Woman charged with making ethnic threats to black workers at Jewish loan office

A woman who police say made 40 increasingly disturbing calls within 20 minutes to a Jewish loan office in Bloomfield Township is facing ethnic intimidation charges.

Investigators said the woman unleashed a string of racially insulting phone calls that climaxed with a threat against employees of the Hebrew Free Loan of Metropolitan Detroit.

That led Oakland County authorities to file two counts of ethnic intimidation — a two-year felony, also punishable by fines of up to $5,000 — against April Marie Bennett, 29, of Hastings, a small town of 7,300 in western Michigan.

Besides ethnic intimidation, Bennett was charged last month with malicious use of a telecommunication service after detectives spent months tracing calls she made from her hometown to the Hebrew Free Loan office in Bloomfield Township, according to Bloomfield Township police.

Bennett’s calls immediately followed the nonprofit association’s refusal to grant an interest-free loan to a male caller because he wasn’t Jewish, police said.

The loan office grants interest-free loans only to Michiganders who are Jewish — a seemingly discriminatory practice, but it's legitimate because interest-free loans granted by a nonprofit group aren't regulated by the rules that govern banks, credit unions and other for-profit lenders, according to consumer credit experts.

Internet surfers can stumble onto Hebrew Free Loan of Metropolitan Detroit if they use search terms such as "free loans" and "interest-free loans." 

The investigation that led to Bennett’s arrest began on Jan. 3 when a man called the loan office asking for a loan, was told he didn’t qualify because he wasn’t Jewish, stated it “wasn’t fair” and hung up, said township police Lt. Paul Schwab.

Shortly after, employees at the loan office told police, a woman began calling with disturbing statements. But instead of being anti-Semitic, as might be expected, her outbursts were anti-black — apparently because several of the telephone tellers at the office, on Telegraph Road south of Maple Road, are African American, Schwab said.

It took months of investigating, but detectives ultimately gained sufficient evidence for police to tie the threats to Bennett 130 miles away, he said.

In the phone calls, "first she started dropping the N-bomb, and she made reference to Trump building the wall and wanting to send (the tellers) all back to Africa. She made all sorts of references, like picking cotton. She finally said something like, ‘I’m coming over there and blow your head off,’ and that was a very active threat," Schwab said.

Immediately after the employees reported the threat, police had no idea of its origin and while they investigated they provided “heavy extra patrols for weeks” around the loan office, Schwab said.

They had to obtain search warrant to check phone records, tracing the calls to Hastings and then sending detectives there to interview Bennett, who “denied it was her,” Schwab said.

"It took some good old-fashioned detective work and we proved it was her," he said. 

Last month, at the request of Oakland County authorities, police in Hastings arrested Bennett, although not without a struggle, Schwab said. "She has a history of fighting with police" and a criminal history of assault, he said.

On June 20, Bennett was arraigned in 48th District Court in front of Judge Kimberly Small and, after failing to post a $50,000 cash bond, she was being held in the Oakland County Jail, according to jail records.

Bennett had no lawyer assigned to her after arraignment because "she was a bad girl when she was here and wouldn’t fill out any paperwork for us," said a 48th District Court criminal docket clerk, who asked that her name not be used.

Hebrew Free Loan of Metropolitan Detroit had its start in 1895 in the back room of a shoemaker’s store in Detroit, according to the nonprofit group’s website. These days, the organization operates as an agency of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, said the loan office's executive director, David Contorer.

"A threat to our team members would never be acceptable but in this era, when you have things happening on college campuses and in houses of worship, it’s particularly worrisome," Contorer said.

"So we're very grateful to the police for following this up," he said.

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Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com