Deranged man tears up Clerk’s Office

City Clerk August Gitschlag

By Charles Sercombe
City Clerk August Gitschlag faced some terrifying moments on Tuesday.
A man who police said was having a mental breakdown managed to climb through the clerk’s office window and proceeded to trash the office in a fit of rage.
Police declined to release the name of the man, and said he was subdued by several officers after he threw desks and damaged computer monitors.
Gitschlag said he barely escaped being possibly assaulted by the man.
“A crazy man built like Ray Lewis vaulted through the Clerk’s Office service window and proceeded to destroy the office,” Gitschlag said on his Facebook page about the incident.
“He smashed all the computers, flipped tables and literally wrecked the office. I managed to escape out the back door dodging the last table he tossed. It took several officers to contain him. It was absolutely terrifying.”
The clerk’s assistant was not in the office at the time. Just what caused the man to become so enraged was not clear.
But Acting Police Chief Anne Moise said the man had called 911 that day. However, according to the 911 system the man was apparently calling from a residence in Detroit, not Hamtramck.
The man, described to be about 6-foot, 5-inches tall and in his 30s or 40s, was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital where he is being observed. Moise said a detective will be assigned to the case to see if it warrants prosecution.
Gitschlag said the man told him “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you guys” when he burst into his office.
That could have been a reference to his calls to the Police Department. The Police Department is also located in City Hall, but off to the side of the front entrance.
Dispatchers at the Police Department’s front office are protected by a full glass window.
The City Clerk’s Office is the first office most visitors encounter when entering city hall. Most offices on the ground floor of city hall, except the Treasurer’s Office, have open windows for clerks to communicate with the public.
The administrative wing of offices on the third floor of city hall is sealed off by a locked glass door.
City Manager Katrina Powell said she has no immediate plans to change security policy in city hall.
“I’m not a believer of making changes that affect a multitude of people, based on one incident,” Powell said in an email in response to a question posed by The Review.
“However, we will be establishing a plan internally on how to deal with situations such as this in the event something should happen again in the future.”
Powell has had experience with scary situations with the public in a prior role as a city administrator in Longwood, Florida. It was reported that Powell installed a security door to her wing of offices after a large man visited her unannounced while she was alone and made salacious remarks about her looks.
That security door became her undoing. City officials later cited that door for one reason they forced her to resign, saying it symbolized her isolation from officials.
If it were up to Councilmember Robert Zwolak, there would be one immediate addition made to Hamtramck City Hall. He is resubmitting a proposal to post a sign in front of city hall that says firearms are not allowed inside.
He proposed that in recent weeks but received no support from his colleagues on council.
Although the man in Tuesday’s incident was not armed, Zwolak said there are a number of departments with open windows, and that employees are vulnerable to an attack.
“People are desperate, and many are in dire straits,” Zwolak said. “They are being hammered with taxes and water bills.”
Plus, he said, no guns are permitted in Detroit’s municipal center.
Tuesday’s incident also had some wondering if anything like that happened before in city hall.
Greg Kowalski, the Chairman of the Hamtramck Historical Commission and a former Editor of The Citizen, said he remembers only two incidents of note.
“I once saw Bob Kozaren’s assistant toss a guy out the front door,” Kowalski said in regard to the former mayor. “And I mean toss. The guy flew. And there was a guy who peed in a voting booth.”