When are local news agencies going to talk to people and organizations that have been brutalized by the GRPD: The root of Winstrom’s anti-cop claim

The local news media continue to demonstrate their bias with all the coverage they have given to the former GRPD Police Chief Eric Winstrom. Hell, they provided an unquestioning platform for Winstrom to say whatever he wanted and there was no indication that any of the reporters challenged Winstrom’s claims.

Probably the most egregious claim that Winstrom made was that he left because of the anti-cop sentiment in Grand Rapids. Since this was the main talking point from Winstrom, one would think that any competent journalist would then go and speak with individuals and organizations that have questioned the GRPD, challenged the GRPD, protested against the GRPD and even organized to defend the GRPD. The local media has chosen to not talk to people involved in any of these efforts.

It is instructive to note that this same news media also provided Winstrom an earlier platform where he could talk about what the last 4 years have looked like to him in Grand Rapids. To counter Winstrom’s narrative I methodically looked at stories during his 4 years in Grand Rapids and wrote an article entitled, Killing and assaulting Black people, protecting power and criminalizing dissent: A grassroots account of what Chief Winstrom actually did over the past four years

In that article I talked about how the GRPD under Winstrom’s leadership killed Patrick Lyoya and how the local news has reported on it. I also wrote about how the local news reported on these issues in the just prior to the Schurr trial in an article entitled, Local news coverage leading up to Schurr’s trial has been influenced by his lawyers, experts, a failure to provide community voices and a pro-GRPD bias.

I talked about how the GRPD has been criminalizing dissent in Grand Rapids, particularly when it comes to BIPOC organizers that have been demanding Justice for Patrick in an article entitled, The criminalization of dissent in Grand Rapids.

I talked about how the GRPD has been doing the bidding of the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and other downtown business owners, by enforcing the City’s ordinances that essentially criminalized the unhoused.

I have shown how the GRPD has tried to intimidate those acting in solidarity with immigrants being targeted by ICE in a a recent article, and how Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have documented lots of evidence that the GRPD is collaborating with ICE.

I wrote two articles recently, both of which show how the GRPD are loved by those with wealth in this city and how the GRPD functions to protect the economic interests of the Capitalist Class.

I also wrote about how under Winstrom’s watch the GRPD killed another Black man in an article entitled, The GRPD killed another Black community member: Those in power have a script, but we don’t have to follow it.

If former GRPD Chief Winstrom wants to complain about an anti-cop sentiment then he and the local news need to come to terms with the fact that the GRPD ultimately protects systems of power – both political and economic – that they try to limit or silence free speech, that they criminalize dissent and that they disproportionately police in Black and Brown neighborhoods to manage those populations, using force whenever they want to.

End Note:

In the past two years I have done methodical documentation of MLive and the three GR-based TV stations – WOODTV8, WZZM13 and WXMI 17 on a number of issues. However, the vast majority of stories has to deal with public safety matters. In the 2024 study (linked below) of all these 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. This should tell us something about the real function of the GRPD.

2024 Local News Monitoring Project 

Out of the 433 stories in the first six months of 2025 that were about the GRPD, the courts or public safety matters, only once was there a story where the GRPD prevented a crime or violence.

2025 Local News Monitoring Project