Cop Apologist chastises activists for disrupting City Commission meeting, calls them children

This past Tuesday, during the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, someone spoke during the public comment to praise the GRPD for what they do and to chastise activists who have been critical of the GRPD and disrupted recent city commission meetings.

The person, shown here in the photo above, is Jennifer Franson, the Founder and Executive Director of the pro-police group iCI Nation.

I have been writing about iCI Nation since 2021, a group which formed to defend policing around the same time that the Movement for Black Lives and the 2020 uprisings happened all across the country in response to cops killing Black people.

Franson was interviewed by the Grand Rapids-based far right Think Tank the Acton Institute in 2023, where she talked about working with local police and sheriff departments, along with collaborating with the FBI.

iCI Nation was also instrumental in getting the GRPD to start a program called Clergy on Patrol, where faith leaders do ride alongs with the GRPD and work to get community support for that department.

During Tuesday’s Grand Rapids City Commission meeting the iCI Nation Executive Director made some of the following comments (Franson’s comments begin at 2:19:00 into the video):

• People at the City Commission meeting that were there during the last public comment are like a dysfunctional family.
• The GRPD are like family members that only get criticized.
• Maybe the GRPD should start off every commission meeting talk about all the good things they do in this city.
• She says that activist are the children throwing a temper tantrum, so the the family leaves the room. She also suggested that these activists/children should be put in timeout.

What the police apologist Jennifer Franson was expressing was almost comical, when in fact it is scary and reflects the notion that the public should be submissive to those in authority – commissioners and cops.

For all her talk about family and love, Franson, like the Grand Rapids City Commission fails to grasp that what activists with Cosecha and GR Rapids Response to ICE have been saying for nearly two years is that the GRPD is collaborating with ICE to do harm against the immigrant community and that Grand Rapids City officials are not responding to or putting in place policies and procedures that would reduce the harm being directed at immigrants.

I look at the faces of City Commissioners after her comments, with several smiling in support, just like Mayor LaGrand was smiling with Franson at the going away party for Eric Winstrom, the former GRPD Chief who left Grand Rapids because they was too much anti-cop sentiment.

Based on the fact that Franson wants to chastise activists who disrupt city commission meetings, she would no doubt do the same thing if Civil Rights activists like Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis or the thousands of other Civil Rights activists that engaged in disruptive actions for decades.