A brewing feud between Detroit's police chief and the president of the city's firefighters union has now erupted into a criminal investigation.
DPD Chief James Craig says his department is looking into whether a Facebook post by Union President Mike Nevin criticizing police response times has violated law.
Nevin allegedly his Facebook page to voice his frustration after he says firefighters were left unprotected at a homicide scene the morning after Thanksgiving. The post, which supposedly showed parts of the police report with the unredacted name, address and phone number of a witness, is the focus of the investigation.
In the edited dispatch audio posted by Motor City 911, firefighters are heard responding to a murder scene at Epworth and Warren on the city's west side in the early morning hours of Nov. 23 – Black Friday.
According to reports, and confirmed by Police Chief James Craig, the firefighters union president, Mike Nevin, criticized the police response time saying in a Facebook post that it took 40 minutes for officers to arrive, leaving firefighters vulnerable. The post has since been removed, but it allegedly included a police report from the homicide with the name of a witness visible.
In a Thursday press conference, Craig said the initial caller on the shooting was indiscernible, so the call was classified "unknown trouble."
"Typically, an unknown trouble call is not treated as a priority 1 call, it’s just not," Craig said during the press conference. "It wasn't until fire arrived on the scene and determined there was a victim of a shooting."
From there, Craig says it took his officers six minutes. However, his department's public corruption unit is now investigating the release of the witnesses information in Nevin's social media post. Craig is defending the probe against accusations that it's an attempt to silence criticism.
"(The investigation) has everything to do with the release of information containing confidential or sensitive information relative to several witnesses to a homicide," he said.
Nevin and his attorney plan to respond to Craig's press conference on Friday.
