Here at 7 News Detroit, we want to make sure you start your day off on the right foot, informed about weather, traffic, the latest news and more. That's why we have the 7 Morning Digest, where we'll get you out the door informed and ready to go.
What's the weather for today?
Keenan Smith said that it's going to be another cold day in metro Detroit, but it won't be as cold as it was yesterday as the winds are down significantly. We could see some flurries in the morning.
Once we get through today, temps do start warming up on Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday temps being in the mid-40s and then near 50 degrees on Monday. There's a chance for some rain on Saturday night into Sunday, but Sunday will be dry.
Any traffic issues?
So far, no major traffic issues to tell you about this morning. Be sure to check our live traffic map before heading out the door.
The top stories to know about
Detroit Lions fans are fired up after clinching another playoff spot
Fans packed the streets of Detroit following the Lions' 34-31 win over the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night, an important win in the NFC North and it also clinched a playoff spot for the team.
Detroit is now 12-1 and atop the NFC, and it's the best start in team history. The Lions have won 11 straight games.
When asked, you could not deny the pride the Lions fans had in their team after the game.
“Can’t get any better than this. It really can’t. I mean, we’ve been...we had season tickets at the Silverdome for years. We used to go. And, just tough. And then, now they’ve turned it around. Yeah baby! It’s great. I mean, it was great. We were there. I mean, it was awesome," Tom Kutch from Center Line said.
“Hey, it feels great. Two years in a row. After watching for so many years and being a big fan, the fact that we’re in the playoffs again is huge," Ryan Cadarette from Lansing said.
“It was stressful. No question about that. As they say, it’s not as if that was easy. And, that was not easy. But, in the end, we did what we had to do because we’re gonna get in the Super Bowl," Dave Hauer said.
Crash victim fights for change after getting slapped with bill from Shelby Township Fire Department
This week, Macomb Township resident Sharon Hardy received a bill from the Shelby Township Fire Department that she thought was a joke. The bill was for $1,293.04 and she said she was being asked to pay $431.02 of that.
What's it for? It says right on the bill that on November 9 the fire department was called to the scene of an incident.
According to Hardy, that incident was when a car crashed into her and her husband's car, as well as one other car, at Van Dyke Avenue and 25 Mile Road. Hardy said that the driver who hit them apologized and said he was not paying attention well enough.
She said that a good Samaritan nearby called 911, the Shelby Township Fire Department showed up, but she didn't receive any service from them.
Hardy called the fire department assistant chief and was told that the bill is because of a Township ordinance passed just 5 months ago in July.
"Everything I asked him he kept saying to me, ‘This is cost recovery ma’am, you don’t pay taxes in Shelby Township, if you lived in Shelby Township and you paid taxes in Shelby Township, you would not have received the bill.’" said Hardy.
7 News Detroit reached out to the assistant chief to learn more and received a call back from Shelby Township's community relations director.
He sent this statement:
"Shelby Township residents generally do not pay additional fees for emergency services, such as police and fire responses, beyond what is funded through property taxes. However, there are situations where the Shelby Township Fire Department bills insurance companies for specific services. For example, in car accidents, ambulance services or house fires, the fire department may bill insurance to cover the costs associated with the response.
As Michigan operates as a No-Fault state, any billing related to an accident is typically split among all involved parties, regardless of who may have called 911. Even if no one at the scene specifically requested fire department services, the fire department must respond to ensure the safety of everyone involved, including first responders. When our team arrives, they work quickly to secure the area by blocking traffic, assessing injuries, sometimes extricating individuals from vehicles, providing necessary medical care and clearing the scene.
‘A huge breach of trust.’ Michigan lawmakers aim to stop problem cops from finding work
State lawmakers on Thursday are taking up a package of bills that they hope will put an end to troubled police officers circulating throughout departments across Michigan.
The legislation was introduced following more than a year of reports from 7 News Detroit, showing how problem officers have been allowed to jump from department to department, leaving scandal, lawsuits or criminal charges in their wake.
“It’s a huge breach of trust,” said State Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit). “We shouldn’t be cycling through bad cops when someone clearly knew that this was someone who should not be in law enforcement.”
In Michigan, the agency that helps police the police is the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES). Its small investigations staff has an enormous responsibility: to ensure that every officer who leaves a department to join another meets the standards to be an officer.
“The vast majority of people who leave agencies do so in good standing,” said Tim Bourgeois, the MCOLES executive director. “However, there’s 18,500 officers in Michigan. Even if 1% of them don’t, that’s a significant number.”
But as 7 News Detroit has shown, officers with troubling histories have been hired by new departments without state watchdogs noticing.
Examples include officers deemed to be untruthful, a Detroit officer seen punching a citizen in the face, a Highland Park officer found to have improperly tased a homeless man, an Oakland County Sheriff’s deputy caught buying narcotics on duty and using racist language and officers accused of harassment by multiple women or engaging in sexual acts or sexting with women they’d pulled over.
State Sen. Sarah Anthony, a Democrat from Lansing, said the instances are appalling.
“What you just named are some egregious examples of individuals who violated the public trust in one department,” Anthony said, “and because of the lack of bills like what we have before you now, they’ve continued to be able to violate our citizens.”
It wasn’t supposed to work this way. When an officer leaves a police department—even if it’s just to take another job— their department is supposed to report to MCOLES exactly why they left. Any department looking to hire them needs to conduct a thorough background check of the officer on their own.
But too often, that didn’t happen. In numerous cases, 7 News Detroit found that police chiefs hired officers without even knowing why they left their last police department.
In other cases, departments claimed that an officer left in good standing when they were actually under investigation or facing internal charges.
Sometimes, it was state investigators who dropped the ball…failing to flag problem cops before another agency could hire them.
“This is where this bill is important,” Sen. Anthony said. “To finally put an end to this practice, and to give MCOLES…finally giving them additional tools to reign this stuff in.”
In November, Senators Anthony, Chang and others introduced a package of bills designed to help plug some of the holes that allowed problem officers to slip through.
If signed by the governor, they would allow MCOLES to set standards for department background checks.
The bills would also require departments to fully disclose why an officer left and whether they were ever under investigation during their final year of employment.
The bills would also give the state greater authority to revoke a law enforcement license and would provide MCOLES a 90-day window to revoke an officer’s license if it was activated in error.
What the bills don’t address — at least right now — is any discipline for departments that give false information about why an officer left, or don’t perform a complete background check at all.
“When you have police chiefs who say that an officer left in good standing who did not leave in good standing, or a police chief who said they did a background check and they did not do a background check, how do you guard against that?” asked Channel 7’s Ross Jones.
“I’m aware of other states where if an agency head does not follow their versions of the MCOLES Act, that action is taken against their law enforcement license,” said Tim Bourgeois, the MCOLES Executive Director.
“In certain cases, these are criminal offenses.”
Senator Anthony says she’s open to adding more teeth to the law down the road, but first she wants to get these fixes on the books.
Her legislation already has the endorsement of major law enforcement groups, including the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, whose executive director says Channel 7’s reporting has provided a public service and a warning to police chiefs.
“Because now we see in a very public matter, the types of repercussions that can happen when you take a chance on somebody,” said Robert Stevenson. “A lot of good has come from these stories, as painful as it is for me to watch these because it's embarrassing to the profession which I obviously care about.”
For the Democrats pushing the bills, time is of the essence. In the House, Republicans become the majority party in January. Today, there are just weeks left in the current legislative session, meaning the clock is ticking for lawmakers to act on the new bills. Senator Anthony says the stakes are too high not to.
“I don’t want to be sitting here in a year, listening to another laundry list of incidents in which a bad apple went to the other side of the state and violated someone in their community,” she said.
