Detroit City Council’s President Pro Tem George Cushingberry Jr. doesn't like that he's become a distraction with all the media attention for the wrong reasons.
In an interview with Kim Kozlowski of the Detroit News, he contested parts about his infamous Jan. 7 traffic stop in which police found an open bottle of alcohol and marijuana.
“At the rate we’re heading now, our society is heading for doom for allowing the sideshow of life to become central,” Cushingberry told the News.
Police claimed he tried to elude officers during the stop near the Penthouse bar in northwest Detroit. There was an open bottle of liquor in the car and some marijuana Cushingberry has claimed belonged to a friend in the car who has a medical marijuana card. He was ticketed for a traffic violation and never given a sobriety test. The police chief says he did not receive favorable treatment.
The News wrote:
He declined to comment on the ticket being reissued but said he was most disappointed by inaccurate media reports that he was at a strip club the night he was ticketed. That hurt his parishioners at Northwest Unity Baptist Church, where he is an associate minister.
“Once you poison the well, you can’t really drink from it,” he said. “Nobody’s corrected that.”
Cushingberry said he was at the Penthouse, which is a lounge and one of the headquarters for the association of restaurants and bars in the African American community.
He also denied trying to elude to police.
“It was ten below zero. It was snowing. (I was) in a 1993 Buick. I am going to try and outrun the police? How laughable,” Cushingberry said.
During the interview he declined to talk about the incident at a city council meeting in which police manhandled Fox 2 reporter M.L. Elrick so Cushingberry could walk into the meeting without Elrick confronting him.
Cushingberry said he wasn't letting the sideshow divert him from his duties as a city council member, the News reported. he said he's worked on important issues like property taxes and lighting. -- Allan Lengel
