“I just got off the phone with Jim Fett. He says all three officers’ lawsuits have been consolidated before Judge Avern Cohn in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Fett sounds pretty sure the county is going to fire all three of his clients any day now. That includes Hendricks, who has been on paid suspension since June 2006, and Hoy and Eberle, whose unpaid leaves were converted to paid leaves when they were acquitted of charges. Fett predicts the officers are going to be fired and then go through a union arbitration process to try to get their jobs back before going to trial, which could take a while. Even if they are reinstated with back pay, Fett says that’s not going to be sufficient; the officers are seeking damages for being “drug through the mud” for three years.”
– Ryan J. Stanton, AnnArbor.com Staff

One small quibble. In your “Background: the incident” section, the alleged fact that Bruce Lee “spit in an officer’s face through a window” was not captured on the released video. The video starts at the part where the officers are pulling Bruce Lee out of the patrol car, just after the alleged spitting. So perhaps the spitting allegation should be prefaced with the same disclaimer as the second paragraph, “According to reports of the incident…”.

But everything else looks great and us common people would have had to make an awful lot of FOIA requests to get all the info you just provided. Thanks, again.

(A thread on Arbor Update discussing this West Willow incident can be found here.

I am impressed with Sheriff Clayton’s efforts at outreach and the proposed training plans and citizens advisory council. I have talked with a couple of sheriff’s deputies recently, and they are also impressed with him.