fouts hackel.jpg

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel on left and Warren Mayor Jim Fouts on right.

(MLive file photo)

In a response to another controversial recording being released, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said that he would rather die than resign in the fallout.

An audio recording leaked last month and attributed to Fouts made disparaging remarks about people with mental disabilities. And a second leak that materialized this week contains the voice of a man who sounds like the mayor comparing black people to "chimps."

"Regarding the piling on of nasty tapes. I fully expect that they (Hackel & Company) will continue to manufacture more tapes," Fouts wrote in a Thursday Facebook post. "I've been told this will not end until my death (I have recently had death threats) or resignation. Preferably the first one."

Fouts claims the recordings are "phony" and "engineered" by his political foe Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel and his supporters.

The most recent recordings were first published by Motor City Muckraker founder and reporter Steve Neavling on Monday, Jan. 16. Neavling didn't reveal the source of the recordings, nor when they were made.

As for the first recordings, Hackel said a staffer recorded Fouts speaking ill of the mentally disabled.

In the first recording, a voice is heard saying:

"I wish them well in a cage but I think they have to keep them in diapers ... I think, really, I don't dare say that publicly, but you see these old people pushing their retarded daughter around, for what reason? She doesn't know what she's doing. Why would anybody want to have that.

" ... they're dysfunctional human beings, they're not even human beings."

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan addressed the controversy while at a luncheon on Tuesday, saying "If what Fouts says is true, somebody faked his voice and put out a tape, somebody committed a felony."

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard also called for Fouts' resignation in Twitter remark posted Monday.

Just listened to recordings of Mayor Fouts.While I'm not a member of the Warren community,I am member of the human community. You need to go — Mike Bouchard (@MikeJBouchard) January 16, 2017

U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, multiple state legislators and county commissioners from Fouts' own Democratic Party have also called for his resignation in a joint statement issued Tuesday:

"We have listened to the audio tapes with the voice we recognize of Mayor Jim Fouts.

These comments are hateful. They are racist and disparaging of women.

The leader of the states third largest city should be a role model for how we treat each other and anyone that harbors these feelings and expresses them is not fit to lead.

We believe that these comments, and the previous comments about people with disabilities, do not represent the people of the city of Warren. Therefore, we believe that it would be best for the people of Warren for Mayor Fouts to resign and we call on him to do so.

It would have been our preference that the individuals making these audio recordings would have immediately turned them over to the proper authorities for investigation so they would have been handled in an appropriate manner and reduced the discussion about the motivation for the recording and circumstances of the release."

In a response to his colleagues calling for his resignation, Fouts said that "many of them got elected because I endorsed them." The embattled mayor adds that he understands what they are saying, because "it's safe for them and I understand that."

"I will continue to do my job and be at work every day. I am working with some people that are investigating this. I'm heartened by the fact that the people who elected me and who I owe allegiance to are still supporting me," he wrote in the post. "Last night I returned calls until almost 10 PM. Everyone I called was in support of me. However, there were a few from outside the city that were not. Also, I returned calls from several African Americans who supported me and did not buy the assertion that I was anti-African American."

The post was not embeddable due to privacy settings, but can be read by clicking here.