Wayne County Sheriff Raphael Washington is accused of violating the county’s ethics ordinance by soliciting cash for his mother’s birthday on social media.
Reginald Crawford, a former Wayne County sheriff’s deputy and Detroit police commissioner, filed a complaint with the Wayne County Ethics Board on Tuesday.
Crawford points to a county ethics ordinance that prohibits officials from soliciting money for relatives. A social media policy for the sheriff’s office also prohibits accepting “gratuities.”
In October, Washington posted on his Facebook page that it was his mother’s 86th birthday and encouraged his 1,400 followers to send money to his mom via CashApp, which enables users to send money online.
“If any of you would like to be a blessing to mom today, feel free to cash app her,” Washington wrote.
The post has since been deleted.
Crawford notes that Washington is wearing a sheriff’s office uniform in his Facebook profile photo.
The ordinance is intended to prevent people from influencing officials with gifts.
It’s unclear how much money was donated to Washington’s mother and who sent donations, and that’s a problem, Crawford says.
“If I'm a contractor or vendor and I’m looking to curry favor, I could give his mother a few thousand dollars,” Crawford tells Metro Times. “There is no way of tracking that. It should be revealed how much money was given.”
Unlike campaign donations, gifts of this kind produce no records, making it impossible to track donations.
Washington was appointed to serve as sheriff in January 2021, a month after Sheriff Benny Napoleon died from COVID-19. Washington won a special election in November 2022 to serve a partial term that ends on Dec. 31, 2024.
Napoleon was also accused of mishandling donations, but in a different way. Between 2014 and 2020, Napoleon spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from his campaign account on upscale restaurants, flights, hotel stays, golf outings, taxis, home decor, sporting and concert tickets, and even a massage parlor in Sacramento, Calif., and a strip club in Chicago, according to a Metro Times review of hundreds of pages of campaign finance records.
Metro Times could not reach Washington for comment.
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