Donna Marie Pitts has multiple felonies (YouTube photo)
Here's a pretty embarrassing tidbit: half of Detroit's eight mayoral candidates have been convicted of felonies involving drugs, assault or weapons, The Detroit News reports.
Three were charged with gun crimes and two for assault with intent to commit murder, report Christine Ferretti,Mike Martindale and Robert Snell. Some of the offenses date back decades, the earliest to 1977. The most recent was in 2008.
“Black marks on your record show you have lived a little and have overcome some challenges,” says Greg Bowens, a former press secretary to Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer and NAACP activist. “They (candidates) deserve the opportunity to be heard, but they also deserve to have the kind of scrutiny that comes along with trying to get an important elected position.”
In the end, the two candidates who don't have felony convictions, Mayor Mike Duggan and state Sen. Coleman A. Young II, are the likely to be the only two standing after next Tuesday's primary. The two top vote-getters run in the November general election.
Two other hopefuls, Edward Dean and Angelo Brown, also have no criminal record.
An analysis of candidate records finds:
- Donna Marie Pitts, 58, has multiple felony convictions dating back to 1977. She was convicted of receiving a stolen vehicle; two counts of assault with intent to murder and two firearm offenses in connection with two separate incidents; and in another incident, she was convicted of having an operator’s license and disobeying a police signal.
- Danetta L. Simpson has a 1996 felony conviction out of Oakland County for assault with intent to murder.
- Articia Bomer was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon. She claims the gun wasn't hers.
- Curtis Christopher Greene was charged in 2004 with fourth-degree fleeing and eluding police during an attempted traffic stop in Harrison Township as well as delivering and manufacturing marijuana. He got 18 months probation. Later, he was charged with violating parole after passing a bad check and spent six months in jail.
Read more details about the crimes and the candidates' responses here.
