Detroit cop: Greene case was hindered
Detroit — A Detroit police officer testified Thursday he saw an administrative sergeant doing “secret squirrel work” with the homicide file of slain exotic dancer Tamara “Strawberry” Greene, a lawyer said.
Officer Alejandro Parra, who gave a sworn deposition in a lawsuit brought against the city by Greene’s family, “confirmed more of the same sort of obstructionist nonsense” that others have testified to in the Greene case, said Norman Yatooma, a lawyer for Greene’s family.
Parra testified he saw an administrative sergeant — who was not involved in investigating homicides — with the Greene file in 2008, Yatooma said. When Parra asked the sergeant what she was doing, she said she was doing “secret squirrel work” for James Tolbert, then a commander and now a deputy chief of the Detroit Police, Yatooma said.
Parra also testified that about three weeks after that incident, on April 19, 2008, he was observing an interrogation of confessed hit man Vincent Smothers when Tolbert interrupted the questioning and shut it down, Yatooma said. The questioning of Smothers by Officer Ira Todd was stopped by Tolbert soon after Smothers said he was about to drop a “bombshell” that Parra believed related to former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Yatooma said.
Second Deputy Chief John Roach, a spokesman for the department, had no comment on Yatooma’s account of Parra’s deposition testimony.
Parra is a member of a multi-jurisdictional Violent Crimes Task Force that is now investigating the Greene homicide.
Greene, who was linked to a rumored but never proven stripper party at the Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003. Her family is suing Kilpatrick and top city and police officials, alleging the investigation into her killing was obstructed for political reasons.
Kilpatrick and the other defendants have denied the allegations.
Todd sued the city in 2008, alleging he was transferred to a desk job because he was investigating possible ties between Kilpatrick and a reputed cocaine dealer and an associate of Smothers. That case is pending.
