Secret footage of mayor aired at Detroit city hall
DETROIT — Local businessman Bob Carmack — the star witness in the federal government’s bribery case against Detroit Councilman Gabe Leland — went to extreme lengths Wednesday in an attempt to publicly shame another elected official: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
As part of an operation for which Carmack said he paid about $20,000, surveillance video of Duggan was broadcast on two giant video monitors affixed to the back of a truck parked outside city hall Wednesday evening during rush hour. The truck drove around the government office center, exposing the video to city employees and downtown visitors during the busy evening commute.
Onlookers stopped and stared at the video, which appeared to show Duggan’s movements away from the office. Duggan is seen in the video — of which the Detroit Free Press has obtained a version — driving a Ford Taurus and entering and exiting the car at various locations. In an interview outside City Hall on Wednesday night, Carmack explained that he had hired private investigators to follow Duggan and record him after hours.
The edited video displayed on the giant screens showed Duggan driving to what appeared to be a suburban location and pulling into a garage. On three occasions, according to the annotated production, the video shows a woman arriving at the same location between one and four hours earlier in the day.
Duggan arrives at the location without his personal protection unit in view, staying on three different occasions for between one and two hours, according to the video obtained by the Free Press. The 15minute video identifies a woman and implies Carmack’s allegations of an extramarital affair, although nothing in the video provides documentation of those allegations. The Free Press also has not independently verified the accusation.
In a statement Thursday, Duggan and his wife, Lori Maher, called Carmack an angry litigant and condemned Carmack’s intent to “create a negative judgment on the state of our marriage.”
“We decided to write this statement together because we are proud of the marriage we’ve built over 32 years, proud that our bond today remains strong, and proud of our goal to spend the rest of our lives together.”
The Free Press is not identifying the woman in the video. She did not return a phone call requesting comment, and was not available at her place of work Thursday. She is not a city employee, but has served on at least one mayoral advisory group after Duggan was elected to office.
City spokesman John Roach earlier refused to discuss any aspect of the incident, including whether a citizen conducting video surveillance of the mayor or broadcasting allegations of misconduct with a large mobile display was considered a potential security threat that the city was going to examine.
Carmack, who is embroiled in a handful of lawsuits involving the city, told the Free Press he hired a private eye to track the mayor this summer to see whether Duggan was living in the city and to see what the mayor was doing after hours.
Carmack explained that his goal in publicly broadcasting the video was to pressure Duggan to appear for a deposition in a lawsuit the city filed to evict Carmack from his collision shop in southwest Detroit.
Carmack offered an explanation for the video’s footage.
“This is a video showing Mike Duggan going out ... to meet a lady at night time when I put my private eyes following him on my federal lawsuit, to try to find out what kind of character he is,” Carmack said in an interview alongside the truck as it played the video on Larned Street near the employees’ entrance to the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
“I’m broadcasting it because this is where they can see what kind of character that this man has. They say he’s a clean-cut guy, that he’s honest and so forth. Here you see that he’s going to meet a lady at 10 o’clock at night, staying there one hour then leaving,” Carmack said.
Carmack has long held a grudge against Duggan. He blames the mayor for the demolition two years ago of a structure on a piece of property on Michigan Avenue that Carmack believes he owned. The city has disputed Carmack’s ownership, saying it bought the property in 2010 after the county foreclosed on it.
In a separate lawsuit against Carmack filed in June, the city called him a thief for fraudulently obtaining title to a piece of city property and selling it for $1 million. Carmack denies he acquired and sold the property improperly.