DETROIT (AP) — A top aide to former Police Chief Jerry Oliver recommended to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's then-chief of staff that she fire a deputy chief who later was awarded a share of an $8.4 million settlement of a whistle-blowers' lawsuit, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Cmdr. Shereece Fleming-Freeman, chief of staff to then-Chief Jerry Oliver, recommended to Christine Beatty on May 7, 2003, that Kilpatrick fire Deputy Chief Gary Brown, according to a story posted on the paper's Web site Sunday night.

"It is obvious that he needs to be gone; he just needs to be gone," Fleming-Freeman said in a text message to Beatty cited by the Free Press. The mayor fired Brown two days later.

During last summer's whistle-blower trial, Kilpatrick testified that professional reservations, not personal retaliation, led him to dismiss Brown.

The Free Press, which first reported two months ago on sexually charged text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty that have made them the focus of a perjury investigation, also cited text messages indicating that current Chief Ella Bully-Cummings helped the mayor's office obtain the first of two city-funded Lincoln Navigators for the use of Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita.

Oliver has said Bully-Cummings did so without his knowledge, which Bully-Cummings denies.

The Free Press said Fleming-Freeman, now a deputy chief, declined comment. Mayer Morganroth, Beatty's lawyer, also declined to answer questions.

Oliver told the paper earlier this month that Brown's firing surprised him and that he had no idea that anyone on his staff had been consulted by the mayor's office for advice.

The text-messaging scandal was expected to come to a head on Monday, when the Wayne County prosecutor announces whether she intends to pursue perjury or other charges against Kilpatrick and Beatty.

During last summer's trial of the whistle-blowers' lawsuit filed by Brown and former officer Harold Nelthrope, Kilpatrick and Beatty denied under oath that they had a romantic relationship in 2002 and 2003. But that testimony was contradicted by published excerpts of sexually explicit text messages left on Beatty's city-issued pager.

Kilpatrick has said he will be "vindicated" when all aspects of the scandal are made public.

The Detroit Free Press hasn't explained how it obtained the 14,000 text messages, which were sent or received in 2002-03 from Beatty's city-issued pager. The newspaper said it cross-referenced the messages with the mayor's private calendar and credit card records to verify events in some of the notes.