Some of you have seen this video & story of the Mayor's Executive Protection Unit detaining Channel 7 and WXYZ.com's Chief Investigator Steve Wilson.     It is of course news anytime an officer of the law uses physical force to prevent a journalist from doing his job.

As a policy, and just a good journalistic practice, we never talk about stories we are working on until we are ready to air them on Channel 7, or post them on WXYZ.com, so we won’t comment any more than to say:  Stay tuned to Channel 7 and WXYZ.com to see what the mayor and his people are so determined to hide that they will resort to physical force.

We’ve received a tremendous amount of feedback following a story our Chief Investigative Reporter Steve Wilson broke last night on Action News at 11 that raises questions about the relationship between Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and a powerful city contractor.

Steve uncovered a link between Mayor Kilpatrick’s lavish 2007 family vacation at the Ritz-Carlton Resort in Naples, Florida and Detroit businessman Tony Soave. It was his company, Soave Enterprises, whose name appeared at the top of the Mayor’s nearly $10,000 hotel bill.  Soave Enterprises does business throughout the country, including Naples, where it constructs and sells multimillion-dollar condominiums.  Since 2001, it sold two to former mayoral candidate Freman Hendrix.

Soave has done plenty of business with the city in the past, and admits he’d like to do more in the future. Sources tell Action News that Soave Enterprises is pursuing a towing contract with the city of Detroit. 

One of the uses of this blog is to share information we cannot fit in our original broadcasts.  Below is additional information regarding Soave and his company:

Soave has long been one of the Mayor’s biggest financial backers.  Citizens for Michigan, a political action committee (PAC) primarily financed by Soave, has donated $35,000 to “Kwame M. Kilpatrick For Mayor” since July 2003. In October 2007, Soave personally donated $3,400 to the mayor’s re-election campaign. Other Soave Enterprises employees have also been generous to the Mayor.  In 2005, at least four company vice-presidents each donated $3,400 to the Mayor’s 2005 re-election campaign.

Soave seldom makes public appearances or grants interviews, referring reporters to his spokesman, but he did speak to a reporter for “DBusiness,” a Detroit business magazine, for a March 2007 story that profiled his life and business empire.

The Investigators are expanding how we bring you the news.  We are now live-blogging at important news events, like Mayor Kilpatrick's bond hearing last Friday. That day we posted several entries as commentary to the live video feed that website visitors were watching.

The most interesting item was a conversation with his attorney Jim Thomas. Before the hearing began, we called Thomas to ask if his client would be coming in the front door or "sneaking" in the back, but he wouldn't say. And when we told him that the back door entrance made the Mayor look guilty, Thomas said, "That's your point of view." He also mentioned protestors as to why the Mayor needed to use the back door. When we told him no protestors were at the courthouse, he said there were death threats against the Mayor. Pressed to give details about the alleged death threats, Thomas wouldn't comment, except to say details about them "had already been published."

If the Mayor is truly in danger, then why does he walk on the streets of Detroit each day at scheduled press conferences where anyone could reach him? How are the streets safer than a courthouse swarming with officers and security guards and where eveyone has to go through security screening as they enter the door?

Thomas should do his client a favor and insist that the next time the Mayor enters any courthouse, he use the front door. Otherwise he will continue to look -- in the words of three Detroit teens we spoke to that day outside the courthouse -- "guilty."