Chief Winstrom is now saying that Patrick Lyoya was killed because the GRPD was understaffed

It has been a week since the Judge announced a mistrial in the legal proceedings against the former GRPD cop who killed Patrick Lyoya. On Wednesday there were two different gatherings to talk about next steps in finding justice for the Lyoya family. 

During Tuesday night’s Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, there were dozens of people who spoke during public comment denouncing the recent behavior of the GRPD, especially during the Schurr trial and their actions during the Cosecha May Day march and the march after a mistrial was announced.

Just minutes before the 7pm Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, WOODTV8 ran a story that was crafted by GRPD Chief Eric Winstrom, a story that was a calculated PR stunt. Winstrom has been working overtime to control the narrative around the GRPD, claiming that he has regained the trust of the community when it comes to the GRPD.  

This story that aired on WOODTV8 was simply another pre-emptive attempt to win over public support for the GRPD, with Chief Winstrom playing his role as the snake oil salesman. Winstrom had the audacity in this channel 8n story to make the claim that had their been more cops in the police force, Christopher Schurr would not have had to shoot Patrick Lyoya. 

On top of that, the WOODTV8 story used commentary from Christopher Schurr’s trial, where Schurr is talking about hoping for backup on the day he shot Patrick Lyoya. By crafting this story, on could say that Chief Winstrom is brilliant, but I would also call him diabolical. Diabolical in the sense that he willingly knows that this claim is meant as a justification for why Schurr shot Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head. Chief Winstrom never comes out and says it, but it is clear that this is what he is implying. 

Here are 5 reasons why Winstron’s claim that Schurr would not have killed Patrick Lyoya if there were more cops available that fateful day is just plain ridiculous.

• An expert that Kent County Prosecutor used during the Schurr trial made it clear that there were multiple things that Schurr could have done after pulling over Lyoya. This expert testified that Schurr did not have to chase after Lyoya when he fled initially. Lyoya  was stopped because his car registration had expired. 
• Schurr could have waited for back up, that would have allowed for the possibility that Lyoya would be willing to cooperate.
• Schurr could have gone to Lyoya’s home later that day to speak with him and find out why he was driving with an expired car registration.
• Schurr did not use de-escalation tactics. In fact, Schurr escalated the situation.
• The GRPD have been facing a crisis of legitimacy in recent years, thus offering justifications for what they do, even shooting unarmed civilian, is an opportunity to argue why we need cops and more of them. The excellent report by Interrupting Criminalization provides important data and an analysis that dismantles Chief Winstrom’s claim. In fact, this report makes it clear that cops rarely prevent violence. 

In my own research looking at local news coverage around crime and public safety, I found that the GRPD rarely prevent crime. In the 673 stories that centered around crime, there were only 11 stories about the GRPD actually preventing crime, which means in most of the stories the GRPD showed up after a crime had been committed.

A couple of other things that Chief Winstrom said in this story was, first, “We’ve turned around the culture around where elected officials aren’t afraid to compliment us anymore.” I read this as elected officials don’t want to be critical of cops anymore for fear of smear campaigns and character assassination from pro-cop organizations and cop unions. In Grand Rapids, the GRPD union has provided campaign funding for people like City Commissioner Robbins, who received $10,000.

The second this that Winstrom said was They (City Commission) did a fantastic job recognizing we need the police department,” he added. “We’re not in a position where we can abolish the police, get rid of the police, that world doesn’t exist.” Of course Winstrom is an apologist for policing, but he also demonstrates that he does not practice radical imagination, like imagining a world where people are shot by cops during a traffic stop. By making the point about the world of abolishing the police doesn’t exist, means that he is telling the Movement for Black Lives, Angela Davis, Miriam Kaba, Robin D.G. Kelley, and countless community based groups that they are wrong, or more accurately, Winstrom is telling them to fuck off.