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🌊 How Dion Savage Got His Life Back
The story of a man who says he wrongfully spent 25 years behind bars
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By Max Frost
“You got a phone with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Type it in real quick,” the man said. “‘Dion Savage.’ Google.”
I waited for it to load.
“You might need to sit down to read it,” Savage warned.
We were in a desolate parking lot in a desolate part of one of America’s most desolate cities – Flint, Michigan. To Savage, for reasons that will soon become clear, the city changed in the blink of an eye.
We spotted Savage as the lone man in the parking lot, tending to a barbecue smoker. We had pulled in to get some food. As we waited for our ribs, wings, mac and cheese, and banana pudding, Savage told us about his son. He had been a boxing protégé who started on the defensive line for the University of Oklahoma’s football team. At the peak of his career, he started in a Bowl game where Oklahoma upset favorites Alabama.
The Google search finally loaded. The first result was a GoFundMe link: “23 years and 54 days.”
It was 1990, and Savage had been closing up his business, Dion’s Party Store. As he counted the money, he saw a man being handcuffed outside. As he watched, the police violently kicked the man in the ribs. Savage ran outside to interfere.
Flint was on the decline in 1990. Once the automotive capital of America, the car factories had shuttered one after another. Out of money with a rapidly declining population, Flint was well on its way from being synonymous with the American dream to being synonymous with violence, poverty, and neglect. Yet amid that transition, Savage had prospered. If you wanted to have a party in Flint, you went to Dion’s Party Store.
On that night, though, Savage tried to stop the police from beating up the man outside his store. The officers didn’t appreciate that, and from then on, Savage, his businesses, and his customers became the subject of a continued harassment campaign. Thankfully, in 1991, Savage won a restraining order against the whole department. He could get back to minding his own business.
Savage was thriving. He put his money into building a $400,000 four-bedroom home in the suburbs, where he moved his family. But on November 18, 1995, everything changed.
Savage remembers it like it was yesterday: “First snowfall,” he recalled.
Savage, his daughter, and son grabbed two shotguns and a rifle and went out into the field, looking to do some rabbit hunting. As they traced the tracks in the fresh snow, they crossed onto the property of their next-door neighbor, a police officer. The officer came running out and told them to get off the property.
12 days later, after a four-year hiatus, the police harassment resumed. The police raided Savage’s store and his home, allegedly searching for crack and cocaine. They found none. Nevertheless, Savage was indicted and charged with using his stores as the base “for the large-scale distribution of crack cocaine during 1991-95.”
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Editor’s Note
Thanks for reading. We hope you enjoyed today’s reporting. With this newsletter, we aim to shed light on stories that have been underreported by mainstream media. Thanks for supporting our work.
We got a wide range of replies to yesterday’s story on elite journalists:
Samantha wrote:
This newsletter disappoints. It’s the first time you started off your newsletter with an actual editorial opinion, at least that I recall. What happened to balance? And just the facts. Stating that the elite has no experience with crime because they live in nice areas isn’t exactly what you try to do.
Bill wrote:
Glad to see you're getting back to reporting facts and NOT adding or sliding into political opinion! This was what made me a proponent of 66 and I invite many of my middle of the road conservative/liberal friends to follow 66. But I was getting "nervous" as I've seen more political opinions "sliding" in. Thank you for writing an article that gives me hope that those of us in the middle - have a reliable and non-frustrating source for news!
Fra wrote:
From the outside (I only look at Roca and another newsletter for US pov news) it looks like you are becoming more pro-Trump every day.
I liked you years ago because I had the impression that you tried to be super partes. I don‘t know why but it seems like now you are just throwing that out the window and falling in line. It might just be the US political climate though, Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman seem to experience similar shifts…
Obviously who cares, I’m just a drop in an ocean of listeners. But you never know when impartial feedback can be useful, so I thought I’d write.
Either way, you have done me an amazing service those last years, and I am very thankful for that
And Greg and Lisa wrote:
Felt today's article was more of a manifesto... and a good one at that. I'm less focused on the DC story (very important, and well-executed, BTW), more on the divisiveness continuously inflamed by the MSM (to ring their cash register, obviously; positivity, rationality, and balance haven't historically sold that much ad space).
My wife and I refer to ourselves as "radical moderates" because, at least in many public spaces (especially online), to behave like a moderate (including respecting the opinions of others) has been a radical thing in the hyper-partisanship of the past decade or so.
Thanks so much for being there for those of us who feel stuck in the middle... I suspect we're actually the majority, but you'd never get that from the MSM, elite universities, or our hyperbolic two-party system. Keep up the awesome work!
Keep the replies coming! And if you want to read more of our latest stories, find them here:
See you tomorrow,
Max and Max