Top Brass At Detroit PD Looking Like A Jerry Springer Show

Detroit's Police Chief was recently fired by the Mayor, allegedly for trying to have a lead role in his own reality TV show and for having a romantic relationship with one of his subordinates, a police lieutenant.

His replacement, the interim chief who has been on the force for quite some time, apparently had or is having or a romantic relationship with the same police lieutenant.

The Detroit news: Cop-shop love triangle: Texts stir up juicy Detroit scandal

She is known around Detroit Police headquarters as the "Teflon Lieutenant."

She reportedly had romantic relationships with the current and former police chiefs and was given a special parking space usually reserved for a high-ranking official, among other perks.

She was put in charge of the department's efforts to comply with the federal consent decree, a position some claim she used to get back at former supervisors who had disciplined her in the past. One officer who filed a lawsuit against her last week called her "tyrannical."

Lt. Monique Patterson was a controversial figure in the department long before the latest firestorm surrounding romantic text messages Interim Police Chief Ralph Godbee sent while they were reportedly involved in a relationship last year.

Godbee issued a statement Tuesday apologizing to his family for the controversy.

Patterson is dating former Police Chief Warren Evans, whose attorney used the text messages after he was fired last month as leverage to get Evans' job back or land another position in Mayor Dave Bing's administration. Evans' relationship with Patterson was among the reasons Bing cited for his ouster.

Nice to see professionalism at work.

Patterson's attorney, David Robinson, said the texts contained a lot of "I love yous and other overtures from Mr. Godbee."

Yet another reminder (as if everyone didn't figure this out from the Kwame Kilpatrick text scandal) that what happens in text doesn't stay in text.

"The overtures began from Mr. Godbee when he became assistant chief," Robinson said. "He was wooing her to perform on his staff, on the pretext that he was interested in her skill set as an officer. Once she began working in his office, he was obviously concerned with a different skill set."

She must have quite a skill set indeed to bag two command officers.

"Lt. Patterson was bringing down morale," said former Deputy Chief Katherine Tuttle, who retired last month in part, she said, because Patterson put "enormous pressure" on her.

While the Teflon Lieutenant doesn't seem well liked by subordinates or others under her control and that's not surprising as most people resent those who advance their career by uhm, the use of certain extra-curricular activities, she had quite an effect on keeping up the morale for the upper echelons.