Former Warren Police Chief William Dwyer is accused of offering to hide an internal affairs investigation.
This is part of an ongoing series about “wandering cops” in Michigan.
A state agency is investigating the Warren Police Department over an email that suggests the city offered to hide the details of an internal affairs investigation if a top-ranking official agreed to resign.
The email, obtained by Metro Times, raises serious questions about the police department’s willingness to follow a 2017 law intended to crack down on wandering cops, or officers who move from department to department amid allegations of misconduct.
In August 2018, less than a year after the new law went into effect, city attorney Raechel M. Badalamenti said the police department would not finish its investigation and offered to keep “the entire original file” in her law office if then-Deputy Police Commissioner Matt Nichols resigned.
By doing so, Nichols would have an easier time finding another job at a police department, even though he was accused of punching a suspect who was in custody. By moving the report to a law office and declining to finish the investigation, police departments considering hiring Nichols would not be privy to the information.
The email suggested that then-Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer was behind the offer.
Nichols, who claims in a subsequent federal lawsuit that he was unlawfully pushed out of the department based on sham allegations, says he didn’t accept the offer because it was illegal.
“I didn’t want to be a participant in violating a state law,” Nichols tells Metro Times. “They were inviting me to violate the law.”
The Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), the state agency responsible for regulating police, confirmed it is investigating the email. MCOLES is also investigating claims, raised by Metro Times last week, that Dwyer falsely told the agency that another officer, Robert Priest, retired in “good standing,” even though he was under investigation.
Priest ended up getting another police job in Romeo, where he was fired after pulling over Nichols as part of a “special project” in February 2022, leading to a lawsuit.
Nichols claims Priest was out to get him because Nichols played a role in denying Priest a promotion to the rank of lieutenant.
Both departments failed to comply with the 2017 wandering cops law.
Dwyer was fired after the story went to press. On the day of his termination, newly elected Warren Mayor Lori Stone said she “is separating his duties as Police Commissioner” because their “viewpoints on hiring no longer aligned.”
Nichols’s attorney Jamil Akhtar says he released the email to show that Warren has a history of covering up for cops accused of wrongdoing.
“I don’t want this to be swept under the rug,” Akhtar tells Metro Times.
Nichols was eventually fired in June 2019 after refusing to take the deal, prompting a lawsuit that alleges Dwyer embellished allegations against Nichols because he wanted a different deputy commissioner.
Macomb County prosecutors declined to charge Nichols, and the alleged victim initially denied he was assaulted.
The case is ongoing in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an interview with Metro Times, Dwyer rejects the notion that he or Badalamenti would have extended the offer, despite the email indicating otherwise.
“I personally would never have agreed to that,” Dwyer says. “I don’t think Badalamenti would either. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
In the email, Badalamenti calls the arrangement Dwyer’s “agreement.”
“Commissioner very much wants to get this investigation wrapped up one way or the other very quickly so I must stress that his agreement that I hold off on a report is a very short one,” Badalamenti says.
Nichols contends the email, combined with the other MCOLES investigation, shows that Warren police, under the leadership of Dwyer, has demonstrated “a pattern and practice of doing things illegally.”
The wandering cops law is important, Nichols says, because it’s intended to prevent bad officers from bouncing from department to department.
Steve Neavling
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