his panel discussion by distancing himself from Supreme Felons, Inc. He stated that Supreme Felons, Inc. does not work for the County Sheriff’s Dept. and has no contract with the Sheriff’s Dept. Emails and text messages shared with The Ann Arbor Independent revealed that two Sheriff’s Dept. employees controlled the set-up of Supreme Felons, Inc. and dictated the non-profit’s leadership structure. Billy Cole and his co-conspirators, registered sex offender Alan Fuqua, and bank robber Bryan Foley, were told not to speak to anyone about Supreme Felons, Inc. without first asking permission of the Sheriff’s Dept. employees in charge.

Local school district superintendents have gone on the record saying that Supreme Felons, Inc. is “not a part” of their districts, has no contracts with local school districts and the organization has never submitted any proposal to work with the school districts.

Nonetheless, the contract between the County and Supreme Felons, Inc. calls for felon-members of the group to work in Washtenaw County schools with children.

During the panel discussion, County Commission Chair Justin Hodge said that since Supreme Felons, Inc. had been in his neighborhood, there had been “no shootings.”

Public records show that on Hodge’s street, and within a six block radius of Justin Hodge’s home on Linden in Ypsilanti, over just the past five months 583 crimes have been reported, including 25 sex crimes, 34 burglaries (including on Hodge’s street), 187 assaults, including assault with intent to murder, domestic violence crimes, and robberies that involved guns and other weapons. The data map, below, shows crime reports from the County Sheriff and the Ypsilanti Police Dept. sent to Crimemapping.com. The red circle in the middle of the map, below, is where Hodge lives.

In comparison, on Brooklyn, the street where the Mayor of Ann Arbor lives and within a six block radius of Taylor’s home, over the same period of time Crimemapping.com shows 116 crimes reported.

Ken Magee is one of three candidates for Sheriff. Derrick Jackson is the Sheriff’s Dept. Dir. of Community Engagement and he has been endorsed by Clayton as the most qualified candidate to be the top cop in the County, despite a lack of policing experience. Magee has over 30 years of law enforcement experience, including executive leadership experience, and two decades of work as a federal agent who also investigated corrupt police officers. Alysha Dyer, the other candidate for Sheriff, has seven years of experience as a patrol officer.

Magee attended the April 1 panel discussion and said, “CVI has a place in our community. However, our County law enforcement officials—including Derrick Jackson—should not be skipping around arm-in-arm with a convicted murderer on parole. It is completely inappropriate for our top cop (Clayton) and Derrick Jackson to place on a pedestal a criminal who tied up and then executed a young man by shooting him in the head twice. The public cheerleading by the Sheriff’s Dept. for Supreme Felons is an insult to the victims of violent crime, an insult to their memories, and an insult to their families.”

Doug Winters is a Township attorney who knew Cole’s victim Mark Simpson. “Redemption for Billy Cole? Where’s Mark Simpson’s second chance? I don’t see any remorse here on Cole’s part.”

Panel participants included Cole, on parole from a life plus 60 years sentence for the execution-murder of Mark Simpson, a young EMU grad working a night shift at a convenience store on Washtenaw Ave. While in prison, records show Cole was also charged with felonious assault and sentenced for that, as well. At the panel discussion, Cole told participants how long he had spent in prison. He did not say why he had been sentenced to life plus 60 years, or that he had been convicted of felonious assault while in prison.

One Ypsilanti Democrat who watched the video of the Sheriff’s panel described it as “an April Fools Day joke on the community. Eli, Jerry, Derrick, they’re all gaslighting voters for their own political benefit. Let me tell you: Eli and Derrick are discrediting themselves.”

Hodge used the panel discussion as an opportunity to ask those present to attend meetings of the County Commissioners in order to “speak in favor” of “funding the work” of Supreme Felons, Inc. (video clip below).

An attendee who was present at the event described Hodge’s “blatant begging for political cover and support,” as “sad.” The attendee added, “Come and speak in favor of Supreme Felons, Inc? Is he kidding? He should be encouraging people to come to the Commissioners’ meetings to ask questions about this raging dumpster fire, including when and how the Commissioners like him are going to put it out. I’m a Democrat. I don’t support corruption, fraud, or politicians who vote and shill for it.”

A former elected official says Supreme Felons, Inc. is a front group. “We have had a Black Sheriff since 2006 and he can’t get gun crime under control? This is organized crime. The Sheriff’s Community Engagement? There is no substance. This Supreme Felons is all a platform to campaign for Derrick. These guys [Clayton, Jackson and Cole] are trying to build up their own little Washtenaw County brand to get Derrick Jackson elected.”

Shannon McFall is a long-time vlogger who focuses on politics in the Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Twp. areas. He watched the April 1 panel discussion and came away with more questions than answers. “Where’s the meat to go with the ‘sauce?'” McFall added,” Once SF solves all crime…then what? There has to be more. Lowering recidivism only works with resources, and without resources, repetition will beat recidivism every time. The Sheriff and Supreme Felons, Inc. are playing on the ‘fearstrings’ of the community, if you will.”

By “sauce,” McFall referred to Supreme Felons, Inc. president Billy Cole’s panel discussion description of the work done by Supreme Felons, Inc. as “Daddy” and “sauce.”

Eric Sturgis is a former Democratic Ann Arbor City Council candidate in Ward 1. He is a tennis coach at an Ann Arbor high school, and has coached tennis on the collegiate level. When he learned of the April 1, 2023 panel discussion featuring a murderer on parole, Sturgis emailed the Chair of the Washtenaw County Dems Theresa Reid. Sturgis pointed out that the County Dems appeared to be focusing support on criminals instead of the victims of violent crimes and their families.

Reid replied: “To your specific points about Billy Cole, all involved agree that he would have been a valuable member of the discussion, but in the last several days he and others decided that it was not wise for him to be on the panel with Bryan Foley since, as you have pointed out, they both have felony records. Of course the WCDP does not condone violence. The entire point of this program is to discuss how best to prevent violence and rehabilitate those who have engaged in it or who seem to be on the path to do so.”

Despite County Dem Chair Theresa Reid’s assertion to Sturgis, Cole appeared as a member on the panel discussion, seated near County Prosecutor Eli Savit.

According to the April 1 panel participants (among whom were two representatives of Supreme Felons, Inc., County Sheriff Jerry Clayton, the Sheriff’s Dir. of Community Engagement Derrick Jackson and Justin Hodge), County residents shouldn’t believe the “misinformation” about Supreme Felons, Inc. they hear in the community and read in The Detroit News and The Ann Arbor Independent. Hodge said residents with questions could contact their County Commissioners, or look on the County’s website for information.

At a Mar. 2023 meeting of the Southwest Washtenaw Council of Government, County Commissioner Shannon Beeman, who has been on the Board of Commissioners since 2018, was questioned about the $1.2 million grant to Supreme Felons, Inc. In response, Beeman teared up and told officials from the five county townships present that the reporting about the fraud perpetrated by the County Commissioners and the president of Supreme Felons, Inc. had been written by a “hack.”

Among Beeman’s “issues” listed on her 2022 campaign website is “fiduciary responsibility.”

Manchester Twp. officials were unswayed by Beeman’s waterworks and Trumpesque attack on the media. “That grant is total bullshit, and the County Commissioners are out of control,” said one official.

Likewise, a Sharon Twp. official present at the meeting who heard Beeman’s comments said in an email, “I have concerns about this program [Supreme Felons, Inc.], along with other things the County Commissioners are doing.”

In Jan. 2023, County Administrator Greg Dill was quoted in The Detroit News as saying that he, Hodge, Beeman and all of the County Commissioners seated in July 2022, knew the Supreme Felons, Inc. grant application contained fabrications, but that Hodge, Beeman and their colleagues had awarded the federal funding despite knowing of the fraud. It was a shocking revelation that implicated the grant applicant (a felon on parole), Dill, seven current County Commissioners, a Michigan state senator and a Michigan state representative in a premeditated plan to defraud the federal government of ARPA funds.

With violent crime, murders and gun violence up significantly in Washtenaw County, at the panel discussion, without sharing any facts or crime data, multiple panel participants made the claim that “Supreme Felons saves lives.”

Commissioner Justin Hodge, an adjunct social work lecturer at U-M, and now State Senator Sue Shink, a lawyer, made the same unsupported claim in Oct. 2022. At that Oct. 2022 meeting of the County Board, Shink and Hodge defended the $1.2 million award of federal funds to a felon on parole and a registered sex offender whose grant proposal falsely claimed the group had worked in public schools and would “push into more county schools” to work with children and help administrators with “discipline.”

Shink’s vote in support of giving the felons $1.2 million in federal funding to work with children almost derailed her run for the Michigan Senate. After getting over 70 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary election, Shink was targeted by Michigan GOP mailers revealing her vote to fund the felons’ non-profit. Sue Shink captured just 55 percent of the vote in the general election and, at many points on election night, her Republican opponent was ahead as the votes were tallied. Shink won her race thanks to absentee votes, many of which had been cast before her vote in support of the fraudulent $1.2 million grant was made public.

At the April 1 panel discussion, County Prosecutor Eli Savit claimed that the work of Supreme Felons, Inc. was keeping “people out of our office.” Savit provided no data or statistics to back up this claim.

Savit has been the subject of intense criticism both locally and nationally for allowing criminals charged with allegedly committing crimes with guns to be released into the community prior to trial and sentencing. He has also been criticized for allegedly giving preferential treatment to two local college athletes arrested for weapons crimes. One of the athletes, Emoni Bates, was arrested and charged with felony gun crimes. Bates was found in possession of a gun whose serial number had been filed off, a federal crime. Savit dropped both felonies and didn’t pursue the federal charge. Within 30 days, Bates’s case was adjudicated.

Doug Winters called Sheriff Clayton’s CVI panel “pathetic.” He added, “The Sheriff, the Sheriff wannabe (Jackson), prosecuting attorney all paying homage to Supreme Felons and murder. Sickening.”