BOARD OF POLICE COMMISSIONERSMinutes of the Regular Board of Police Commissioners Meeting
Thursday, May 5, 2005
The regular meeting of the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners was held on Thursday, May 5, at 3:00 p.m., at Police Headquarters, 1300 Beaubien, Detroit, Michigan 48226.
ATTENDANCE
Board Members Present Department Personnel Present
Arthur Blackwell, II DC Ronald Haddad
Erminia Ramirez Comm. Marshall Lyons
Jim Holley Insp. Gail Wilson-Turner
Megan Norris Lt. Terry Herbert
Willie Hampton Lt. Donna Jarvis
Inv. Brian Fountain
PO Leslie Washington
PO Lisa Eldorado
PO Michael Woody
Atty. Nancy Ninowski
Board Staff Present
Dante’ L. Goss, Executive Director
E. Lynise Bryant-Weekes, Personnel Director
Denise R. Hooks, Attorney/Supervising Inv.
Arnold Sheard, Interim Chief Investigator
OTHERS PRESENT
Ron Scott
Ms. Walters
Rick Jones
David Grant, Detroit Free Press
Rev. David Murray and Family
RECORDERS
Jerome Adams
Kellie Williams
4. SECRETARY’S REPORT – EXEC. DIR. GOSS
SUSPENSIONOn May 5, 2005, Police Officer Hodari Lewis, Badge 3123, assigned to the Third Precinct, was suspended without pay by Chief of Police Ella M. Bully-Cummings.
On April 12, 2005, the Internal Affairs Section was notified of an allegation of misconduct on the part of Police Officer Hodari Lewis, Badge 3123, assigned to the Third Precinct. More specifically, the complaint alleged that Officer Lewis did engage in sexual contact with a female under the legal age of consent.
As a result, the Internal Affairs Section initiated an investigation, which revealed the following:
On April 12, 2005, at approximately 8:10 p.m., an officer from the Grosse Pointe Farms Police Department was dispatched to Waterloo and Lincoln, in the City of Grosse Pointe Farms, to investigate a complaint concerning a vehicle that was occupied by a couple and the female in the vehicle was
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observed undressing. Upon arrival, the officer observed a female in the passenger seat of the vehicle with her head in the driver's lap performing oral sex. The driver of the vehicle was subsequently identified as Detroit police officer Hodari Lewis. At that time, it was also ascertained that the female was fifteen (15) years of age.
Both Officer Lewis and the female were then taken to the Grosse Pointe Farms Police Department wherein the female indicated that she had met Officer Lewis at "the Mall" approximately one month ago and that they talked on the telephone several times thereafter. And, eventually, the female indicated that they agreed to meet on this date at the above-indicated location. The female also indicated that she told Officer Lewis that she was seventeen (17) years old.
On April 22, 2005, a felony warrant was issued against Officer Lewis charging him with Criminal Sexual Conduct - Third Degree (statutory rape) and Felony Firearm, contrary to MCL 750.520d and MCL 750.227b. Criminal Sexual Conduct - Third Degree (statutory rape) is a felony punishable by not more than fifteen (15) years in prison; and Felony Firearm is a felony punishable by two (2) years in prison.
Criminal Sexual Conduct - Third Degree is a statutory crime defined as unlawful sexual contact with a female under the statutory age of consent. In such cases, the prosecution is not required to prove that the sexual contact was without the consent of the female because she is conclusively presumed to be incapable of consent by reason of her age. Similarly, any misrepresentations made by the female regarding her age are immaterial to the prosecution.
On April 28, 2005, Officer Lewis appeared at the State of Michigan Thirty-Second District Court for arraignment. A plea of not guilty was entered on Officer Lewis' behalf to the aforementioned charges and a personal bond was set in the amount of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000.00). The Preliminary Examination is scheduled for May 12, 2005.
Based on the above circumstances, it is recommended that Officer Lewis be charged with, but not limited to the following violation of the Detroit Police Department Rules and Regulations:
CHARGE: CONDUCT UNPROFESSIONAL; CONTRARY TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT CODE OF ETHICS, THIS BEING IN VIOLATION OF THE DETROIT POLICE DEPARTMENT MANUAL, SERIES 100, DIRECTIVE 102.3-5.7, CONDUCT UNBECOMING AN OFFICER, COMMAND 3.
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Unless contravened by this Commission, the above suspension without pay will stand.
There were no contraventions the above suspension without pay.
Detroit Free PressApril 29, 2007
Hodari Lewis of Detroit was just 20 when he met a teenage girl at Eastland mall late in 2005.
The girl, 15 at the time, testified that she lied twice that day, insisting that she was 17 when the off-duty officer asked her age. When Lewis asked to see identification documenting her birth date, both parties acknowledge she said she’d lost it the previous week.
They agreed to a first date one week later. Lewis, again off-duty, picked the teenager up at a public library after school. Twenty minutes later, a Grosse Pointe Park police officer was startled to find the couple parked on a residential street and engaged in an act that does not typically take place there, at least in broad daylight.
In the awkward confrontation that ensued, the Grosse Pointe Park cop determined that the teenager was still several months shy of the age of consent and arrested Lewis on charges of criminal sexual conduct and carrying a firearm (his service revolver) during the commission of a felony. Soon after, a district court judge bound him over for trial before Judge Deborah Thomas.
The teenager’s admission that she had initiated the sexual act did little to mitigate Lewis’ plight, since she was incapable (as a matter of law) of consenting to any such act.
So Lewis’ lawyer took a different tack. An act of sexual assault may indeed have taken place, attorney Randall Upshaw conceded. But his client had been the victim, not the perpetrator.
Thomas was sympathetic. When prosecutors objected that Lewis had done nothing to resist his consort’s advances, the judge noted that Michigan courts had long held that a woman need not resist to be considered a victim of sexual assault — and that the same standard should be applied to Lewis.
Apples and oranges?
The court of appeals didn’t even address that argument in its unpublished opinion reinstating criminal charges against Lewis. The three-page ruling, which ignored almost all of the points Thomas raised in her order quashing Lewis’ arrest, can be paraphrased in a few words:
Come on. Give us a break.
By “knowingly allowing” the teen to proceed, the appellate panel said, he had engaged in a forbidden sex act.
Thomas, who recused herself from Lewis’ case after the appeals court reversed her, continues to regard the defendant as more sinned against than sinning. She rejects the state’s position that “it is perfectly permissible for complainant to lie, defraud and assault another person so long as she is under the age of 17.”
Prosecutors respond only that the law holds Lewis and the girl to different standards — and that jurors can decide, when the case goes to trial later this year, who victimized whom.
