GRPD recruitment video is easily exposed as hypocrisy

For years GRIID has been monitoring the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD), providing critique of the local commercial news media reporting, an analysis of GRPD policies, along with my reporting on how the GRPD treats local social movements in this city. 

On Tuesday, February 27th, the GRPD posted a very short recruitment video on their Facebook page, featuring their bicycle patrol riding on the downtown campus of GVSU, as shown in the image on the left above. There is a short narrative in the video, which states:

We are more than just officers; we are guardians constantly looking out for the Grand Rapids community. Join us in our mission to create a safer and stronger city for everyone. Click the link in our bio to learn how you can be a part of it. 

The narrative that accompanies the video by the GRPD is both absurd and dishonest. Just 5 days before the GRPD posted the video with bike cops, it was documented during a protest on Thursday, February 22nd, that the GRPD bicycle cops used force to push protesters back from an intersection that Vice President Kamala Harris was exiting from.

The GRPD bicycle cops arrived to the protest early on, but rode past the protest into a GRCC parking garage. They emerged from the parking garage, once they got orders from the Secret Service to make sure that people protesting US complicity in Israeli’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians would not be near the intersection. 

Those protesting against the Biden Administrations support for Israel had been legally protesting the entire time, standing on the sidewalk on the southwest corner of Fountain St and Ransom Ave. The GRPD bike cops picked up their bicycles, holding them in front of themselves, and used their bicycles to push those protesting further down the sidewalk where they had been non-violently protesting.

This incident demonstrated that the GRPD are not interested in keeping people safe in Grand Rapids, but they are guardians of those in power.