The Department of Justice dropped another bomb on the scandal-plagued city of Detroit this week by alerting a federal judge that his court-appointed monitor overseeing Detroit Police Department reforms had “meetings of a personal nature” with former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

The episode came to light Friday when U.S. District Judge Julian Cook issued an order that announced Sheryl Robinson Wood’s resignation but raised more questions than it answered. Cook didn’t describe the nature of the meetings, when they occurred, whether they affected Wood’s performance or whether he demanded she resign.

The order said Wood “engaged in conduct which was totally inconsistent with the terms and conditions of the two consent judgments.”

•PDF: Read the judge's order.

Cook said she had “engaged in undisclosed communications, as well as meetings of a personal nature” with Kilpatrick “during the term of the consent judgments, which included inappropriate discussions with him about this lawsuit.”

The order said Cook reviewed the documents Wednesday at a status conference involving the Justice Department and the city. Afterward, he telephoned Wood to confront her about the documents and she resigned.

The Detroit Police Department has been under federal oversight since 2003, when the city signed two agreements to avert a lawsuit with the Justice Department’s civil rights division over questionable shootings of civilians, illegal dragnet arrests and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The department has fulfilled less than 40% of the reforms.

Efforts to change cops doubted in light of monitor's conduct

City officials and community activists were stunned Friday by revelations that the court-appointed monitor overseeing reforms at the Detroit Police Department had engaged in improper personal meetings with former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

"Wow. Wow. Wow. Good Lord. Oh, my God," Ron Scott of the Detroit Coalition of Police Brutality exclaimed Friday when told that Sheryl Robinson Wood had resigned after the Justice Department gave text messages or e-mails about the meetings to U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr., who is presiding over the lagging six-year reform effort.

The Justice Department obtained the records as part of its ongoing investigation of city corruption. It remains unclear where the material originated.

Scott said he has long been concerned about Wood's lack of aggressiveness in forcing the department to adopt reforms to reduce shootings of civilians and eliminate illegal dragnet arrests of homicide witnesses and mistreatment of prisoners in police lockups. He said he wonders whether her relationship with Kilpatrick delayed the reform effort.

Detroit City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel called the disclosures part of a "cascading cancer" of scandals confronting the city and said she worries about the $10 million the city has spent under Wood's supervision since 2003 to try to fix the troubled department.

"Is there any way we can recover any of the money we spent?" she said. "Did Kilpatrick make deals with Ms. Robinson Wood to drag this thing out? It calls into question the fundamental legitimacy of the monitoring of the Police Department that has faced the same set of problems for the past 40 years."

Cockrel said Friday's disclosure likely will come up in Monday's closed-door City Council meeting to discuss the reform effort and the federal consent decrees that brought them about.

Wood, a lawyer, did not respond Friday afternoon to messages left at her Baltimore office or on her personal cell phone. It remains unclear whether her conduct with Kilpatrick might result in professional misconduct charges or other discipline.

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said: "We agree with the court's decision and will move forward in a positive manner to select a new monitor."

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said in a statement: "The revelation about the court-appointed monitor is disappointing, and her resignation is appropriate. As instructed by Judge Cook, we will work with the Justice Department in selecting a new monitor and remain dedicated to fulfilling the requirements of the consent decrees."

The developments took Kilpatrick's lawyer James Thomas by surprise.

"We have no knowledge or understanding of anything related to Judge Cook's order," he said. "We will review the order. But at this point we don't have enough information to make a meaningful comment."

Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, declined to comment when asked if her office supplied text messages to the feds from the prosecution last year of Kilpatrick and his former aide Christine Beatty.

Cook issued an order Friday saying that he had accepted Wood's resignation and suspended all court monitoring of the department until a new monitor can be found. He wants the Justice Department and the city to submit prospective interim replacements by July 31.

The circumstances of Wood's departure -- with allegations of an inappropriate relationship -- are reminiscent of some of the more riveting turns in the text message scandal, which ended Kilpatrick's political career and landed him in jail.

That scandal exploded in January 2008 when the Free Press published excerpts of text messages that showed Kilpatrick and Beatty had lied at a police whistle-blower trial when they denied a sexual affair.

Subsequent text messages, released by Worthy in October, showed that Kilpatrick, who is married, also was engaged in cross-country rendezvous with three women in addition to Beatty.

Since the text message scandal broke, the Justice Department has indicted or accepted guilty pleas from several former and current city officials, including ex-Councilwoman Monica Conyers, in a wide-ranging bribery scandal involving city contracts.

At a hearing earlier this month, Cook said the city's progress in correcting Police Department problems was unacceptable. After six years, the department has fulfilled only 39% of the reforms it had agreed to carry out.

Scott, of the police watchdog group, said he hopes Cook appoints a replacement who forces the department to comply with the consent decrees and that Cook finally will force the department to comply.

Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER: dashenfelter@freepress.com. Staff writers Amber Hunt and Todd Spangler contributed to this report.