You Used to Be My Girl—Former Detroit Councilwoman Monica Conyers Heads to the Slammer

Really Detroit? Is it becoming clearer now why the city filed for bankruptcy, why they didn't have enough money to bury their own dead, why Kwame Kilpatrick can only "put a little something down" on his million-dollar debt he owes the city?

Thursday Monica Conyers was added to the growing list of corrupt officials that will be representing their city in prison.

Conyers, a former Detroit city councilwoman and the wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., was sentenced to more than three years in prison yesterday for bribery.

Before the hearing, Conyers moved around the courtroom blowing kisses to supporters while wearing dark sunglasses. Her husband, who has an office in the federal courthouse, was not in the courtroom. Spokesman Jonathan Godfrey said he didn't know his whereabouts. Obviously, he won't be the one to count on to keep her commissary filled.

Conyers yelled in the packed courtroom that she planned to appeal and that she wanted to withdraw her guilty plea, suggesting that she was the victim of "badgering" last year, when she admitted taking cash to support a Houston company's sledge contract with the city.

Conyers, 45, is the biggest catch so far in the FBI's wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Detroit city government. Nine people have pleaded guilty, including two former directors of the downtown convention center, and prosecutors have promised more charges are coming.

"Bribery is a betrayal of trust," Cohn told Conyers, after announcing a 37-month prison term for her "egregious" crime. She quit the council, after pleading guilty in June.

Conyers' plea deal was limited to taking bribes to support a contract with Synagro, worth $47 million a year. The recent trial of her former aide, Sam Riddle, though, exposed a series of alleged schemes involving others making payoffs to do business at city hall.

Earlier this year, jurors at the Riddle trial heard secretly taped phone calls, where he and Conyers discussed money, bank deposits and how to split cash.

In a November 2007 call, Conyers told Riddle:

"You'd better get my loot."

On another call, businessman Rayford Jackson, who passed bribes to Conyers for her sludge vote, said, "You're my girl. Don't forget that."

Do you think that law enforcement and the FBI are targeting black officials-Councilman Marion Barry in D.C. (again?!), Sheila Dixon in Baltimore, everybody and their step cousin in Detroit-or is it just time to clean up shop in politics for everyone?