Hearing on Evidence that Bouchard & Bullard Misappropriated Oakland County Funds

Pontiac, Michigan – As part of a case to set aside a foreclosure, a Pontiac church submitted evidence to Oakland County Circuit Judge Daniel Patrick O’Brien that Sheriff Mike Bouchard and former Oakland County Board of Commissioners Chairperson Bill Bullard Jr. signed a controversial contract without the approval of the Board of Commissioners. As a result, since April 2009, more than $2.8 million in Oakland County taxpayer funds have been going to American Process Service Inc., without lawful authorization. Bill Bullard Jr. is now the Oakland County Clerk and Register of Deeds.

The news about Bouchard and Bullard’s misappropriation of taxpayer funds was first reported on WCHB talk radio journalist Mildred Gaddis’ Morning Show on January 26, 2012. See the write-up of Attorney Arthur C. Kirkland’s interview on the Mildred Gaddis show at http://wchbnewsdetroit.com/detroit/mildredgaddis/public-corruption-in-the-oakland-county-sheriff%E2%80%99s-office-exposed-by-foreclosure-case/

On February 15, 2012 at 8:30 a.m. EST, Judge Daniel Patrick O’Brien will be ruling on the evidence that Sheriff Mike Bouchard and others violated laws that prohibit conflicts of interest, contract bid rigging, pay-to-pay/kickbacks, perjury, misconduct in office, and now, misappropriation of taxpayer funds. This evidence was filed on January 25-27, 2012 in New Jerusalem Deliverance Church v. Evangelical Christian Credit Union, case number 11-119411-CH. The public is invited to attend the hearing that will be held at the Oakland County Circuit Courthouse, 1200 North Telegraph, in Pontiac, Michigan.

Copies of the documents supporting New Jerusalem’s allegations of public corruption are published on http://www.docstoc.com. For more information, please contact Anita Belle, legal assistant to New Jerusalem’s attorney Arthur C. Kirkland Jr., at 313-740-4644.

Corruption in Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Exposed by Church Foreclosure Case

Pontiac, Michigan – Although bad things can happen to good people, Melanie Rutherford is outraged about how corruption in the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office that has impacted Bishop Robert E. Joyce’s church.

“Our church is not just another church in the black community. Life Worship and Training Center is the cornerstone of the community!” she explains.

Melanie then recounts how Bishop Joyce, who is also the senior chaplain for the Detroit Pistons, led marches that closed 27 crack houses in the community. Rutherford asks, “Would the pastor of any other church take his life into his own hands like that? How dangerous would Pontiac if Bishop Joyce’s church is foreclosed out of this building?”

However, while fighting the foreclosure of his church, Bishop Joyce is again rooting out crime in his community by asking Oakland County Circuit Judge Daniel Patrick O’Brien to set aside the sheriff sale because of corruption in the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

In Oakland County Circuit Court case number 11-119411-CH, New Jerusalem Deliverance Church challenges that the sheriff foreclosure deed signed by Oakland County special deputy Thomas Rabette is invalid. New Jerusalem alleges that:

· On 12/29/2008, Bouchard appointed Thomas Rabette as a marine special deputy.

· On 1/6/2009, Thomas Rabette, who is an attorney, transmitted the Articles of Incorporation for American Process Service Inc. to the State of Michigan Corporations’ division.

· On 1/26/2009, the Michigan Inter-Governmental Trade Network (MITN) published bidding on the civil process service contract for the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

· The newly-incorporated American Process Service Inc. is awarded the civil process service contract on 4/1/2009. The contract is worth at least $800,000 a year.

· On 4/1/2009, the same day that Bouchard appointed Rabette as a reserve special deputy employed by the Sheriff’s Office, Bouchard also appointed Rabette a civil process service special deputy employed by American Process Service. This violated MCL 15.321et seq., particularly MCL 15.327 that makes it a misdemeanor to violate the public servant conflict of interest statutes. New Jerusalem alleges that if it is a misdemeanor for the public servant to have a conflict of interest, then Bouchard’s appointment of Rabette is invalid and the sheriff deed signed by Rabette is also invalid.

· In 2010, American Process Service filed its annual report with the State of Michigan, listing Thomas Rabette, Roger St. Jean, and John Roehrig as the corporate officers. (In addition to Rabette, there is a pattern of conflict-of-interest corruption because Roger St. Jean, Mike Bouchard’s longtime close friend and personal driver, is another American Process Service corporate officer who is also employed with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.)

· In 2009 and 2010, all of American Process Service’s corporate officers, and their wives, made the maximum allowable contributions to Bouchard’s campaign for governor.

· On 2/1/2011, as part of a federal motion, Rabette committed perjury by stating he was never employed at the same time by both the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office and American Process Service Inc. This affidavit is contradicted by Bouchard’s documented appointments and Rabette’s oaths of office.

Evidence of the above allegations was filed in the New Jerusalem case on 12/27/2011. New Jerusalem will be defending these allegations at a hearing at 8:30 a.m. on January 18, 2012 before Oakland County Circuit Judge Daniel Patrick O’Brien.

New Jerusalem believes that all citizens of Oakland County, including those going through foreclosure, deserve honest government. The sheriff, who is the chief law enforcement officer of the county, cannot be above the law.

The New Jerusalem foreclosure case should not be over-simplified as another deadbeat debtor using or abusing legal loopholes to avoid eviction. The plight of New Jerusalem’s foreclosure is bigger than another class struggle between the haves and the have-nots. To dismiss, wink at, or tolerate deputies’ crimes against the “little guys” in foreclosure gives license for the same deputies to serve and protect themselves rather than the taxpayers who pay their salaries.

For more information, please contact Anita Belle, legal assistant to New Jerusalem’s attorney Arthur Kirkland, at 313-740-4644 or ackirkland.law@gmail.com.

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Eviction By Any Means Necessary, Including By Invalid Sheriff Deeds

We tell children all the time that one person can make a difference, both for good and for bad.

A person who could be making the difference for bad is Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard. He wanted to be Governor of Michigan. Nothing illegal about that. However, another thing we tell children is that the end doesn’t always justify the means, especially if the means by which you raise campaign finances is through kickbacks from pay-to-play schemes.

The case of New Jerusalem Deliverance Church was published recently. (See link: http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=7043)

Robert Joyce, Bishop of New Jerusalem Deliverance Church, the 'private attorney general'

An example of one woman making a difference for good is Diane Bukowski. The Voice of Detroit is an independent newspaper that is truly “unbossed and unbought”. In this newspaper, Diane Bukowski published the exclusive scoop that gives hope to everyone who has gone through foreclosure in Oakland County since 2009. She told property owners that the sheriff deed in their foreclosure might be invalid, if the auctioneer who conducted the sheriff sale had a conflict of interest. The New Jerusalem case highlights the potential conflict of interest of Attorney Thomas Rabette.

If the RICO allegations in New Jerusalem’s proposed amended complaint are true, then two people can make a difference, those two people being Thomas Rabette and Sheriff Mike Bouchard. If Rabette was employed with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office when Sheriff Bouchard steered a no-bid contract to a company that Rabette represented as an attorney, and Rabette worked for that company while he was still working for the Sheriff’s Office, then Rabette had a conflict of interest. Michigan law makes it a crime for anyone, including sheriff’s, to have a conflict of interest, so if it was unlawful for Bouchard to authorize Rabette to sign sheriff deeds, then the sheriff deeds Rabette signed are invalid. But the plot thickens: What if Rabette, the company’s other officers, and their wives then all made the statutory maximum political campaign contributions to Bouchard’s bid to become Michigan’s Governor in 2010? Was the contract steering a pay-to-play scheme?

According to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Annual Report for 2010, (see link: http://www.oakgov.com/sheriff/assets/docs/OCSO_annualreport2010.pdf there were 8818 foreclosures in 2009 and 9727 in 2010. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, of the more than 18,000 foreclosures in Oakland County in 2009-2010, Thomas Rabette was the auctioneer for only 10%, or 1800 sheriff sales. According to City-Data, the median value of homes and condos in Oakland County was $186,800. (See link: http://www.city-data.com/county/Oakland_County-MI.html) If Thomas Rabette unlawfully signed the sheriff deeds for 1800 Oakland County properties valued at an average of $186,800 each, then he alone has caused more than $336 million in sheriff deeds to have clouded title. Because federal RICO laws permit civil litigants to sue for triple damages, then the economic impact of Bouchard and Rabette’s alleged pay-to-play scheme potentially exposes Oakland County to more than a billion dollars in liability! If Rabette signed more than 10% of the Oakland County sheriff deeds executed since 2009, then the economic impact of his alleged corruption increases exponentially.

Given Michigan’s fragile economy, the media outlets who are bossed and bought would not want to publicize that millions, if not billions, of dollars in Oakland County titles to banks are clouded due to Bouchard’s corruption. Only Voice of Detroit wants to tell property owners that their rights are being violated!

This is the problem. A big problem! What is the solution? It’s easy to do as federal Judge Robert Cleland seems to have done, to simply turn a blind eye to Sheriff Bouchard’s corruption, and allow people who can’t afford their mortgage to be evicted by any means necessary, including by means of invalid sheriff deeds. The end doesn’t justify the means, particularly if the means require us to compromise our standards of government integrity. You’d think the banks, just as much, (if not more than foreclosed homeowners), would want to put a stop to Bouchard if he is guilty of what New Jerusalem accuses him of. Then, the banks’ sheriff deeds wouldn’t have clouded title. Honest government isn’t a privilege. It’s everyone’s right!

Ultimately, turning a blind eye to corruption costs everyone so much more than $336 million. Even people who don’t live in Oakland County suffer if that county is bankrupted and blighted by unpunished, corrupt politicians. We all pay the price of evil triumphing because good people do nothing. It would be wise of Oakland County to investigate Bouchard and Rabette.

Ignoring a Corrupt Conflict of Interest

My family is still in our house, thanks to Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans’ failing to sign the special deputy appointment of Sterling Harrison. Actually, my gratitude should go to Judge Robert Ziolkowski for doing the right thing and obeying the law. Other judges turn a blind eye to the law.

Let’s take federal judge Robert Cleland for example. Oh, you thought I was going to mention Detroit’s 36th District Court Judge E. Lynise Bryant-Weekes again? Well, maybe I will: Just because litigants aren’t supposed to have ex-parte communication with the judges doesn’t mean that judges can’t talk to each other. I have no proof, but I imagine that when Judge Ziolkowski, while sitting as an appellate judge over Bryant-Weekes, he remanded our case back to Bryant-Weekes, but she played dumb, asking for clarification of his remand. I imagine his clarification was a phone call giving her a choice to either set aside her order of possession or he will do it by reversing her. Judges have egos. They don’t like to be reversed, so Judge Bryant-Weekes finally set aside the possession judgment to the bank. Now, all I need is three or more Judge Zs over Robert Cleland.

What is Judge Cleland doing now? He is ignoring a corrupt conflict of interest in the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. The Wayne County sheriff deeds were invalid because Sheriff Warren Evans improperly delegated the task of appointing special deputies to his undersheriff. The Michigan statutes don’t grant the sheriff that kind of authority. Maybe Cleland is covering up for fellow Republicans, or fellow freemasons. Whatever the reason for Cleland’s bias, it does not change the fact that Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, a proud Arab American, is proving that corrupt politicians are not segregated south of 8 Mile Road.

Unlike Warren Evans, Mike Bouchard signs his own special deputy appointments, but Bouchard outsourced the task of sheriff sales to a private corporation. Because Judge Cleland denied the black Plaintiffs all discovery, as if participating in a conspiracy to cover up Bouchard’s corruption, it is unknown whether the government contract to the private corporation, American Process Service, Inc., was awarded on an exclusive, no-bid basis. That alone would violate plenty of laws and Constitutional provisions regarding equal opportunity. However, credible evidence shows the following:

1. At least as early as 2008, Bouchard appointed Attorney Thomas Rabette to work for him at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, because in 2008, Bouchard gave Rabette a commendation as “Reserve Deputy of the Year”.

2. In January 2009, Attorney Rabette filed the American Process Service incorporation papers for John Roehrig, the former Lake Angelus Police Chief.

3. In April 2009, American Process Service, a home business headquartered in Roehrig’s house, was awarded the multi-million dollar civil process contract with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

4. While Rabette was still working at the Sheriff’s Office, Bouchard appointed Rabette to be a special deputy employed with American Process Service Inc.

This appointment violates Michigan’s conflict of interest laws. Because the appointment violates state law, it should be invalid. If Rabette’s appointment is invalid, then the sheriff deeds executed by Rabette should be invalid. This might make sense to a judge like Robert Ziolkowski, but Judge Cleland seems to need clarification.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, in the 2010 Annual Report filed with the State, Rabette lists himself as secretary and registered agent of the corporation, Roehrig is President, and Roger St. Jean is Treasurer. All three are on the corporation’s board of directors. And all three, Rabette, Roehrig, and Roger St. Jean, (another Sheriff Office and American Process Service dual employee) contributed the maximum to Bouchard’s failed gubernatorial campaign. Rabette and St. Jean’s wives contributed the maximum, also.

Not too shabby, Sheriff Bouchard! That’s one way to finance political campaigns and lots of TV commercials! But didn’t former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick get charged with RICO on evidence like this? Didn’t Kilpatrick’s RICO charge spark the present (as if it ever-ended) city-suburb water war? I’m not afraid to play the race card: In one federal courtroom, black politicians are criminally indicted, but in the same courthouse, Judge Cleland lets white politicians violate state and federal laws with impunity, particularly if the ones complaining about being hurt by government corruption are black property owners. Or maybe this isn’t about black and white. Maybe it’s about Democrats versus Republicans. Or mason versus non-mason.

I wonder if the Oakland County Commission knows about Rabette and St. Jean’s conflict of interest? Or the Michigan Bar? Or the Justice Dept.? Or voters and taxpayers? Shouldn’t Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson know about and correct the corruption in his own glass house before he starts throwing stones at Detroit? If Kilpatrick’s corruption affects water, shouldn’t we care just as much if Bouchard’s corruption affects the land?