Detroit Police Chief Resigns After Coming Under Fire For Raid That Killed Aiyana Jones

Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans resigned at the mayor’s request Wednesday, months after a 7-year-old girl was killed in a police raid on a reality television crew.

Detroit Police Chief resigns

Mayor Dave Bing’s office announced the resignation just more than a year into Evans’ tenure. Bing said at an evening news conference that a “combination of things” led him to seek the resignation, but declined to elaborate beyond saying the chief was “compromised in some of the decisions he made.”

Bing publicly reprimanded Evans after the police department’s handling of the May 16 raid on a Detroit family’s home during which 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed by a police officer’s bullet. A special response team had been searching for a man wanted in an earlier murder.

“Is it a resignation?” city council member Kwame Kenyatta said of Evans’ departure. “That’s what they always call it. I think you had this coming with the public reprimand.”

The raid was documented by a camera crew for A&E’s reality television show “The First 48”. Bing did not know Evans had approved a contract with the show, which had followed Detroit police and homicide investigators for several months.

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