While an epidemic of drug-related crime plagues Detroit, allegations of misuse of a secret police fund used to fight the drug war are threatening to topple the city's long-respected police chief.
William Hart, a former vice cop who has a dozen meritorious service awards in 37 years on the force, has denied misusing the $1.4 million fund used to pay informants and finance undercover drug buys in the nation's seventh-largest city.However, records show that he signed checks totaling $72,000 to California-based companies that paid the rent on a Beverly Hills, Calif., home occupied by his daughter and son-in-law. A report in the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday said investigators found several checks written to cash and signed by Hart.
The FBI and a federal grand jury are investigating the fund and a former civilian deputy chief whose whereabouts is unknown. No one has been charged with a crime.
"I had no idea that money was used to pay for a house in California, Michigan or Ohio, or anywhere else on earth," the 65-year-old Hart has said. "With God as my witness, I swear I did not do that.
There have been many calls for Hart to resign or at least step aside during the probe. A recent poll of Free Press readers found 79 percent in favor of Hart resigning.
But Mayor Coleman Young, who is Hart's boss, said he is standing behind the chief. As he has often before, Young blamed the media for sensationalizing the story.
"The man has been tried and convicted without even a chance of acquittal," Young said Monday night at a news conference.
The City Council voted last week to subpoena 49 checks from the fund after the Police Department barred Auditor General Roger Short from seeing them. The department has until Dec. 19 to surrender the records.
Young has said he will not release the checks, signed by Hart, which total more than $1 million.