Livonia — An underclass of two-bit activists, fixated on a wild-eyed assortment of local conspiracies and the city’s mayor, have coalesced around one single long-time Livonia resident: Steve King, a former school board member and failed city council candidate.
King is an impossible force to ignore within the city. He manipulates a coterie of boomer malcontents like a fiendish puppet master. Predicting his political attacks is nearly impossible. His nemesis, to the extent he has a singular enemy, is Mayor Maureen Brosnan, which is ironic because, according to a source in the know, “she’s never even spoken his name.”
But therein lies the fixation. An endless hunt for the attention of a single person, birthing “Maureen Derangement Syndrome,” or MDS for short.
King and his followers—mockingly referred to as The Yellow Shirts—inflame city council meetings, where King routinely drags a metaphorical cross to the podium, climbs up, and hangs himself as a Christ-like figure while his disciples shake from the intensity of his anti-establishment power.
To be sure, Steve King is one of the more famous city residents, and therein lies a bigger tragedy. He prefers to dwell in infamy instead of being recognized as a beloved member of the community. It’s nearly impossible to find a resident of Livonia who doesn’t know King, but that acknowledgement is usually followed with a quick, “Did you hear what he did this time?”
What he did this time—make an aggressive run for City Council in 2025—has left a wake and has set up a potential legal drama.
The King saga goes back to spring 2025 when he filed paperwork to run in the upcoming city council election. Already a firebrand, he branded himself the anti-establishment candidate, donned a fluorescent yellow shirt emblazoned with his name, and made fighting off the mayor’s proposed City Center millage his cause de jour.
King won in the primary, successfully killing off the millage, but then he had a major problem: remaining relevant in a field with far more interesting and serious contenders.
King went hard to work stirring up a shirt storm all over town. Struggle sessions at the housing commission, hectoring old ladies in Silver Village, showing his ass at city events, and more and more emotionally charged speeches at council meetings. In desperation, he even chased and accosted City Councilwoman Robin Persiconi in a government parking lot, further highlighting King’s difficulty communicating with women under the age of 50.
But during the chaotic cloud of dust King very successfully kicked up, I detected a subtle shift in the wind only days away from the November election. Something significant had occurred: King became very careful on social media and tightened himself up in public.
People very close to city hall and city council, and those sharp for the city’s political landscape, all spoke to me during the week of the election, indicating they too felt a “shift.”
In fact, a source in the know revealed to me the day of the election that something did happen, without telling me the details. Livonia being a small big city, gossip proliferated but was soon forgotten.
But this minor controversy was kept alive by none other than Steve King himself. During the first city council meeting of 2026, and only two minutes and 50 seconds into deliberations, King rose and waxed poetically for three minutes on the notion he was being punished for his political speech by the mayor and her operatives by being banned from the Recreation Center and the adjoining newly constructed Senior Wellness Center. He declared this was a punitive strike against his speaking out against the corrupt practices by the mayor and not because of any potential misconduct on his part.
In the days following that speech, King’s followers went to work on social media, furthering his narrative and verbally smearing various employees of the city claiming mafioso tactics against their dear leader. In several posts, members of his coterie claim King’s due process rights were dismissed.
I watched King’s speech and monitored social media, and a cantankerous member of his rogue’s gallery snidely declared in a thread “Pics or it didn’t happen” as a defense of King.
Thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t that be funny if…” Connecting the dots, I leapt into action.
A search of district court records revealed Steve King was arrested and charged with breaking and entering on October 4, 2025, with a $1,000 bond. But what did he break into?
A Freedom of Information Act filing with the city of Livonia asking for surveillance film from the Rec Center and Senior wellness center on October 4 revealed footage of Steve King, wearing a yellow shirt, arriving at the Rec Center, scoping out the secure Senior Wellness construction site, removing the security gate, and entering the facility. Additional interior footage showed King inside the facility, revealing that he not only unlawfully entered the senior center, he also toured an unsafe area of the Rec Center with heavy machinery and material without wearing a hardhat.
In a hilarious bit, King can be seen entering an accessway, noticing the surveillance camera, and backing out of view. He was later observed exiting the facility and leaving in his vehicle.
It gets even funnier. The Livonia Police Report and investigative documents, in addition to a Parks and Recreation investigation, state that King posted photographs he took inside the facility on Facebook, alerting city employees to his illegal activity and facilitating his arrest.
Additional documents reveal Steve Kings received extensive due process as Parks and Rec Superintendent Edward Davis forwarded King’s appeal to the suspension to the Parks Commission where it was summarily denied. In addition, King is receiving additional due process on an upcoming trial date.
Combing through the fine details of this saga, one gets the notion King isn’t fully operating with a full deck of cards. Within the police investigation appear interviews with various city staff employees stating King had made public comments to them that he’d entered the secure site and had inspected the elevators. Even more bizarre, on additional dates since the break-in, King had approached Parks and Rec staff and made statements implying he was aware of specific details inside the site regarding construction material, thus clueing in employees that he was allegedly entering the construction site repeatedly and going so far as to showing employees photographs on his phone of the site interior.
The investigation also revealed that Davis had told King he was not authorized to enter the site months prior to the break-in and to seek access through the mayor office, with King responding, “she’s not answering my calls,” in a stunning lack of self-awareness.
According to the Livonia Police, King attempted to explain away his need to enter the site by claiming a member of the city council provided him authorization to enter the facility as needed, although multiple city officials, including Davis, who supervises the site, have informed Enjoyer no former or current members of the council have powers granting unsupervised entrance to the facility even for themselves.
All of this to say, Steve King seems to be in deep legal shit, but perhaps even more foolish are his lizard-brained fans who have bought his bullshit narrative hook, line, and sinker.
King is a supremely confident midwit, but clever enough to ride a populist wave to somewhat local notoriety. The island of misfit toys that hang on his every word, wear his stupid yellow shirts, and parrot his paranoid conspiracies? What excuse do they have?
Watching all this local drama play out, I feel a lot like Corey Feldman in “The ‘Burbs.” Stunned, bewildered, but unable to look away and excited to see what happens next.
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
