In an unusually personal commentary, veteran Detroit investigative reporter M.L. Elrick reacts to federal court testimony in recent days by Derrick Miller "against his former best friend and boss, Kwame Kilpatrick."
Elrick, a Pulitzer winner now at Fox 2 Detroit, steps out from journalism's just-the-facts boundary to share his feelings:
As someone who considered Miller a friend -- as much as a reporter and a city official can be friends -- it pains me to hear him admit to taking payoffs and getting a secret cut on city deals.
I hate thinking that greed could do this to a low-key family man who rose from being an East Side nobody to being one of the most important men in city government, pulling down a tasty $140,000 a year -- all before his 33rd birthday.
It scares me that someone who I believed was one of the good guys could fool me so badly and turn out to be so damn shady.
It makes me wonder: "Who can we really trust?"
Elrick quotes Miller as saying on the stand that his testimony for the prosecution is a way of "atoning for my mistakes, trying to put the past in the past, trying to move on with my life." The reporter comments:
I hope, for his sake, that's true.
