MLive story provides the GRPD with yet another opportunity to control the narrative about policing in Grand Rapids, particularly in the Black community

On Saturday, August 5th, MLive posted an article entitled, ‘Fishing with the Po Po’ event lets kids, police bond together outdoors.”

Like many of the stories that the local commercial media does about the GRPD, this story is nothing more than a propaganda piece for the cops, thus it is copaganda.

Now, we don’t know if the MLive article was the result of a Press Release from the GRPD or Uptown Church GR, which was the entity that organized the event, since there are no online Media Releases. However, Uptown Church GR did a promotional piece about the event on Fox 17 in late July.

There are two overall issues that I think are important about the MLive story, one has to do with the lack of context and transparency, and the second point has to do with the commentary from Police Chief Eric Winstrom.

Nowhere in the MLive article do we learn that Uptown Church GR has been part of larger efforts in collaboration with the GRPD and pro-police organizations in Grand Rapids. This is important, since Uptown Church GR has participated in an event that was hosted by the pro-cop group iCI Nation, a so-called Unity Walk, which involved some local pastors and the GRPD walking in a neighborhood on the Southside of Grand Rapids.

In addition, Uptown Church GR hosted a Summer Celebration just 3 weeks ago, with the GRPD invited to participate and to have some of their cops show off in feats of strength. These are just a few examples of how Uptown Church GR has made the decision, in the words of their Pastor, to develop relationships with the GRPD.

The second point I wanted to talk about, has to do with what Police Chief Eric Winstrom had to say to the MLive reporter. Winstrom was quoted as saying: 

“We want to let the kids know we’re very much human,” Winstrom said. “We very much care about the kids and we’re not the enemy. We’re not. We care about them here and we care about them when we’re at work, patrolling the area.” Winstrom said it has been hard to make community connections in the past few years after public opinion of police soured following high-profile police shootings of civilians like George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. “Policing is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, and police are necessary,” Winstom said. “Having adults in Grand Rapids that still embrace us and say, ‘Hey, we know that the police department is important and we want to support them,’ and making these connections for us is huge.”

These comments from Winstrom are instructive, but it is also worth noting that the MLive reporter does not challenge what Chief Winstrom had to say, instead they just acted as a stenographer without question or without providing any sort of counter-narrative.

We don’t know what order Chief Winstrom said the things that he said, especially since we know how much the news media often constructs story narratives. In Winstrom’s comments he begins and ends with making the point about how important it is to make connections with the public. His comment, “Having adults in Grand Rapids that still embrace us and say, ‘Hey, we know that the police department is important and we want to support them,’ and making these connections for us is huge.” Winstrom is correct in saying that this is huge, because they want to influence how the public sees them and what better opportunity than to go fishing with adults and kids. In this setting, the GRPD can construct their own image, an image which is radically different than cops patrolling in neighborhoods, profiling Black motorists, or pulling guns on Black and Latinx youth, as has been the norm in recent years in Grand Rapids. 

The fact that Winstrom himself, acknowledged the high profile police shootings of civilians like George Floyd in May of 2020, is itself an admission that his department is always looking for ways to counter the growing public understanding of the function and practice of policing in the US. The MLive reported could have presented the fact that 1006 civilians have been killed by police in the US over the past 12 months, based on the data collected by Washington Post.  The MLive reporter also could have made the point that the Washington Post does, where they say: 

Black people account for roughly 14 percent of the U.S. population and are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Chief Winstrom and his GRPD officers are not going to address this data or the fact that Black people in general are constantly at risk of intimidation, abuse, arrest, or death when encountering the police in this country. Add to this the lack of accountability or counter narratives about policing as presented by the dominant commercial news media in Grand Rapids, Chief Winstrom can feel confident that the GRPD will continue to to dictate the narrative about their role in this community, a narrative that is sanitized and completely false.