What we learned from Mayor LaGrand’s comments after the most recent City Commission meeting about Cops and ICE

As I noted in my post about the student organized rally and the student comments during the City Commission meeting on Tuesday. much of the focus was on adopting the Cosecha sanctuary policies, demanding justice for Da’Quain Johnson and redirecting some of the $75.4 million proposed funds for the GRPD to meet community needs.

Students comments, along with other community input during the Grand Rapids City Commission was important, even if it seems as if no one was being listened to. Several of the commissioners responded at the end, although most of their comments had nothing to do and completely avoided the point that people were making around ICE, the GRPD and the City budget. However, Mayor LaGrand had plenty of to say, which is what I want to focus on in the rest of this post.

There were two overarching takeaways from what Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand had to say in his closing comments, which you can watch here, beginning at 2:38:42 into the video, making his comments about twelve and a half minutes long. The two issues we learned were that Mayor LaGrand believes that 1) the GRPD are essential to public safety and that they don’t act out of malice; and 2) the 6 sanctuary policies that Cosecha has been demanding for over 15 months, Grand Rapids is already doing them.

Before the Mayor talked about what he thinks of the GRPD and law enforcement in general, LaGrand decided to response to someone’s comment about working on police issues for a long time. LaGrand said he has been working in the “law enforcement space for 36 years,” as a lawyer, and as a state representative. LaGrand goes on to say he has worked to end mass incarceration and create a justice system that is not biased around class or race. He then said that he has yet to meet a cop who did their job out of malice.

Interesting, now I don’t recall anyone talking about cops acting out of malice, but I do remember people talking about the structural or systemic nature of policing, which has been designed to protect property, wealth and power. This has been the case since much of policing in the US can be traced back to slave patrols. Please read Kristian Williams book, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America.

It is not about malice or the “a few bad apples” argument, it is about understand the function of policing. See my 8 part articles based on a GRIID class on the history and function of policing in the US to find more resources and analysis.

The Mayor then says that he knows that the GRPD doesn’t act out of malice because he does ride alongs on a regular basis and that they do their jobs with courage. LaGrand even states at one point that all cops are not perfect, which evades the issue that people brought up on Tuesday night and have been doing for years in response to the GRPD, which has been to critique the systemic repression coming from the GRPD. Mayor LaGrand even went so far as to apologize to the GRPD for the comments made by mostly Black and immigrant community members.

From there he talked about spending years of his life trying to make the justice system better, which was followed by a list of his accomplishments, like the concerns raised by Black and Brown was about him and what he has done. Sweet baby Jesus……

Lastly, he said that living in a world without cops is a real stretch for him when he was talking about working with domestic violence victims, meaning that cops were absolutely necessary in domestic violence situations. The Mayor’s comment on this matter flies in the face of what the group INCITE in their toolkit says – Law Enforcement Violence against Women of Color & Trans People of Color: A Critical Intersection of Gender violence & State Violence

The second major issue that Mayor LaGand responded to was the 6 sanctuary policies that Cosecha has been demanding. LaGrand essentially said that the City of Grand Rapids is already doing them all. This is instructive in that the Mayor has only recently been saying this, even though Cosecha began their campaign in January of 2025. In fact, there has been an evolution or ever changing response from Mayor LaGrand regarding the 6 sanctuary policies which I addressed in an article from this past January.

Mayor LaGrand then proceeds to read each demand and tell people how the city is already doing them. LaGrand states that since he is a lawyer he wants to address each one and then provide his own insights. I am including the six policies here below.

What is instructive about what the Mayor said is regards to most of these sanctuary policies is that the city is already doing them because “it is in the policy” or because the “Chief of Police said so.” This is no real answer since there was no document provided to verify that the GRPD or the City of Grand Rapids was already doing it. People shouldn’t take the word of anyone who is in a position of power, we should demand evidence.

When Mayor LaGrand got to the issue of the GRPD collaborating with ICE, he said they are are already doing it because the Chief of Police said so. This is despite the fact that numerous people have seen first hand accounts of the GRPD cooperating with ICE, even a documented example when Byron Martinez was arrested and a GRPD officer had their hand on Byron while ICE agents are shoving his face into a snow bank. (Pictured at the beginning of this article)  

Then there was the 6th policing, which LaGrand found to be confusing and tried to give an example such as Gordon Foods having a contract with ICE to keep their vending machines full. This kind of commentary from the Mayor is unfortunately too common. What #6 is saying is that the City of Grand Rapids should not enter into any contracts with companies that also have contracts with ICE. Now, there are lots of companies that have contracts with ICE, with the largest listed here.  However, there are smaller contracts, which I discovered by doing some research, which you can find here. Again, the city should not enter into contracts with companies who have contracts with ICE, a federal agency that is disappearing people for being undocumented.

Lastly, the Mayor suggested that he is willing to have a conversation with the community about this. I would support such a conversation, especially if it was outside of a commission meeting.