By Joel Thurtell
Monica Conyers says she wants more respect from her fellow Detroit City Council members.
They might be wise to give her a bit more deference.
Or maybe just a wide berth.
All depends on whether she’s packin’ a gat.
The big question for her colleagues on the council should be, If Monica Conyers says she’s gonna take a gun to you, does she mean it?
If my name were DeDan Milton or Valecia Moore, I wouldn’t be testing her. Both Detroiters say they’ve been threatened with shooting or killing by Conyers.
Three years ago, according to today’s (April 12, 2008) Detroit Free Press, Moore, a buddy of Conyers, asked for a court order protecting her from Conyers. Monica’s erstwhile pal claimed she’d heard gunshots near her house after Conyers threatened to kill her.
No way of knowing if Monica and the shooting were connected.
Then last February, Milton accused Monica of threatening to shoot him. He’s one of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s staffers, and the mayor and his people aren’t on the greatest of terms with council members right now since city attorneys hornswoggled the council into paying off a pair of cops to the tune of $9 million to hush up hizzoner’s salacious text messages.
Bluster so far from Monica, but no sign of artillery.
Is she just running her mouth, talking “street lingo,” as her onetime chief of staff, Sam Riddle claimed at the time she promised to go after Milton with a gun?
Maybe not. A 7-year-old Detroit police report suggests that the councilwoman, wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., may indeed have the iron.
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, son of the same Monica Ann Conyers who’s been threatening people with guns lately. His father is Congressman Conyers. 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 duly 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.
A bunch of finger-pointing between mom and son that amounts to nothing?
Maybe.
Or, if John-John is to be believed, it may be a signal that the councilwoman, who on April 11 accused City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. of “bullying” her, should — as she demanded of council members — should be treated with more respect.
Maybe she has a gun.
C’mon folks, stop bullying Mon.
Or else.
Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
