The GRPD showed up to a meeting where GR Rapid Response to ICE was invited to speak

Editor’s note: for transparency sake I was the GR Rapid Response to ICE volunteer who attended the meeting mentioned in this post.

For people who are don’t already know, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE has campaigns to get the City of Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt 6 specific sanctuary policies, policies that are fundamentally public safety policies for affected communities.

Both Kent County and the City of Grand Rapids have been dismissive of these demands, both the last time people went to the Kent County Commission meeting in early January and based on the response from Mayor LaGrand during a City Commission meeting on January 27.

Volunteer organizers have witnessed throughout the past year incidents where ICE called the GRPD, along with instances where the GRPD showed up the same time as ICE did while GR Rapid Response to ICE was responding to an ICE alert.

On Wednesday, GR Rapid Response to ICE was invited to speak at Madison Square Church during a regular networking meeting they host with people and agencies in the community. I arrived maybe 15 minutes before the meeting started and right away noticed a GRPD cruiser parked in the adjacent parking lot to the building. The parking lot was full, so I went to the next parking lot just south and Parker there, only to see two more GRPD cruisers pull in and park as well.

When I came into the building I checked in with the person taking names and there was already a GRPD cop in the building. I then tracked down one of the organizers of the event and told them that GR Rapid Response to ICE will not share what we do if the GRPD is present.

The response from this organizer was that the GRPD rarely attends these events and I said there were at least two more coming. I then asked if there was a public notice for the event that mentioned that GR Rapid Response to ICE would be speaking? The organizer responded yes, which led me to believe that this was why so many cops were present.

I continued to have conversations with other event organizers to share that GR Rapid Response would not be speaking with the GRPD present and that we have witnessed GRPD/ICE collaboration on a consistent basis.

Eventually, I left the building and went home. However, within the next hour I received several messages from people who stated that the GRPD got up to speak and here are some of the things they said:

The GRPD got to speak in lieu of your (GR Rapid Response to ICE) absence at the meeting today. They said they will not use force or target ICE in their arrests, because they took the same oath they did. And that force is sometimes necessary.

When I asked if people pushed back on what the GRPD said, this person stated: Many leaders did. To the point that the Captain left quickly after her pedestal speech.

Another person wrote: The conversation centered on how people should comply with law enforcement  and how they are “not cooperating with ICE” and basically ignored when people said what about Miranda rights and being protectors of the community. Basically still saying the show up when ICE is there to just try to keep the peace.

The other person who messaged me stated: A community officer spoke for a while to this, and then took questions for a while as well.  Essentially, she stated that GRPD doesn’t coordinate with ICE but that if they are called out to a contentious scene that they will keep the peace.  She also said that jails will notify ICE if someone who has an outstanding ICE warrant is taken into custody for a different criminal offense.  There was a lot of pushback and conversation but it was healthy… good to have these conversations, even if they are unsatisfying to everyone involved (they certainly were unsatisfying to us).

I was delighted to get this feedback from people who attended and to know that there was a significant amount of pushback to what the GRPD had to say. Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE invite people to join their campaigns to pressure the City and the County to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies listed here below so that local cops do not collaborate with ICE in the arrest and detention of immigrants in this community.