From [HERE] All of the above. That's who is to blame for the City of Detroit's repeated failure to adopt federally mandated reforms at the Detroit Police Department, several people involved in the effort said Thursday in an unusual forum at Wayne State University.

They blamed the administration of ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for failing to get behind the reforms, police executives for resisting them and a federal judge for failing to crack the whip when the efforts stalled soon after they began in 2003.

"The initial reaction of the city was tremendous resistance," Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Levy, the Justice Department's point person on the reforms, said in her first public criticism of the department in the seven-year reform effort. "We shook hands, and we began to fight."

Ron Scott, of the Coalition Against Police Brutality -- which pushed for the reforms to curb excessive force, mistreatment of prisoners and mass arrests of homicide witnesses -- faulted U.S. District Judge Julian Cook for refusing to let his group become a party to the legal proceedings to keep up pressure on the city to comply.

"We felt we were stepchildren to something we pushed for," Scott said. "We're the victims, and we're not involved in the process."