Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick: Texting vs. Privacy

A lot of controversy has come to light as of late concerning public officials and the messages that they are both sending and receiving. The controversy involving the Tistadt family in Fairfax County, VA is among them, but the most recent involves Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty.

Last year, both Kilpatrick and Beatty swore under oath that they were not involved in a sexual relationship with one another during 2002-2003, but recently discovered text messages contradict those statements. Mayor Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty both testified in the whistleblowers lawsuit last year which involved two former police officers-ex-Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown and ex-bodyguard Harold Nelthrope.

For those who don't know (because I didn't know either so I had to look it up) a whistleblower suit is a lawsuit filed by an employee, former employee or organizational member, most often in a business or government agency, who reports misconduct to those who have the power to take action. The misconduct usually involves actions that are unlawful or unprecedented. This particular suit involved the unjust punishment due to Nelthrope allegedly claiming misbehavior by the mayor and his police bodyguards; Deputy Chief Brown became involved because he was brought on to investigate the claim.

In 2007, both Kilpatrick and Beatty testified in this case which involved an action of misconduct that took place in 2002-2003, they both swore under oath that they were not involved in a sexual relationship at that time; they also testified that they did not plot the dismissal of Deputy Chief Brown. The case eventually settled and the two former police officers together were awarded 8 million dollars.

Controversy began when over 14,000 text messages were recently discovered that had been passed between Kilpatrick and Beatty. The texts supported the theory that the two were involved in a sexual relationship at the time and also supported the claims that they had conspired to dismiss Deputy Chief Brown. Through texting, the two exchanged sexual banter and love declarations (both were married at the time) and also made arrangements to meet in Detroit area motels as well as while on out-of-town business trips. The judge presiding over the whistleblower case does not plan to purse contempt proceedings, rather states that the investigation of perjury charges should be the main focus.

So the question here is: should text messages between public officials be private? I think legal answer here would be no. However, there are different levels to this debate. First of all, what's the status of the phones they were using to send these messages? Was the city footing the phone bill? If so, then yes the messages are definitely subject to public scrutiny. On another note, all public officials give up certain rights when they become public figures. It's well known that their pasts, as well as their current livelihoods will succumb to rigorous scrutiny, therefore whether its 1 message or 14,000 messages, they will be found.

It doesn't matter if the phones were publicly owned or privately owned, if someone wants to find out what messages the mayor of a city is texting, they'll find out. It would be everyone's hope that the mayor of their city keeps his hands clean and doesn't subject himself and his employees to dirty business practices, but sending thousands of text messages, that can easily be traced, was not a very smart thing to do (you'd hope that if your public officials are going to involve themselves in bad politics, they'd be a bit smarter about leaving evidence trails). It's unfortunate, but for the sake of the city of Detroit, I hope the mayor and his chief of staff are punished adequately for these terrible crimes.

Sources:

David Josar, Paul Egan and Christine MacDonald / The Detroit News. "Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Shamed by Text Messages", dtnews.com

'Whistleblower', Wikipedia.com