Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 173

Patterson won a murder-one conviction and came up with a battle cry: "We're being raped, robbed and murdered by the same people over and over again." -J 7) I 01 wm.i4:i.iH-.rrp!M.rii'H'j mm fi i Mr 1 A. There are those who say Plunkett could smell his bright young assistant's ambition a mile away; others say Patterson's constant habit of boat-rocking was the catalyst. In any event, in January 1971, the same month he argued and won three murder-one cases, Patterson was fired. That was logic. What happened next was coincidence.

Some months earlier, an eight-year-old girl had been given a girly magazine by some friends in her Pon-tiac elementary school, who had bought it at a small store across the street. The child brought it home and her outraged mother went to two Oakland County assistant prosecutors in an attempt to have the store-owner charged with violation of state obscenity laws. Both refused, so she went to yet a third L. Brooks Patterson. He agreed to issue a warrant and prosecute the case.

The store-owner went to jail on the minor charge, and the woman was impressed. Months later, when Patterson was out of a job and struggling with a limited private practice, the woman went to see him again. Her name was Irene McCabe, and she had decided to fight busing. "When she came in that day, she told me she had a neighborhood group that she wanted me to represent," Patterson recalled. "My eyes lit up.

Remember, I was out of work at the time, and trying to get a private practice going. "I immediately thought 'Wow, a neighborhood group, 200 people who will want wills some day, or have accidents they'll need a lawyer for. You bet I was interested." His interest waned immediately, he said, when he heard why the group had organized. They called themselves NAG National Action Group and they planned to stop the busing of school children in Pontiac any way they could. "At that time, my political ambitions were set," Patterson said.

"I was still angry about being fired by Plunkett, and I had decided to run against him and take away his office. "As soon as they found out I was thinking about representing NAG, several of my friends people whose opinions I really trust told me I could forget about winning that election. They said I'd immediately be associated with the Ku Klux Klan or some other right-wing organizations because of the NAG connection. by Hcrschede Classic Provincial Prized acacia burl cabinet Westminster Chime 2 year warranty 795 SPECIAL (reg. $900) Free set up "Then I talked with Dick Thompson about it.

He just reminded me that, as a lawyer, it wasn't up to me to think about what a certain case could do for me. The whole objective was what I could do for my client." No one refutes that story not Dick Thompson, nor Patterson's former wife, nor Irene McCabe herself. "I can't say what went through his mind. Only he knows that," Mrs. McCabe said.

"But I do know we were looking for a courageous attorney, and Brooks thought long and hard about it, then took on a job no one else would touch." Today, Patterson says, people don't remember that NAG was an unpopular cause when he became associated with it. Irene McCabe and her group of T-shirted, middle-class no-isemakers were looked down upon in many circles, even by those, who agreed with them philosophically. That was in the fall of 1971. But less than a month after busing began in Pontiac, Federal Court Judge Stephen J. Roth ruled that Detroit's schools were guilty of segregation, and a week later it became clear that Roth was considering a "metro" plan busing children across district lines, in and out of the suburbs to solve the problem.

"All of a sudden I wasn't in a lonely position any more," Patterson says. "Instead of having backing that consisted of, as someone once put it, rednecks in four million people in three counties were upset about busing." and delivery Both Patterson and McCabe gained national, as well as regional attention in their ensuing fight. McCabe eventually returned to anonymity, but Patterson rode that school bus straight into the prosecutor's office. Plunkett never had a chance. Patterson campaigned on a one-plank platform: toughness.

Considering Plunkett's previous record, he says, the issue was a natural. Patterson promised to afford the victim all the rights enjoyed by the criminal, and it was exactly the note people had been waiting to hear. Once in office, Patterson kept his promises. The issues he chose to champion indeed were of the highest visibility, as the cynics say, but Patterson's involvement in each sprang from traceable causes. I October 1972, Ruben Herrera, a convicted murderer, was paroled from Jackson Prison after serving seven and a half years of a 15- to 25-year sentence.

Charles Meadows, who had served 20 months of a three-to-15 for armed robbery, was paroled with him. Eight months later, Oak Park police officer Henry Wolfe stopped their car for running a red light, and Herrera shot him to death. A month after that, Deborah Bingham, a senior at Milford High, was strangled to death by Walter Lee Corbin, who had been paroled 38 days earlier after doing 22 months of a 2V2-to-5 for an attempted kidnapping. Patterson prosecuted the second Detroit Free Press, February 16. 1975 anywhere in S.

Michigan. SEAN C. MONK, CM. W. Author Internationally known lecturer on "Clocks Repair." arofeCt 2.