Warren Mayor Jim Fouts stands by claim that he didn't degrade people with special needs
WARREN, Mich. (WJBK) - The mayor of Warren says he stands by what he put on Facebook Thursday night that recordings that sound like him - are not him.
The audio recordings were emailed to FOX 2 by Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. They feature audio of a voice that sounds like Fouts talking about mentally challenged people.
Fouts refuted the recordings and said that they were electronically engineered by Hackel.
On Friday, FOX 2 went to the mayor's office and tried to get a comment. He was unavailable and an assistant said he stands by his Facebook post where he denounced the audio.
In the recordings, a voice says "Tonight I am going to meet a bunch of retards. Tonight is retard night."
In a second recording a voice that sounds like Fouts says "Fine I guess, what good are they, they are dysfunctional human beings. They are not even human beings."
In another recording the person says that meeting with the mentally challenged is "one of the worst things about being mayor.
"This is bottom of the barrel," the voice said. "I don't (inaudible) to retarded people and I don't want to be around them. I wish them well in a cage."
Fouts denied the recordings were him.
The political battle between the two stems from a dispute over a landfill incident at Freedom Hill. Fouts wrote on Facebook that this summer 200,000 yards of dirt was moved on the former landfill site at Freedom Hill causing the ground to collapse and 40 methane gas monitor sites were covered up and/or damaged. About 100 trees were also destroyed.
Fouts said at the time that a Flint analogy he used was about an environmental disaster being covered up by government officials. Fouts says that there is concern that contaminates will be leaching from the site into the Red Run Drain.
At the time Hackel bristled at the comments, saying at the time he tried calling Mayor Fouts say to get more information, but never heard back.
"The reality is what was on that tape is absolutely disturbing," Hackel said.