A former Detroit cop who resigned in August 2021 after an internal investigation found he had punched an unarmed man in the face and then lied about it has left another local police department in disgrace.
The Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES) suspended Officer Kairy Roberts’s license on Sept. 15, preventing him from serving as a cop in the state.
The suspension was in connection with the two-year-old allegations that Roberts assaulted a man in Greektown, knocked him unconscious, and then failed to provide medical aid, an incident that was caught on cellphone video.
About a year after Roberts resigned from Detroit’s police force, he was hired by the Eastpointe Police Department, despite the serious allegations against him.
Eastpointe Police Chief Corey Haines tells Metro Times that Roberts was immediately placed on leave after his license was suspended and then resigned on Friday.
Haines, who wasn’t the Eastpointe chief when Roberts joined the force, couldn’t provide much insight into why the city hired him.
“Unfortunately, I do now know what the previous administrator used for criteria for hiring,” Haines says. “It is my understanding that he was aware of the incident.”
George Rouhib, the Eastpointe chief who hired Roberts, accepted a job as chief of the Rochester Police Department in May. Metro Times couldn’t reach him for comment.
An internal investigation by the Detroit Police Department in July 2022 concluded that Roberts punched Marcus Alston in the face, even though he didn’t appear to pose a threat, and walked away from him despite his serious injuries. Roberts then falsely claimed Alston had taken a fighting stance and assaulted another police officer, even though he did neither, the internal police investigation found. In fact, Alston was punched while he was asking for the badge numbers of police officers who allegedly assaulted several people while dispersing a crowd in Greektown.
Roberts resigned from DPD before he could be fired.
Alston’s attorney, Johnny Hawkins, who is suing Roberts and the Detroit Police Department over the incident, says it was inexcusable for Eastpointe to hire Roberts and for MCOLES to take two years to suspend his license.
Hawkins is representing four people who were allegedly assaulted by Detroit police on the night that Hawkins was punched. Two of them, he says, were assaulted by Roberts, whom Hawkins calls a “rogue cop.”
Alston’s injuries were life-altering, Hawkins says. He suffered a concussion and herniated disk. A truck driver and youth sports coach, Alston couldn’t return to work because he’s unable to pass the physical exam.
“He was in pretty bad shape,” Hawkins says. “The hardest part for him is explaining to the children he coaches why this happened and how it happened. All he was doing was asking for a badge number, and he got banged up pretty bad.”
Hawkins says Michigan needs to do a better job protecting residents from abusive cops.
“As a country, we don’t take police brutality as seriously as we need to,” Hawkins says. “There is a great need for reform. The boys in blue are part of the biggest national gang in this country. They’re protected, and whatever they say, goes.”
Roberts’s ability to move from one police department to another after serious misconduct allegations is nothing new in Michigan. The problem is so common that officers like Roberts are called “wandering cops.” They’re forced out of one police department, only to find work at another law enforcement agency, Metro Times reported in August.
In Michigan, like many states, there are no laws requiring police departments to disclose information about much of an officer’s misconduct to another law enforcement agency.
Without reporting requirements, agencies are at risk of unknowingly hiring officers who left their previous job under questionable circumstances.
In an attempt to learn more about wandering cops in Michigan, Metro Times and the Invisible Institute sought records identifying all certified and uncertified officers in the state. But Michigan State Police declined our Freedom of Information Act request, claiming “the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.”
By withholding the identities of officers, MSP is impeding the public’s ability to track wandering cops.
Now that Democrats have control of the state Senate and House in Michigan for the first time in nearly 40 years, lawmakers may soon make it more difficult for wandering cops to continue landing new jobs.
In 2017, the Michigan Legislature passed a law that required police departments to keep a record of officer separations, and officers to sign a waiver allowing departments to view their previous records. But it didn’t prevent cops with significant histories of misconduct or use of force from being hired again, and didn’t prevent agencies from allowing officers to resign, rather than be terminated. If an officer is allowed to resign, the documentation required to be kept about their separation is likely to be much less substantial.
In 2021, Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss introduced a bill targeting officers with checkered pasts. But with Republicans holding a majority in the Senate, the legislation languished.
Senate Bill 474 would have required police departments to report all use-of-force violations, in addition to the separation records that they’re required to provide to new prospective employers for their former officers. That way law enforcement agencies would have broader access to a job applicants’ history of misconduct.
After talking with law enforcement agencies about the bill, Moss says he’s received a lot of support to resurrect the legislation.
Hawkins says lawmakers should act with urgency.
“We need the legislators to protect the citizens in the state of Michigan,” Hawkins says. “If other states are doing it, then why shouldn’t Michiganders get the same benefits of cops getting properly vetted so our citizens aren’t the target of some rogue cop who has been allowed to go from police department to police department, doing what they have been known to do?”
@metrotimes #greenscreen ♬ original sound - Detroit Metro Times
Subscribe to Metro Times newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
