LANSING — The Flint promotion scandal was a watershed event at the Michigan State Police that remains a source of mutual distrust inside the agency’s top ranks, records show.
The rigging of promotion exams at the Flint Post predated Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s appointment of Col. James Grady as MSP director, in September 2023. But senior MSP officers have been suspicious of Grady’s admitted friendship with former 1st Lt. Yvonne Brantley, the Flint post commander who was found to have provided favored applicants with advance copies of promotion exam questions, and because of a 45-second pause in the audio recording of Grady’s questioning by internal affairs in connection with the Flint scandal, records obtained by the Detroit Free Press show.
“It was covered up,” Paul Pummill, executive director of the MSP Command Officers Association, who has accused Grady of being untruthful about his communications with Brantley, said May 9 during a separate internal affairs investigation.
Last June, both the MSP Command Officers Association and the MSP Troopers Association announced their members who participated voted more than 90% nonconfidence in Grady and his controversial choice of Lt. Col. Aimee Brimacombe as chief deputy director.
Records suggest an early contributor to shaken confidence in Grady, for Pummill at least, was the Flint scandal, which investigators determined had tainted at least seven promotions between 2019 and 2023. An even larger number of officers received discipline ranging from demotion to forced retirement or resignation, to firing.
But the distrust extends in both directions, records show.
Former Lt. Col. Ryan Pennell told an internal affairs investigator in a June 2 interview that Grady told him in October 2023 that he had already promised Brantley a promotion to captain in charge of the 2nd District, prior to the promotion scandal, which instead forced Brantley to retire.
Pennell, who is suing the department and testified he kept contemporaneous notes about his conversations with Grady, also told internal affairs that during a one-on-one meeting on Dec. 28, 2023, Grady told him he thought Maj. Joseph Brodeur, who has since retired, “looked happy” when Brodeur, Lt. Col. Dale Hinz, who has since taken a demotion to lieutenant, and Pennell called on Grady to inform him of the investigation of Brantley.
“It kind of caught me off guard because I was there,” Pennell said in the internal affairs interview. “I don’t remember anybody being happy that a post commander was under investigation for something (so) serious. But again, he said he had plans for Brantley and she was going to be the 2nd District captain.”
Pennell said Grady went a step further, appearing to accuse Pennell of coaching Brantley on how to rig exams when Pennell was a captain overseeing the MSP’s 3rd District, which is headquartered in Flint.
The conversation “became a little bit in my opinion accusatory towards me,” Pennell said in the interview. “Because he was implying that Yvonne Brantley had learned her process from somebody else, hinting that I was there as a captain, I must have known, and she had to learn it from somebody.”
Pennell also testified in a Jan. 13 deposition that Grady told him he continued to “reach out to” Brantley during the Flint internal affairs investigation, though Grady did not discuss with him the contents of any conversations that Grady and Brantley had.
Asked whether Grady had any comment on, or response to, Pennell’s statements, MSP spokeswoman Shanon Banner said the department responds to legal allegations in court, not in the news media.
Grady’s communications with Brantley were the subject of an internal affairs interview with Grady on Jan. 5, 2024. Grady was interviewed because Brantley reportedly told potential witnesses in the investigation that she had spoken to Grady about the allegations against her and he told her there was no evidence to support them, records show. In his interview, Grady denied telling Brantley that.
The 15-minute interview with 1st Lt. Nicole Bock was conducted remotely, via Microsoft Teams, with Grady’s camera turned off. Grady told Bock that he and Brantley had a long-standing professional relationship and that a friendship had formed over the prior couple of years, with them regularly communicating on their department-issued cell phones and sometimes on their personal phones.
Asked whether he had communicated with Brantley since she became the subject of an internal affairs investigation in October 2023, Grady first answered, “No,” but then corrected himself, saying, “Check that; yes, I did.”
Asked whether Brantley was truthful when she told internal affairs investigators she had not discussed with Grady the allegations against her, Grady began a hesitant response and then went silent for 45 seconds, — prompting suspicions among some MSP members who heard the recording that he was consulting with someone else in the room — before saying that Brantley was already aware of the allegations and, “I just told her that she needed to be careful.”
Grady sent Bock a clarifying email after the interview, in which he said Brantley texted him on his personal cell phone both before and after the start of the internal affairs investigation. Grady said he told Brantley to be careful and “not to trust anyone,” because at that time he did not believe she was engaged in the type of conduct alleged. Brantley told him people were making false allegations against her, and he knew she had a strong relationship with her staff and he was concerned someone might twist what she said to them, Grady said in the email to Bock.
“I am extremely disappointed to find out she engaged in the behavior,” Grady wrote in the clarifying email.
Pummill told internal affairs May 9 he raised concerns about the 45-second pause and didn’t feel it was ever properly investigated.
Allegations continue that promotions at the Flint Post are still being rigged.
Lt. Tarzza Williams Jr. alleges, in a lawsuit filed Jan. 21 in the Michigan Court of Claims, that the officer who denied him a Flint Post promotion to 1st lieutenant after an October interview, Inspector Fahad Qureshi, did so partly because of an undisclosed bias and conflict of interest.
Earlier, in October, two Michigan State Police sergeants sued the department and Qureshi, alleging promotions at the MSP’s Flint post continued to be unlawfully manipulated.
And before that, in April 2025, five troopers who were passed over for promotion to sergeant, and later learned copies of exam questions were provided to favored applicants, sued the MSP and other defendants in the Michigan Court of Claims.
Though Grady and Brantley were friends, records show Brantley clashed with Brimacombe.
The conflict between Brantley and Brimacombe was over allegations that Brimacombe, an attorney, pressured the Shiawassee County prosecutor to bring criminal charges against three troopers for alleged excessive use of force during an August 2022 arrest in Owosso. The alleged police brutality against Jacob Long was first reported to the MSP through Brimacombe, in a direct message from Long’s sister, who was a Facebook friend and acquaintance of Brimacombe.
Criminal charges against the troopers were dismissed after a May 2023 preliminary hearing at which Brimacombe testified for the prosecution.
The MSP launched an internal affairs investigation into Brimacombe’s conduct in September 2024, after two of the three troopers filed a 2024 lawsuit alleging she improperly pressured the prosecutor to bring the charges. The suit also alleged that as the former head of MSP risk management, Brimacombe orchestrated an unusually speedy $999,999 settlement of a lawsuit Long filed in federal court in April 2024.
Internal affairs closed the investigation into Brimacombe as unfounded in November 2024, records show.
Though she had already retired over the Flint scandal, Brantley told Bock in an Oct. 18, 2024 internal affairs interview that she had heard rumors Brimacombe was meeting with the Shiawassee prosecutor in advance of a charging decision and she felt that was inappropriate. Brantley said she told troopers at the Flint post — after charges were filed against troopers for the Owosso arrest but before the charges were dismissed — that the allegations would be investigated.
The day after that meeting, Brantley got a call from a trooper saying Brimacombe had shown up at the Shiawassee detachment, which is part of the Flint Post, wanting to know what was said at the previous day’s meeting, Brantley told Bock.
Then, Brantley “took away Lt. Col. Aimee Brimacombe’s access to the post and she instructed the troopers to contact her” if Brimacombe returned there, Bock wrote in an internal affairs incident report. Brantley said she also had an unpleasant conversation with Brimacombe about the chief deputy director “cornering her people,” the report said.
Brimacombe, in her Oct. 24, 2024, interview with internal affairs, denied pressuring the county prosecutor and denied meeting with him until after the charges were filed. She acknowledged having a role in the settlement of the Long lawsuit after she was promoted out of her job in risk management, but said the settlement would have had to be approved by others, because of its size, and denied being influenced by her acquaintanceship with Long’s sister.
Brimacombe said she recalled having a “heated conversation” with Brantley in which Brantley accused her of prosecuting the troopers and pressuring the prosecutor. “Brimacombe told her none of this had happened,” Bock wrote.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Flint promotion scandal still reverberates at Michigan State Police
Reporting by Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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