John Conyers III is no stranger to police reports of his knife-wielding.
Sixteen years before the recent episode in which the elder son of former U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. reportedly injured his girl friend in a fight involving a knife, young John Conyers reportedly brandished a butcher knife at his mother.
The May 5, 2001 Detroit police account states that 10-year-old John Conyers III grabbed a knife after his mother, Monica Conyers, spanked him for not doing his homework.
Here, slightly eddied, is “Pistol packin’ Monica,” my April 12, 2008 blog post about that 2001 mother-son face-off:
According to the police report, titled “Family Trouble,” a city police cruiser was flagged down by a 10-year-old boy at 1:20 p.m. on May 5, 2001. The boy told the officer his “mother pulled a gun out and threatened to shoot him,” according to the report.
The boy was John Conyers III. His father is Congressman John Conyers Jr. The officer reported that the boy had run out of the Conyers’ home at 2727 Seven Mile Rd. in Detroit.
Ten minutes later, the cop found Monica. Mom told cops her son had pulled a butcher knife on her after she spanked him for not doing his homework. He didn’t threaten her, she said, but instead “jumped out of a bedroom window.”
The report doesn’t record Monica’s response to her son’s claim that she brandished a gun at him.
Mom “has been having problems with her son in the past,” the officer wrote.
The cop noted that the boy is Congressman Conyers’ child.
Conyers pere wasn’t home when this incident happened.
The boy was turned over to Monica’s sister.
Nobody was injured, the report said.
Soon after the incident, an aide to Congressman Conyers gave a copy of the police report to a reporter at the Detroit Free Press.
When I was investigating Conyers for the Detroit Free Press in the early 2000’s, I learned of the police report. It was found in another reporter’s file and passed to me.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
