Officer fired in Detroit is one of those accused of abuse in RenCen security lawsuit

In 2008, narcotics cop Matthew Zani made a contentious exit from the Detroit Police Department.

Zani was fired over the findings of an internal affairs investigation, triggered after he was accused of violating the civil rights of those he arrested during southwest Detroit drug raids.

The city ultimately would pay $166,000 to settle five civil lawsuits from Zani’s accusers, including a man who said the officer hung him from a window by his ankles and tried to hang him with a noose.

More than 16 years after his firing, Zani faces newer allegations of wrongdoing. But today it’s for his work with a different employer: the private security police force patrolling Detroit’s iconic Renaissance Center for General Motors Corp.

The security firm is accused in lawsuits of a pattern of racism and harassment by its white officers, including Zani, that has gone unchecked for years despite being under state oversight, according to a Free Press investigation published in November.

“He was fired by the department. Shouldn’t the standard for hiring somebody to provide a law enforcement function be how they were evaluated at their last law enforcement function?” asked Sheila Cockrel, a former Detroit city councilwoman and longtime activist against police misconduct.

Today, Zani, along with five other private security officers, faces a federal civil lawsuit from two Black RenCen visitors who say the officers beat them and detained them in a basement cell. Another federal lawsuit from a whistleblower co-worker alleges racial profiling and harassment of Black RenCen guests since at least 2016. That suit names Zani and eight other officers.

Allegations against Zani and the other RenCen officers include excessive force, assault, false arrests, falsifying reports, and racial discrimination.

RenCen guest Demarko Brown alleges in his lawsuit that GM and the security company knew Zani and four other officers were former police officers “with known racial biases” and knew Zani was terminated from his previous job and hired him anyway.

Attorneys for the security company and GM, which are also defendants, denied in court documents they have violated anyone's rights.

The Free Press requested the work histories of 16 individuals associated with the RenCen private security force through the state Freedom of Information Act, including investigative documents related to the individuals, from Michigan State Police in November.

State police have yet to produce the records.

Zani, of St. Clair Shores, did not return calls or letters from the Free Press for comment. A man who answered the door at an address listed as Zani’s told a Free Press reporter he was not Zani. His current attorneys did not return calls for comment.

The attorney who represented Zani when he was a DPD officer, Frank Eaman, also did not return calls and emails for comment, only responding "I am retired" to a Free Press email.

Two separate state investigations are ongoing into the actions of the RenCen police force — one by the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES) and the other by Michigan State Police, who are looking for possible criminal violations.

MCOLES is also the agency that sets the standards and training for law enforcement in Michigan.

The agencies are scrutinizing Renaissance Center Management Co., the private security force GM created to patrol the riverfront RenCen and is majority-owned by G4S Secure Solutions, an international security company based in Florida, according to court documents.

Under Michigan’s Public Act 330, the state had given the security company the legal authority to make misdemeanor arrests.

In the wake of Free Press reports on the allegations, a GM spokesman confirmed in November that the automaker had taken action, removing those officers under investigation from the property and later deciding the officers who remain can no longer make arrests or carry handcuffs.

MCOLES said the company gave up its state license on Tuesday.

Allied Universal is G4S’s parent company. Allied did not return calls and emails regarding Zani’s past with DPD. Allied said in November that the company "has zero tolerance for discrimination and use of force of any kind."

GM said Zani is no longer assigned to GM properties and deferred comment on Zani's employment to Allied.

Historic trial leads to acquittal, firing

More than 20 years ago, Zani made front page headlines during his tenure as a Detroit cop.

In 2003, federal prosecutors indicted him and 16 other Detroit officers for civil rights violations, at the time one of the largest criminal cases to hit the department in years.

Federal prosecutors labeled Zani as part of a conspiracy among the officers that included alleged beatings, wrongful arrests, planting evidence and the theft of money and guns during illegal drug searches.

Some of the civilian suspects the accused DPD cops arrested served prison time for crimes they didn't commit, federal prosecutors said. At least two were even released from prison after the federal indictment was filed, according to news coverage at the time.

Police brutality activists heralded the charges, which came just a week after city officials signed two agreements with the federal government pledging to clean up the troubled department. Ultimately, though, the prosecution's attempts to convict Zani and the other officers at trial was a complete failure.

A jury had to decide whether Zani and other Detroit cops violated the constitutional rights of suspected drug dealers, or whether they were just doing their jobs by removing criminals off the streets of southwest Detroit.

Eaman, Zani’s attorney at the time, and other officers’ attorneys disputed the prosecution’s claims, saying the witnesses the government called to the stand to testify were lying to get the officers off the streets so criminals could continue working.

"The government witnesses are not reliable," Eaman had said at the beginning of the trial. "They are not the kind of people who are used to telling the truth."

Zani, Eaman argued in court, had received commendations and was never suspended prior to the indictment but did receive complaints from “drug dealers and their friends” he had arrested.

Eaman’s argument stuck with jurors.

After a 34-day trial with more than 100 witnesses, jurors acquitted Zani and other officers.

Two jurors told the Free Press after the verdict they were concerned that the witnesses the prosecution brought to the stand weren’t reliable.

"Their witnesses scared the living bejeebers out of me," said one juror, a 67-year-old Detroit woman, according to the Free Press at the time.

A 64-year-old Madison Heights real estate agent said to a reporter that she didn’t know how Detroit could rid itself of crime without aggressive police officers.

After the acquittals, prosecutors later dropped charges against seven other officers yet to go to trial. Three other officers pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn weighed in with his own opinion of the acquittals, saying they "cannot be viewed in any way as a clean bill of health, either for any of the defendants or the Detroit Police Department generally.”

A separate DPD internal investigation involving the allegations surrounding the 2003 indictment found Zani’s conduct violated the department’s policies.

Four years after his acquittal, in 2008, Zani was fired from the department for "misconduct that was included in the indictment," including false arrests and false entry, following a lengthy and unsuccessful appeal, Detroit Police Cmdr. Michael McGinnis told the Free Press this month.

City pays Zani accusers in civil court

While Zani was acquitted in criminal court, his accusers ended up being paid thousands by the city to settle their federal civil lawsuits against the officer.

That included Michael Holt.

In a February 2002 incident, Zani and other officers allegedly dangled Holt by his legs from a second-story window during an illegal search into a home in the 3700 block of Tillman Street, according to Holt’s lawsuit. Then, Zani and another officer tightened a noose around his neck, and attempted to hang him, the suit claimed.

Also inside the home was James Underwood, whom Zani allegedly punched in the head after he was handcuffed and falsely arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. Underwood’s lawsuit accused Zani of making a false report stating he had observed Underwood go to the residence to buy drugs.

The city paid out $35,000 to Holt and $15,000 to Underwood to settle their lawsuits. The city approved the payouts after Zani’s acquittal in federal court.

In a 2004 lawsuit, Clifton White alleged that Zani and a group of officers used a battering ram to illegally enter his home and falsely arrested him for possession of cocaine — charges the suit says were eventually dismissed.

The raid happened in the middle of the night while White, his fiancée and two toddlers were sleeping. Police handcuffed him and searched his two children — their diapers removed without permission, White’s lawsuit alleges.

No drugs were found.

White accused Zani of writing a false police report, stating the officers were responding to a “man in an alley” run and that White had thrown a baggie of cocaine when encountered by police.

The city paid White $50,000 to settle his lawsuit.

“I’m not surprised,” said White’s attorney, Kevin Ernst, when the Free Press contacted him about the new accusations Zani faces.

“I thought it was clear that those guys that got indicted were guilty. It’s just that the government’s main witnesses were convicted felons, primarily — the jurors were calling the witnesses the defendants.”

Zani is not the only cop who was indicted but ultimately acquitted in 2004 who went on to face similar allegations after he left DPD.

William “Robocop” Melendez went on to become a cop in Inkster before he was sentenced to prison for beating a motorist during a January 2015 traffic stop so badly he was hospitalized.

Police dashcam video showed Melendez punched the motorist 16 times. The judge presiding over Melendez’s trial, Wayne County Circuit Judge Vonda Evans, called the beating “disgusting.”

He was sentenced to 13 months to 10 years in prison and was released after serving 14 months.

Back in court on similar allegations

Zani now is facing new accusations of civil rights violations for his work at the RenCen.

Two Black visitors accuse Zani in a federal lawsuit of assaulting them, including a 61-year-old mentally ill woman who says he punched her in the face repeatedly after an argument in August 2023 about whether she could bring her bicycle inside the high-rise.

Video reviewed by the Free Press shows a security officer slamming the woman into a concrete pillar before forcing her to the ground and punching her in the face repeatedly while on top of her. There is no audio in the video.

The woman told the Free Press she was hospitalized for a month.

A Detroit police official has said the woman allegedly attacked a RenCen officer with a tree branch. A court check found that no criminal charges had been filed against her as of early this year.

The other RenCen guest suing Zani, Demarko Brown, said in his lawsuit that Zani and four other white officers assaulted him so severely in 2020 he suffered a brain injury.

In addition, Zani’s own co-worker sued the private security firm and nine officers late last year alleging Zani and others profiled and harassed Black RenCen guests since at least 2016.

Robert Barnes, current senior use-of-force instructor with the security group as of late last year, said in his lawsuit that unchecked excessive force and racism by white officers is so rampant, he fears someone will get killed. His lawsuit also names GM and the security companies as defendants.

Attorneys for the security companies and GM are asking a judge to dismiss Barnes' lawsuit, arguing that when he was hired he agreed to resolve such claims through an arbitration process, according to court filings.

Arbitration is a process that typically allows parties to resolve disputes in private.

Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. She can be contacted at 313-264-0442 or asahouri@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Officer fired in Detroit is one of those accused of abuse in RenCen security lawsuit