Hearing for fired EMT in Greene lawsuit ends abruptly
DETROIT — An appeal hearing for a fired Detroit Fire Department emergency medical technician was abruptly terminated Wednesday morning after city officials objected to attempts by the former EMT worker’s lawyer to tape record the hearing.
Norman Yatooma, the lawyer for Douglas Bayer, denounced the hearing as a sham.
“That was absolutely, positively a circus,” Yatooma said after he emerged from the hearing at about 11:30 a.m.
Bayer recently filed a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging he was retaliated against and eventually fired for providing the Michigan State Police with information related to a rumored stripper party at the mayor’s Manoogian Mansion. Fire department administrators say Bayer was fired for stealing department equipment, a charge Bayer denies.
Fire Commissioner Tyrone Scott, who barred the news media from attending the hearing at fire department headquarters on Larned, was not immediately available for comment after the hearing.
Yatooma said he told city officials they would have to remove him from the hearing if they did not want him to record it, at which point the hearing was terminated.
Before the hearing ended, a union representative for Bayer said he stepped down from the three-member appeals panel “under duress” at the request of city officials.
The panel that hears the appeal has two members chosen by the city and one chosen by Bayer.
Bayer chose Wisam Zeineh, the president of his union. But Wednesday morning, city officials said Zeineh should be removed from the panel because he could be a potential witness.
Zeineh said he stepped down under pressure after officials reminded him he is still a city employee.
“The whole process is unfair,” Zeineh, who was replaced by another union official, said during a break in the hearing. “This is not due process.”
Bayer said the city’s actions against him are “making it quite obvious that I saw something significant” at Detroit Receiving Hospital in the fall of 2002.
Bayer told Michigan State Police investigators he saw a large crowd outside the hospital when he arrived there for a call and a man he later concluded was a member of the mayor’s executive protection unit attempted to prevent him from taking his patient to the emergency room.
He said the crowd of about 20-25 people included blacks and whites, males and females, some well-dressed, and “two individuals had Secret Service-type earpieces.”
On the way out of the hospital, Bayer asked a group of EMT workers outside the hospital what the commotion was about and was told it related to an assault on a woman by the mayor’s wife, a Michigan State Police report obtained under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act stated. A now retired fire department lieutenant, Walter J. Godzwon, recently said in an affidavit he also saw a commotion at the hospital and saw Bayer at the scene. Exotic dancer Tamara “Strawberry” Greene, whose name was connected with a long rumored but never proven party at the Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002, was shot to death in Detroit on April 30, 2003.
Her family is suing the mayor, the city and top police and city officials in federal court in Detroit, alleging the police investigation of Greene’s unsolved murder was obstructed for political reasons. The mayor and city officials deny the allegations.
Also Wednesday, Scott rejected a plea from a lawyer for the Detroit Free Press to open the hearing to the media. An appeal to Wayne County Circuit Court is being considered, lawyer Brian Wassom said.
Fire Department administrators allege the reason Bayer was fired is because cables for heart monitoring equipment, a charge Bayer denies and that Zeineh and Yatooma describe as ridiculous.
You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com.
