In an invitation only State of the City address Mayor LaGrand praised the GRPD, but said nothing about how the GRPD killed Da’Quain Johnson

Last week Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand held his second State of the City address. Like last year it was also by invitation only.

LaGrand, like most politicians these days, only wanted people in the room that agree with him, along with not wanting to be challenged by community members who have a fundamentally different lived experience in this city. You can watch the State of the City address at this link, but what follows is my response to what LaGrand had to say.

First, it was important to note that the gathering was held in a church. Second, it is worth noting that like last year LaGrand solicited funds from the groups shown in the slide below, entities that have the most access to the Mayor of Grand Rapids. LaGrand made a comment about these sponsors claiming he didn’t want to host an event that put a “burden on taxpayers.”

Next, LaGrand took time to name and recognize other elected officials, since this is what politicians do by giving attention to people in positions of power.

Once the Mayor got past all of the obligatory recognitions he then put up a slide that quoted the global professional networking corporation LinkedIn stating Grand Rapids  was the number one rising city in the US. It makes complete sense for LaGrand to celebrate what a global professional networking corporation has to say about Grand Rapids, since this only furthers the narrative about making Grand Rapids a destination city for those with class privilege.

However, what LaGrand said next is really what I want to talk about. The Mayor followed up the warm fuzzy declaration from LinkedIn about Grand Rapids by saying:

For a city to rise and to grow there has to be a foundation and that foundation is public safety.

LaGrand did acknowledge briefly the importance of the GR Fire Department, but he mostly talked about the GRPD, beginning at 12:48 into the video. Mayor LaGrand gleefully talks about the GRPD and says he has been on several ride-alongs and has seen how they treat people with “respect, empathy and concern.” Is the mayor so naive as to think that the GRPD officers he did ride alongs with would reveal their own prejudices or treat people with disrespect while the Mayor was present? Mayor LaGrand then invited everyone present to do a ride along with the GRPD.

LaGrand continued to praise the GRPD and to a rousing applause he said they are adding, “Community Police Officers who are going to be building relationships and community trust person by person.”

Mayor LaGrand didn’t completely gloss over the harm that the GRPD has done recently. At 14:42 into the video he says:

At the same time we know there is more work to do. This last year we have seen incidents that have sparked real concerns about our policing policies and have shown the limits of what our police force can do to intervene preventatively in crimes such as domestic violence. Those tragic cases underscore our need to continue hard conversations about how we can make our public safety programs maximize the safety of all of our residents equally and fairly and how we deliver safety for all of our residence.

So, it would seem that Mayor LaGrand can’t bring himself to even acknowledge that the GRPD killed Da’Quain Johnson or that some in the community have been organizing around this to demand justice. Mayor LaGrand said nothing about the fact that over the past 15 months there has been an organized effort, with thousands of letters being sent, to get the City of Grand Rapids to adopt 6 sanctuary policies, which are fundamentally public safety policies for immigrants. Mayor LaGrand also said nothing about how the GRPD harasses, surveil’s and arrests people engaged in organizing against violence and structural racism in this city.

It is also worth noting that while the mayor was talking about the GRPD he used the above slide image. However, when he talk about “incidents that have sparked real concerns about our policing policies”, the Mayor used this slide below.

Using a slide with flowering trees and shiny office buildings is just another way for the Mayor and other city officials to sweep under the rug the realities of how the GRPD has been causing harm in this city. Do you think that the mother of Da’Quain Johnson thinks Grand Rapids is a city on the rise? How about the elderly couple whose home was trashed by the GRPD while looking for a suspect, or the young Black motorists who were stopped by the GRPD, with at least 6 other police cruisers arriving? Do these people think that Grand Rapids is a city on the rise?

If Mayor LaGrand had held his State of the City talk in a public venue and made it open to the general public, you can be damn well sure that people would have shown up to challenge his version of public safety in Grand Rapids.