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Willie Burton and Renata Miller
In what’s likely to be a hotly contested Detroit City Council race in November, Chrysler retiree Renata Miller, 57, faces Detroit Police Commissioner Willie Burton, 46, in District 5, a seat currently held by mayoral candidate Mary Sheffield.
Detroit News reporters Louis Aguilar and Anne Snabes examine the two candidates troubles in the past.
In 2004, Miller was found guilty in Oakland County Circuit Court of domestic violence misdemeanor, The News reports. During a preliminary exam, a married man who was having an affair with Miller alleged that she assaulted him outside his Oak Park home in 2003, the day after he broke up with her.
She also allegedly smashed a car window with a tire iron and threatened him with it, the man testified. She was sentenced to probation. In 2001, she filed for Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy. In 2008, the owners of a Bloomfield Hills apartment filed a forcible entry and detainer action to regain the property from her.
She has also faced other property issues and spoke out against same-sex marriage on Facebook, dating back to 2014, The News reports, adding that those posts remain on her page.
Burton, meanwhile, was evicted from his Lafayette Towers apartment in 2019. He has served as the Detroit police commissioner for District 5 since 2014.
In 2019, he was removed from a police commission meeting in handcuffs for allegedly disrupting the session.
Burton told The News on Tuesday that he spoke out during the session against facial recognition technology that “was wrongly accusing innocent Detroiters,” and he was detained “for refusing to be silent.” He also said he felt “the weight of rising rents” and ultimately left Lafayette Towers in 2019 “when costs became unsustainable.”
Miller did not respond to The News for comment.
According to the City of Detroit, the 5th District stretches across both the historic west and east sides of Detroit. The district is home to the Renaissance Center, Eastern Market, the Fisher Building, Ford Field, the Packard Plant, Greektown, the Herman Kiefer Complex, Henry Ford Hospital, Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, General Motors, the DMC, the DIA, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the East Riverwalk, Pewabic Pottery, and the Dequindre Cut.
While all of District 5’s neighborhoods are dynamic in their own right, some of the most well-known include Midtown, downtown, Brush Park, Indian Village, Boston-Edison, West Village, New Center, the North End, and Arden Park.
