Lawsuit says one former Warren cop targeted another
Attorneys for village, another cop counter accuser’s claims
A former top official in the Warren police department accuses a former Romeo police officer of issuing him traffic tickets to get revenge for a beef he had from their previous association.
Matt Nichols, who was fired as deputy police commissioner in Warren in 2018, says in a lawsuit filed in February he was illicitly ticketed by former Warren and then-Romeo police officer Robert Priest in Romeo in February 2023 as part of an effort to “get even” for Nichols previously denying him a promotion to lieutenant. He also accuses the village of Romeo, the police chief and
another police officer of contributing to the scenario by hiring and going along with Priest’s vengeful acts.
Priest was fired last December due to violation of department policy, according
to the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, a court document says.
The citations, issued to Nichols at the end of the street where he lived, were dismissed. But Nichols said the incident has spawned fear and anxiety and distrust for the Romeo Police Department for he and his wife, Celeste, and two children. They had moved into Romeo only a couple of weeks before the incident after they were married.
The months following the incident “took me for a roller coaster ride with sleepless nights, disrupted days of work, anxiety, fear, embarrassment, paranoia, sadness, helplessness, homelessness, humiliation, depression, outrage, lack of security, despair, and feeling like a prisoner in my own home,” Nichols says in a written statement included in the complaint.
“We are anxious and fearful pulling out of our driveway because of the way the chief of police has handled the situation with his egregious indifference and gross negligence. We simply can