Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison is coming under scrutiny after he says he intervened with two men over photos — some posted to social media — showing the city's mayor canoodling with a controversial man.
The department then seized one of the men’s cell phones, two weeks after he was asked to take down his posts.
A search warrant and Detroit police report obtained by the Free Press says officers confiscated the cell phone of Jahdante Smith, a 30-year-old Detroit activist, on Aug. 19, in connection with a separate complaint in which a woman accused Smith of harassing her online and threatening her during a phone call.
Smith, however, says he believes his phone was taken in an effort to cover up Mayor Mary Sheffield’s relationship with an ex-beau,
Marvin Walker, who has a criminal record, including identity theft and forgery — and who was sued by the city in 2023 for operating a transitional housing facility that was allegedly in poor condition and lacked appropriate licenses. The case was dismissed early this year.
The ordeal, first reported by Charlie LeDuff for the Michigan Enjoyer, raises ethical questions about Bettison's actions, namely if he was acting at the behest of the mayor and — considering the timing of the phone confiscation — if it was done to punish or intimidate Smith for posting unflattering photos of his boss, the mayor. The chief has denied any such motivations and Sheffield, through a spokeman, has denied asking anyone to intervene on her behalf.
Since July, Smith has posted photos to Facebook showing Sheffield and Walker. The undated photos are intimate, and some show the pair kissing.
On Aug. 5, Smith said he texted Bettison to complain that interventions by city officials over his social media posts had cost him a job at a local nonprofit. In response, Bettison called him.
And Smith recorded the conversation.
“What I would like for you to do, I would like for you to take those pictures down off your Facebook page,” Bettison said in the phone conversation, according to audio Smith provided to the Free Press. “I would like for you to do that. I’m asking you.”
The department confirmed that the Aug. 5 call with Smith took place, but did not make Bettison available for an interview Aug. 25 or Aug. 26.
Instead, in an Aug. 26 statement, Bettison said: "I asked Mr. Smith to remove the photos because, as a man and a father, I found them to be inappropriate and believed they were intended to shame and humiliate a woman — something no woman deserves."
He said he also spoke with Walker July 11 and asked him to stop disseminating the photos if he was the one doing so. He said he spoke with Walker in the course of investigating a human trafficking complaint at his facility — allegations he said Walker denied and that did not bear out during the visit.
"I asked if he (Walker) knew where the photos of him and Mayor Sheffield were coming from," Bettison said in the statement. "He told me he had no knowledge and suggested someone may have gotten them from his phone.
"I then asked him — man to man, and as someone who cares about our community — that if he had any knowledge of how the photos were becoming public, he help make it stop. I made that request for the same reason I asked Mr. Smith."
Walker did not reply to requests for comment Aug. 26.
Mayoral spokesman John Roach said Aug. 25 that Sheffield had no involvement in asking the men to remove the posts and was not aware of Bettison’s actions until Roach asked her.
He would not provide information on the nature of Sheffield's relationship with Walker or its timing. Sheffield married another man — Ricky Jackson Jr. — in December, shortly before taking office.
DPD says it took phone for separate case; activist calls it pretext
The search warrant for Smith’s phone, signed by a Wayne County judge, cites a felony Michigan law often characterized as cyberstalking, along with the misdemeanor offense of malicious use of telecommunications. It’s dated Aug. 12.
The warrant gave police authorization to search Smith’s iPhone for evidence related to those alleged crimes, with a date range from July 1, 2026 through Aug. 1, 2026; permitting retrieval of phone data, including calls, contacts, location data, texts and chats, web history, audio recordings, photos and videos.
A Detroit police report compiled by Sergeant Christin Winans and obtained by the Free Press says Smith was the subject of a July 28 complaint made by a woman who had been communicating with him about Walker and the mayor over texts and phone calls.
The complainant said that, on Facebook, Smith “began to tag her in a lot of false allegations of receiving money from the Sheffield family and Marvin Walker, also accusing her of being associated with sex trafficking.
“She stated she did talk to Mr. Smith and ask him to stop adding her to his Facebook posts and making statements of false claims of accepting money from them and false claims of trafficking allegations, to which Mr. Smith implied that she would end up like Strawberry, who was an erotic dancer and was” killed following a never-proven, but rumored party at the Manoogian Mansion under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the narrative says.
Smith has not been arrested or charged with a crime and has since been given permission to retrieve his phone, the police department confirmed.
Smith said he believed the case was used as pretext to take his phone.
“I think it's an overreach and it's a covering of criminality for his boss,” Smith said of Bettison in a phone call with the Free Press Aug. 25. “I think it was a way to protect his salary at all costs and protect the mayor.”
In a statement, Bettison said: “The ongoing criminal investigation involving Mr. Smith is completely unrelated to this matter and began before my phone call with him on August 5, 2026." The criminal investigation of Smith began in July.
“That investigation was initiated after a citizen filed a complaint with the Detroit Police Department alleging that Mr. Smith threatened her life,” Bettison said. “Any suggestion that I influenced or used the investigation for any other purpose is completely false because the facts and timeline speak for themselves."
Legal experts: Timing ‘eyebrow raising,’ but cops frequently want phones
The Free Press spoke with multiple criminal defense lawyers about this case, specifically asking about police seizing Smith’s phone.
Margaret S. Raben, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in Detroit who has substantial experience with prosecutors obtaining information from someone’s phone or other electronic devices, said a warrant in a case like this is not uncommon. She did note the timing of the phone seizure, in light of the phone call with Bettison.
"That's sort of eyebrow raising,” Raben said, noting when Smith’s device was taken — Aug. 19.
“But it's also very possible there were a lot of interim steps between [the report and seizure], and it does seem like there were enough interim steps there in getting a search warrant that legally, the seizure is covered."
John Freeman, a former federal prosecutor who now practices criminal defense law out of Bloomfield Hills, and Scott Grabel, a criminal defense lawyer in Washtenaw County, both also reviewed the case for the Free Press.
Grabel said the criminal complaint provides enough grounds for a search warrant — it doesn't mean the allegations are true, but it's certainly probable cause to seize the phone.
Freeman said it's generally common for law enforcement to try to obtain phones, but it can be difficult to track down specific details used to justify the warrant if no criminal charges are ever filed.
Freeman said if law enforcement searched the device based on the allegation cited in their warrant, then found something unrelated — in this case, something pertinent to Sheffield — they'd likely have to get a new warrant if they wanted to use that information in a case.
Bettison asks for Sheffield photos removed
Bettison asked Smith at least twice during their Aug. 5 phone conversation to remove photos of Sheffield and Walker.
“I did see some of the posts that you made,” Bettison said. “But the post with Mary kissing Marvin … man, it’s freedom, you can do what you want, but I don’t like it.”
Bettison later said: “I’m just asking, take it down. And you can always put it back up. But I’m just asking you to take it down for me.”
Bettison also said that his ask was a personal request: “aint nobody told me to do none of this, you sent me a text.”
Smith and Bettison have a prior relationship based in part around Smith’s work with a gun-violence victims advocacy organization, Bettison indicates in the audio recording of the call.
In the recording, Smith said he felt the mayor was “going in my pockets,” and had called the nonprofit Detroit Hamtramck Coalition about his posts and deprived him of a work opportunity.
Roach, the mayoral spokesperson, said Sheffield did not and had never heard of the organization.
Sharon Buttry, a leader with the Detroit Hamtramck Coalition, said she nor staff spoke with the mayor and that Smith’s work lapsed because his contract expired.
Also during the call, Smith asked Bettison to help set up a meeting between him, the mayor, and the organization to discuss a controversial Moroun family-owned concrete factory on McNichols, because he had been asking unsuccessfully for such a meeting for months.
Bettison said he would make the request of the mayor, adding “and whether you take it down or not is not going to stop me from requesting a meeting.”
Smith said Bettison's was the third request he received asking him to stop posting about the mayor and Walker. Additional requests, he said, came from Sheffield's father, the Rev. Horace Sheffield, and Detroit Community Relations Director Ray Simpson.
Roach confirmed that Simpson also contacted Smith after Smith texted him, but said Simpson did not ask him to remove any posts. Rev. Sheffield declined to comment.
Violet Ikonomova is an investigative reporter with the Free Press focused on government and police accountability in Detroit. Contact her at vikonomova@freepress.com.
Dave Boucher is an investigative reporter with the Detroit Free Press. Reach him at dboucher@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit chief asked activist to remove photos of Sheffield kissing man
