Former Dearborn Heights City Attorney Gary Miotke speaks during public comment time at the Aug. 10 City Council meeting to address what he believes is causing the retention problem in the city’s police department, which provoked a heated response from Mayor Bill Bazzi.
Bazzi threatens to report Miotke to the state bar
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
HEIGHTS – Former City Attorney Gary Miotke spoke about the Police Department’s officer retention problem during the Aug. 10 City Council meeting, which earned him an angry rebuttal from Mayor Bill Bazzi.
The mayor even threatened to report Miotke to the state bar association for allegedly revealing information he heard during confidential closed sessions, which Miotke strongly denied.
Miotke said he wished to address the current state of the Police Department and why it is in the unfortunate condition it is.
He said the problem is not associated with salary levels.
“My point in talking today is not to say that pay should not increase,” Miotke said. “Indeed, that might be the best thing to do, or a thing that needs to end up being done.”
He said his point of speaking at the meeting was to convey that the narrative about low pay is a false narrative.
Miotke said that for many years, the Police Department was considered a “destination department” and that while pay was not strong, it offered outstanding benefits, promotions all the way through to chief in keeping with Act 78, stability and a good place for police officers to spend their career.
“These things really provided employees with an incentive to stay and grow with the city, but it also underscores why the narrative is false, because our loss of officers is a retention problem,” he said. “It is not a recruitment problem.”
Miotke said police officers with eight to 15 years of time are giving up their seniority, security and established relationships to start over with a different police department.
Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi offers a rebuttal to former City Attorney Gary Miotke’s comments about the Police Department’s retention problem during the Aug. 10 City Council meeting.
“This is not something done by employees just to improve pay,” he said. “This is something done by employees who perceive themselves to be in an awful work environment, and before they do leave, they want to believe that they can improve things, but they don’t believe that because they have come to the conclusion that it is not going to get any better.”
Miotke said the Police Department is not functional for multiple reasons, such as no longer having a traffic bureau, having a skeletal detective bureau and no longer having a special operations department.
He said the city’s fire department has not had a mass exodus of employees.
“You can’t blame this on pay,” Miotke said. “I think what it really comes down to is this: The fault for the unfortunate state of our police department is on the mayor, the police chief and directors whose poor leadership has failed the city, its employees and residents alike.”
Bazzi responded, calling Miotke “disgruntled.”
“I understand why he’s pissed off, because he’s not working for the city,” Bazzi said. “There were a lot of issues that were present while he was here, and he was aware of it and he failed to mention it to the council and the council has been in meetings that we discussed in closed sessions about some of the issues that we had, and for somebody to inform the residents why some of these left, there are a lot of open investigations on some people that left already.”
Bazzi said he has a 21-page document from the Department of Justice which he said Miotke failed to mention to the residents, and that he and the police chief asked the Justice Department to come to Dearborn Heights to help the city transform its police department.
The mayor agreed that the Fire Department has great leadership, which he said the Police Department lacked.
“We do have a lot of issues over there,” he said. “We are trying to propel our city forward, trying to make the Police Department work like a police department.”
Bazzi said one of the reasons they brought in the Department of Justice was to improve the functionality of the city’s police department.
He said that Miotke, as a former city attorney, has had access to information in closed session meetings.
“I’ll tell you one thing – I am going to file a grievance with the state and let the state deal with this,” Bazzi said. “The information that he provided here was false and we have documentation that he was present when we mentioned some of the issues that we had.”
Bazzi said that when Miotke was still the city attorney, he told Miotke about a company that, since 2020, was “milking” the city for $7.9 million, which he said Miotke did not act upon.
“Seven point nine million dollars – you can FOIA this – this company was supposed to be doing stuff for the city and was not doing anything for the city,” Bazzi said. “The minute that this was brought up we brought this up and within a few months this company disappeared. They were based out of DPW.
“So, don’t come here, previous attorney, to come here and talk. You were privy to a lot of information and you did nothing about it.”
Bazzi said he would go to the state bar to file a grievance against Miotke.
Miotke then was given time to offer a brief rebuttal, and said he wanted to address Bazzi’s accusations.
“If the mayor wants to do stuff that waives privilege, I would be more than glad to speak about any number of issues – any number of issues – that reflect on his poor leadership with respect to all these things in the city,” he said. “I encourage you to end up asking them to do so, mayor – I’ll be ready for it.”