The Matrix of Policing in Grand Rapids receives another $6.45 million for the GVSU Police Academy

Ever since the massive uprising in 2020, the public has been struggling to understand the function of policing in the US. As a response to the police repression of the millions of people taking the streets after the police murder of George Floyd, the Movement for Black Lives put out a call to Defund the Police.

There was push back on the idea of defunding policing in the US and in Grand Rapids, mostly coming from white people, elected officials and members of the Capitalist Class. 

In the process of trying to understand the complexities of policing in Grand Rapids, I first wrote a piece in early 2022, entitled, The Matrix of Policing in Grand Rapids. In that article, and a subsequent post in June of 2022, I provided some analysis of all of the pieces of the policing matrix in Grand Rapids. 

In those two GRIID posted I not only identified the GRPD itself, but all of the entities included in the graphic here above.

A year after the GRPD murder of Patrick Lyoya, I attempted to write a piece about the curriculum that was being used to train new recruits for the GRPD, especially since the lawyers defending the cop who shot and killed Patrick Lyoya claimed that he was merely following his training. However, when I contacted the Police Academy, they blocked me from sending any future inquiries about what training new recruits were receiving, which I then wrote about.

Now, the Matrix of policing in Grand Rapids is expanding, with last week’s announcement that the GVSU Police Academy will be spending $6.45 million to relocate  the Police Academy.

According to an article on MLive: 

The GVSU Board of Trustees recently approved a proposal to renovate Grand Valley’s Meijer Campus in Holland to make room for the GVSU Police Academy, which is currently housed on the Allendale campus. 

Grand Valley leaders say the move will create more space for the Police Academy to “continue to meet the growing need for law enforcement officers (in) the region,” according to the agenda packet from the board’s Friday, Feb. 23 meeting.

In addition, the MLive article states: 

The academy goes beyond the mandatory minimum training requirement of 594 hours set by the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, requiring recruits to spend an additional 42 hours focusing on community policing which includes de-escalation and implicit bias training, according to the board packet.

Now, despite using buzzwords like community policing, de-escalation and implicit bias training, those components of the Police Academy curriculum have not translated into reducing the amount of harm that the GRPD inflicts on BIPOC communities, the unhoused and people involved in various social movements in Grand Rapids. Whenever there is a protest, no matter what the issue, those of us in the streets have seen nothing but increased surveillance, harassment and repression as standard practices of the GRPD. 

Some quick examples come to mind, such as how the GRPD threatened to arrest people marching in the streets in the Cosecha-led May Day 2023 action, even though the Palestine Solidarity GR protests often take over the streets in downtown without consequences. Another example is a recent protest in the southeast part of GR, which included going to Rep. Scholten’s home. At this protests there were at least 10 GRPD cruisers, along with a white, unmarked cruiser, which just happened to be the Chief of Police. The GRPD stopped and ticketed the driver of a car that was following the march, for safety purposes to reduce the possibility of motorists driving into protesters.

Besides these examples, for GVSU to spend an additional $6.45 million on the Police Academy sends the message that they are ramping up their efforts to recruit more people into the GRPD and to further criminalize marginalized populations and repressive tactics against dissident groups. In the end, the GVSU funding will only further solidify the Matrix of policing in Grand Rapids.