Chief Winstrom thinks Grand Rapids is doing a pretty good job supporting the unhoused, but fails to mention the City ordinances that already criminalize the unhoused

In late July, after President Trump issued an Executive Order that would further criminalize the unhoused, WZZM 13 ran a story about how Grand Rapids, and specifically GRPD Chief Winstrom, was responding to that Executive Order.

Winstrom said that the GRPD has removed 4 cops from the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT), stating: “We had to remove those officers just simply to respond to 911 calls, because we saw the time people were calling 911, it was taking 15 minutes for officers to respond.”

Not having GRPD cops interact with unhoused people is a good thing, since we know that cops aren’t trained to provide community care and they generally respond with  force in those interactions. 

Winstrom then goes on to say: 

“I think there’s some grant information in there involved, like the federal government was going to look to give grants to different municipalities looking at that, but I think we’re doing a pretty good job here in the City of Grand Rapids, supporting our unhoused community, and I don’t see it having a big impact.”

Chief Winstrom might be referring to the 100 campaign that Grand Rapids has been involved in, but that is somewhat of a show piece response in Grand Rapids, one that was primarily motivated by removing unhoused people from downtown Grand Rapids in order to minimize their interactions with people who are spending money in downtown GR, especially when it comes to tourism. 

More importantly is the fact that the WZZM 13 reporter completely ignores the Grand Rapids ordinances that were adopted two years ago that already criminalized the unhoused in Grand Rapids. Those ordinances were promoted by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and the downtown business community that sought to rid downtown of unhoused people by criminalizing them. 

WZZM 13 fails the public miserably on the issue of the unhoused in Grand Rapids. First, they do not provide proper context by excluding any information about the Grand Rapids City ordinances that already have criminalized the unhoused. Second, the channel 13 reporter only provides Chief Winstrom’s voice to the exclusion of those who are unhoused and those who are advocates of the unhoused. Essentially, Grand Rapids adopted policies to criminalize the unhoused 2 years prior to the recent Executive Order from President Trump.