Copaganda: Deconstructing the GRPD TV series on HBO/MAX – Episode #4

Editors Note: The fact that Episode #4 aired last night, while white people and other police apologists are still defending Schurr, and a BIPOC organizer sits in jail because they dared to resist state carceral violence, should tell us something about the absurdity of this TV series.

Episode #1 affirmed stereotypes about Black people, thus perpetuating structural racism. The episode also demonstrated that this TV series will be a highly constructed show with the GRPD dictating the narrative about who they are and what they do.

Episode #2 once again centered on a criminal case involving Black people, where Police Chief Winstrom said people who don’t want to talk with cops suffer from “generational mistrust.”

In Episode #3 follows the case of a Black person charged with a shooting, which further normalizes the white supremacist belief that Black people are inherently deviant and violent. In addition, the Black woman who was charged with the shooting experienced domestic violence from the man she shot. The GRPD uses this opportunity to talk about Domestic Violence and how there is a new Domestic Violence court. However, police and domestic violence cases are problematic, as cops don’t know how to deal with domestic violence, plus they often perpetrate more harm in domestic violence cases, which is discussed in this toolkit.

At the beginning of Episode #4 a GRPD cop attempts to create a narrative about how he “shows compassion” to people who are unhoused and addicted. The GRPD then shows up to Heartside Park, where a Black woman has probably overdosed and the GRPD give her narcan. The video cuts back to the same cop we hear from at the beginning who says, “we are sometimes the only people out there that give them any compassion.” To provide some counter context, this is the same GRPD that evicted several dozen people who were staying at Heartside Park in an encampment, just days before Christmas of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. In addition, the GRPD enforces the City’s ordinance that was passed in the summer of 2023, where unhoused people can be arrested for sleeping on benches in the downtown area or asking people for money, which city officials refer to as “harassment.”

The episode then takes a turn with the story about another overdose case the year before, which the GRPD then claims it might be a homicide, where the person who provided the drugs purposely included other substances. 

The case continues, where the GRPD goes back to the cemetery, then cuts to family members and friends talking about this woman. Those who knew the victim showed an image of her on their phone, so now viewers know the woman who died in the cemetery was Black. 

Back at the GRPD headquarters, they have a picture of the person who is suspected of providing the laced drugs to the woman found dead in the cemetery. The picture is of an African American man.

The episode then brings us back to Heartside Park, where the GRPD are responding to another overdose case, with Chief Winstrom making the claim that synthetic fentanyl has “taken over the country.” The cops come upon 2 people who have overdosed and both of them are Black people. While dealing with the overdose cases, the GRPD then spot the guy who they had a picture of in the morning’s meeting, which is the same Black man they believe created a bad batch of drugs.

The GRPD Vice Unit then gets involved and decides to go undercover in Heartside Park. The episode then uses drone footage with the undercover cop attempting to buy drugs.

The GRPD are once again back in their headquarters with an update on the undercover cop in Heartside. They say there are 10 potential suspects and then the camera cuts to a document, with someone leafing through it, and viewers see that the 3 suspects they show are all Black men. 

In the next scene, the GRPD are back in the park and they ID several of the suspects from the document and apprehend at least three of them, all of which are African Americans. The scene cuts to drone footage, with text across the screen that reads – since the arrests, the mass overdoses have stopped.

The episode ends with the GRPD calling the family members back to their headquarters where they reveal what they have been doing on this case. The family members are understandably emotional and Chief Winstrom tries make it sound that this is some form of closure for them.

After four episodes, every person who is a shooting suspect, a drug dealer, an informant or a victim is Black. The Grand Rapids All Access PD series is not only awful TV, it perpetuate racist stereotypes and it completely exonerates the GRPD for the all the awful shit they do in this city.