Pingree Street Conspiracy Trial

Pingree Street Conspiracy Trial:

Dope Houses: “Cookie Jars” For Cops?

By Pamela Johnson

Pamela Johnson is a free lance writer who lives in Detroit and is governing the trial for the SUN.

From the moment she took the stand on a recent afternoon in Detroit’s Recorder’s Court there seemed to be something different about the woman called Peaches Miles. Certainly, like many of the 20-odd witnesses who had previously testified in the trial of the Pingree Street Sixteen (nine Detroit policemen and seven civilians charged with conspiring to sell narcotics and obstruct justice), Peaches had a long history of illegal activity and a tough, street-wise instinct for survival. But about Peaches there also appeared to be a kind of touching vulnerability not often seen on the witness stand in the seven-week-old trial.

The 41-year old black woman had thought carefully about her color-coordinated appearance that day: her black hair gleamed in a long pony tail arrayed over one shoulder, large gold loops dangled from her ears, and nearly everything else was green - from the tint of her sunglasses and the polish on her fingernails to the shade of her nylons and the large square-cut emerald on her pinky. Her dark green knit mini-dress was drawn tightly over a few too many curves and hiked up on her thighs when she sat in the witness chair after swearing to tell the truth. The problem posed by her skirt length was solved by a large black leather purse held primly on her lap throughout her testimony.

Under a grant of immunity and speaking with an obvious concern for polite and proper diction, Peaches described her life as a former heroin addict, dope dealer and prostitute who had finished her formal education in the third grade and could neither read nor write. She said she had also supported herself as a seamstress and part owner of Breed’s Custom Material Shop which was where she first met police officer defendant Robert “Mustache” Mitchell.

Shortly after the riot in 1967, she testified, she and Mitchell agreed on an arrangement whereby she would pass him information about dope houses especially ripe for unauthorized rip-off raids in exchange for supplies and protection for a series of narcotics pads she operated herself. Out of the heroin Peaches said Mitchell gave her, she took care of her own habit, then sold the rest, paid her bills and turned the remaining money (at times as much as $1400) over to Mitchell. When her work as a hooker occasionally got her into trouble, Mitchell, a white cop with a heavily muscled build and thin greased back hair, would usually be there to help. Unlike most of the girls who hustled, said Peaches, she didn’t have a pimp: “I had no one to help me, and everyone needs someone. He (Mitchell) was my someone.”

In this fashion Peaches delivered some of the most convincing testimony heard so far by the 17-member jury, all of it dovetailing neatly with the prosecution’s contention that cops in Detroit’s 10th Precinct generally looked upon dope pads as “cookie jars” which they allowed to flourish and then ripped off for ready cash and dope which they then recycled to other dealers with whom they had special arrangements. But when she was called upon to point out Mitchell’s partner, a gray-haired white sergeant named William Stackhouse, whom she said she had seen nearly every time she saw Mitchell in a period of more than four years, she indicated another gray-haired white defendant, patrolman Daniel O’Mara.

A few minutes later Peaches told assistant prosecutor Clayton Davis she wanted to tell him something, whereupon Judge Justin Ravitz dismissed the jury. Defendant Stackhouse turned to friends in the courtroom and said Peaches had probably realized her mistake and was about to correct it. But when the jury room door had closed Peaches told her audience: “I’ve seen the man who pistol-whipped me, and he’s sitting here in this courtroom. It’s that man sitting right over there.” Peaches pointed at defendant Charlie Brown, a black cop with hulking shoulders and a barrel chest clad in a gold sport coat. “In the yellow,” said Peaches. “Me?” asked Charlie Brown standing indignantly. “Yes, you,” cried Peaches. “You pistol-whipped me!”

Peaches then lost control and broke into tears, and it was 20 minutes before she had sufficiently regained her composure to continue. Back on the stand she told the court on a separate record (with the jury still absent) that Brown had stopped her on the street one day and told her she was a “bad woman.” She was a black woman who was “helping that honky, the white man (Mitchell) to get over,” when she should be helping a black man (Brown) instead. Peaches said Brown told her that he could match whatever Mitchell was doing for her in exchange for her information, but she disagreed and refused to cooperate.

Four nights later in the alley between Blaine and Pingree where she rested occasionally between tricks, Peaches said she saw Brown and another man in plainclothes draw up in an unmarked car. She ran but the two men trapped her and shoved her up against a cement wall. She screamed, she said, but Brown slapped her, then struck her in the face with his gun. When she fell to the alley the two men kicked her, then left with a warning that she’d better cooperate if she didn’t want something worse. After taking herself to a hospital Peaches said she called Mitchell and told him what had happened. Mitchell said he would deal with Brown, and thereafter she had no trouble with the black cop.

Though it held the courtroom spellbound for several minutes the story was finally ruled inadmissible by Judge Ravitz, because, he said, it did not involve a crime that fell within the scope of the two-count conspiracy indictment in this case.

Disappointed, the prosecution nonetheless continued to elicit potent testimony from Peaches despite her failure to properly identify defendant Stackhouse. She offered details of two specific episodes in a way that meshed consistently with previous testimony from dope dealer Roy “Alabama Red” McNeal, his common law wife, Ollie Smiley, and his brother-in-law, Leroy “Beatnik” Sampson. The first involved a 1970 raid by Mitchell and Stackhouse on Alabama Red’s dope house on Pingree during which Peaches introduced Red to Mitchell and so launched another working relationship between cop and dealer. And the second recorded a Mitchell-Stackhouse delivery of three ounces of heroin to Peaches and Beatnik in their room at the old LaVerts Hotel.

It is this kind of “string of truth” testimony running through the performance of its many witnesses that anchors the prosecution’s hope for convictions in the case.

Under cross-examination the next day, Friday, August 22nd, Peaches said her connection with Mitchell ended in 1972, after which she went into hiding because of threats on her life resulting from her previous cooperation with the cop. Since April, 1973, when she testified before a citizens’ grand jury, she said she’s been in the protective custody of the Wayne County Organized Crime Task Force.

At one point Peaches said she had been arrested for narcotics by a policeman she knew only as “Blue Eyes.” Defense attorney Al Varga asked her to look around the court in an effort to spot “Blue Eyes,” and after she had spent about a minute doing so, her gaze lingered again on defendant Charlie Brown. Peaches once more broke into tears, rushed from the stand, and excused herself from the courtroom. She was subsequently taken to a hospital where doctors reported that she had suffered a seizure.

Later in the day, Judge Ravitz adjourned the trial for a weeks vacation until Tuesday, September 2nd. But though the trial is now expected to last through November, it was still not clear when Peaches Miles would be able to resume her testimony.