Police chief responds to gun recording

Police Chief Jamiel Altaheri

By Charles Sercombe
Hamtramck Police Chief Jamiel Altaheri says the recording of him offering a loaded gun to a female civilian from the police academy was “manipulated.”
In an angry exchange in text messages to The Review, Altaheri said:
“The recording was manipulated and, secondly — she never touched and was never loaded. Thirdly — I’m very upset with your biased and unethical reporting. I had respect for you and thought you were unbiased and was actually a reporter with high ethics.”
Chief Altaheri was referring to Review Editor Charles Sercombe.
The recording in question was released by attorney Jonathan Marko, who represents City Manager Max Garbarino and police department investigator Dave Adamczyk in a Whistleblower Protection Act lawsuit against the mayor, city council and police chief.
. Chief Altaheri has been suspended with pay, pending an investigation, over a number of possible criminal allegations.
Garbarino and Adamczyk are also on paid suspension pending the investigation.
Some of those allegations against Chief Altaheri stem from a recording made by Adamczyk.
Adamczyk’s recording was apparently made unbeknownst to the police chief and others in the room, which included Carol Rutkowski.
Rutkowski is the person that Altaheri was recorded offering his loaded gun.
The taped conversation centered on Rutkowski complaining that an unnamed store owner was refusing to return her eyeglasses.
In the recording, released by attorney Marko, Chief Altaheri allegedly said:
“Here, take my gun. Point this at his f-cking head and tell him, ‘Give me the frame.’”
He added: “Go put it in his head and tell him, ‘Give me the frame.’”
In the recording, an officer can be heard asking if the gun is loaded, and Altaheri replied that it is.
Altaheri told The Review: “There was no loaded gun and she never had it in her hand. We were all just talking.”
Altaheri told The Review that the dispute over the eyeglasses was settled because “I bought her her $250 frames with my money, because she couldn’t afford it.”
Although the chief stressed more than once that Rutkowski never touched his gun, The Review did not report that she did.
The chief is not alone in disputing how that conversation went down. Rutkowski said, in a Facebook posting on “Hamtramck Square,” that the offer was simply a “joke.”
Not only that, Rutkowski said the person who recorded the conversation, Dave Adamczyk, was in on the joke.
“You (Adamczyk) know you were laughing. You know it, so you can’t go around and say you weren’t laughing because you were laughing,” Rutkowski said, in the recording posted on Facebook.
On the tape recording that Adamczyk made, there appeared to be no audible laughter, but some of the recording was muffled.
Chief Altaheri also said Adamczyk was aware the conversation was a joke.
“The fact that the joke was David Adamczyk’s idea, because he heard her complaining that she was going to rob the place as a joke because she couldn’t afford eyeglass frames — and him recording without anyone’s knowledge, speaks about his ill-intention,” Altaheri told The Review.
Asked to comment on the matter, Adamczyk told The Review he could not comment because the matter is under investigation, and that he has a pending lawsuit against the mayor, city council and police chief.
As for The Review’s reporting on the matter, Altaheri said The Review should have asked about the “authenticity” of the recording.
“You know he (Adamczyk) owns a studio and investigative company and it’s very easy to manipulate and fabricate audio,” Altaheri said.
Asked where Adamczyk may have manipulated the recording, Altaheri said:
“If someone recording your conversations without your knowledge, will you know exactly… what you said? Of course it was manipulated. Why would someone record this conversation? What’s the motive and if witness stated that they were laughing why wasn’t that in recording??”
Posted June 20, 2025