Peter Karmanos Jr. (file photo)
More than two years after ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison, Compuware co-founder Peter Karmanos Jr., a friend, political supporter and former employer of the ex-mayor, wonders what Kilpatrick really did wrong.
"By the way, we have a guy sitting in jail for how many years? Twenty-eight years, and exactly what did he do?" Karmanos asks during a 22- minute video interview with Chuck Bennett, founder of The Social D, and Karen Dumas, a public relations specialist who previously worked in the Bing and Kilpatrick administrations.
"Exactly, what did he do?" Karmanos asks. "Did they catch him taking money or anything else?"
Karmanos sat down with Bennett and Dumas in his Birmingham office of his new startup, MadDog Technology, and talked about a variety of subjects including politics, the redevelopment of Detroit, decriminalizing drugs and his shyness as a kid.
Peter Karmanos Jr.: "His own arrogance got him in trouble . . . that's the only thing that he did wrong."
As for Kilpatrick, Karmanos says:
"I worked with Kwame when he left office. By the way, we did more work with the city of Detroit than we were doing in Kwame's case. I know when I would drift out this way (suburbs), I'd have some people that would ask me some questions about Kwame that generally would almost start a fight. But as far as I was concerned, maybe his own arrogance got him in trouble, OK. But that's the only thing that he did wrong as far as I'm concerned."
Federal prosecutors, investigators and the jury that convicted him would obviously disagree. Kilpatrick was convicted of bribery, fixing city contracts and income tax evasion.
During the interview, Dumas mentioned that Karmonos invested in Detroit by building Compuware headquarters downtown when it wasn't so popular to invest in the city. She then asked Karmanos his thoughts about the redevelopment in the city.
"I believe that this was a progression that would have taken place anyway," he said. "We denied the kids in this area, two or three generations, of an urban experience either because they were too poor or because they had moved out to the suburbs."
Karmanos, who is a minority investor in Deadline Detroit, said he hopes the city, in its comeback, does not repeat the problems of the past, like having a "totally segregated city" or create friction between the police department and the citizenry. He says he wants the city to be safer than ever before, and he praised the Wayne State University Police Department for doing a great job addressing crime.
He says he wishes local politicians were more progressive "in what they're doing," and would like them to push harder to get hundreds of thousands of more people to live in Detroit. But he added: "I understand the problems associated with that."
He said drugs should be decriminalized. "All of them."
Noting that he had achieved quite a bit in his life, Karmanos was asked: "What's the one thing you're missing?"
"Hair," he responded.
See the full 22-minute interview at the video above.
