DEA Probé (amtinucii from cover) The t'...

DEA Probe

(continued from cover)

*The following day Young, after consulting with Hart, appointed Inspector James Bannon to fill the Executive Deputy Chief position which had been held by Frank Blount before the city's first black Number Two cop was implicated in the DEA investigation. Bannon, former commander of the now-disbanded STRESS unit of the DPD, was considered the top choice tor the Police Chief job by both local dailies before Young decided to name Hart to the position.

On the same day Deputy Chief Reginald Harvel, head of Western Operations for the DPD and a former commander of the narcotics-ridden 10th (Livernois) Precinct, was found dead in his northwest Detroit home after his wife discovered him lying on the floor of a second-floor bathroom with a smoking .38 police special at hand. Harvel was a close longtime associate of Frank Blount and had been linked by several sources to the DEA's investigation of Blount.

In his last hurrah before leaving office, former Police Chief Tannian refused to submit his resignation to Mayor Young, insisting that public opinion would demand that he not be fired while the accused Blount Tannian's arch-enemy within the DPD was allowed to take an "educational leave of absence" pending his planned December retirement.

Mayor Young, who had offered Tannian his choice of jobs in the city administration upon resigning from the top police post, carried through on his promise to remove Tannian under any circumstances, citing Tannian's refusal to inform him of the existence of the DEA investigation and the former chief's inability to control the DPD as reasons for the former Roman Gribbs aide's dismissal.

Willie Volsan, a reputed numbers man who is related by marriage to both Mayor Young and the late Deputy Chief Harvel, continued to be a point of speculation as he reported to a News writer that he presently fears for his life even though he insists that he is not testifying to the DEA grand jury.

Leo Underwood, the former proprietor of Leo's Standard Service at Woodward and Harper where Frank Blount maintained an after-work watering spot in a mobile home owned by Underwood, was reported to be under federal protective custody. Speculation has it that Underwood and an associate are the feds' chief witnesses in the Blount probe, which now seems, to center on Blount 's alleged operation of a tow-truck kick-back scheme centered in the I3th (Woodward) Precinct, where Blount once served as commander.

The Mayor's cousin, Dr. Claude Young, president of the Detroit Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the principal organizer of the city's recent March Against Crime, was called before the DEA grand jury to testify for three hours late last week. Speculation is that Dr. Young's testimony concerned the Young family's Lounge and Barbeque, located on Livernois Avenue next door to Bob Bolton's bar - the site of the near-riot of July, 1975 - where Volsan and reputed narcotics peddler Kenny Garrett were reported to have based themselves during 1974 and part of 1975. The Lounge, along with the mobile home maintained by Underwood on Woodward Ave., was put under electronic surveillance by local and federal police agents in 1974 after a narcotics informant in the 10th Precinct alleged that narcotics activity was taking place there.

As The Sun goes to press there is little we can do but redouble our efforts to ascertain the facts and put them into some semblance of order. Perhaps the smoke will begin to clear away this week, but in any event the recent developments will continue to change the picture for the immediate future of the city of Detroit until some of the serious charges are either borne out or revealed as a mammoth hoax. Stay tuned.o