Another GRPD Press Conference to justify the use of force
Yesterday, the GRPD once again held a press conference in order to respond to another violent incident involving members of the African American community. You can view the video at the GRPD Facebook page.
The Press Conference lasted just over 7 minutes, with Interim Chief Kiddle making a statement, followed by a few questions from reporters. This most recent Press Conference was no doubt organized to respond to a particular incident, but also because someone had recorded what had happened.
Interim Chief Kiddle and other police officers have made it a point to say that the public recordings of police violence “distorts the public perception” of police actions. No shit, because the videos from residents often conflicts with the narrative that the GRPD wants to provide. And the narrative from yesterday’s GRPD Press Conference was the same as it has been in the past few months – the police officers involved acted appropriately and did things they were trained to do.
This was one of the questions asked by a reporter during the Press Conference, about why the police officer kicked the man. Kiddle responded by saying, “kicking is a police maneuver, a distraction and pain technique, intended to try get someone under control who is resisting arrest.”
If you kick someone, you could be charged with assault, but if the GRPD does it to you, it is simply a technique to get someone under control. Does anyone else see the irony in such a statement coming from the GRPD?
Just within the last month, the GRPD has held two Latino youth at gunpoint for walking in the street, punched a black man at least 30 times, while his child is in the back seat of the car, and in this most recent incident, the GRPD officer pull a man out of the car and kick him because he was resisting arrest.
As someone said during the City Commission meeting last night, “How many more incidents are there of the GRPD using force against residents that are not being recorded by people?”
Coalition of groups hold Press Conference to issue demands in light of increased GRPD and ICE violence
Earlier today, members of Movimiento Cosecha GR, GR Rapid Response to ICE and the group 360 GR Movement, held a press conference in front of City Hall to address recent violence against the Black, Latino/Latinx and immigrant communities in Grand Rapids.
It has been a month since members of Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response disrupted the City Commission meeting, particularly in response to the GRPD’s role in contacting ICE against Jilmar Ramons-Gomez.
Since that late February Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, the GRPD union has attempted to present activist groups as mobs and suggest that the GR City Commission has “caved” to the demands. The reality is that the city only responded to one of the demands presented in February, which was calling for Captain VanderKooi to be fired for his role in contacting ICE. The other demands – 1) the City of Grand Rapids should use no resources to support ICE and not cooperate with ICE violence against the immigrant community and 2) the City of Grand Rapids should endorse Movimiento Cosecha GR’s Drivers License for All campaign; these demands have been completely ignored.
Those who spoke at the Press Conference held earlier today not only addressed the fact that the City of Grand Rapids has ignored the previous demands, they responded to recent incidents of police violence against members of the black and brown communities, which we have written about as well.
Now these three groups have added to their demands and will present them at the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting tonight (March 26). What follows is a list of the new set of demands that was put together by the 360 GR Movement, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE.
- Fire Captain Curt VanderKooi and the unnamed officer who beat the young man in the car. VandeKooi has a long history of discrimination based on race and he is not safe for our neighborhoods.
- Stop all cooperation with ICE and use no city resources to do the work of ICE. There should be no police role of “ICE liaison.”
- Support Driver’s Licenses for All in the State of Michigan.
- Release the code of conduct for officers and the track record of each officer in following this code of conduct, including complaints against them. Release the reports of their investigations so that the public can track their accountability processes. Create an accountability reprimand policy for all officers that stand by during instances of beatings or other harm.
- Create subpoena powers and investigative powers for our Civilian Appeals Board.
- Give a vote of No Confidence to Acting Chief Kiddle.
- Create a program whereby GRPD pays for at minimum 5 years of trauma-related therapy especially for any youth interaction deemed inappropriate regarding harassment, profiling, excessive force etc.
- Appropriate the million dollars a year that the city has set aside to deal with community police relations directly to the community instead of it just standing by while police incidents continue to separate our community. The community knows best what to do with that money to make our neighborhoods safer.
Besides attending the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting to present these demands, the three groups will be speaking to these demands at the Michigan Civil Rights Commission public hearing this Thursday, hearing that are being held because of the recent documented GRPD acts of violence against communities of color.
The Language of Capitalism in Grand Rapids
I recently got a copy of the new book, Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, by John Patrick Leary.
Leary’s book is delightful to read, but also serves as an important guide for how to think about how the system of capitalism has co-opted, even transformed the language we use to describe things.
The author states in his introduction that, “A notable feature of contemporary capitalist discourse is its embrace of what earlier ruling classes never hesitated to repress: dissent and heterodoxy, the stuff of innovation in the old, seventeenth-century sense.”
Just think about the terms that capitalism has created or transformed in recent years to give it an edgy, almost counter-cultural feeling. Words like place making, robust, stakeholder, thought leader, creative class, human capital, curator, best practices and empowerment. All of these words used to mean something else, but now they are used by the capitalist class as the language that best describes what it is they seek to achieve.
Leary also makes the point that, “the managerial tenor of the terms in this book, also reflect s the way that capitalist ideology renders labor invisible, just as it has always done.”
What I would like to do in the coming weeks and months, is to use some of the words found in Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, and apply them to organizations and structures in Grand Rapids. This is an important task, since the application of language and analysis is particularly relevant when we can use it in our own locale, to name and identify that which we are most familiar with.
Therefore, we will take one of capitalist words included in Leary’s book and use it to describe an organization, an entity or a system in Grand Rapids that embraces capitalist on neoliberal capitalist values.
Today’s capitalist word is, accountability.
This is what Leary says about the word accountability:
Accountability is a term that has exploded in popularity over the last five decades after remaining relatively consistent for centuries. It shares with innovation a deep and mostly forgotten religious background. With the combination of moral responsibility it retains from its Christian origins and the now dominant meaning of task-based counting, accountability captures the popular fantasy of quantifying virtue.
There are plenty of organizations or systems of power that the capitalist use of the word accountability would apply to in Grand Rapids. However, considering what has been happening in the past few years and even the past few weeks, maybe the word accountability would best fit with the GRPD.
Now, many people would think that “holding the GRPD accountable” is a good thing. But what exactly does that mean? Policing scholar Alex Vitale, in his most recent book, The End of Policing, states:
“accountability measures, like body cameras and civilian complaint boards, are not only subject to the authority of the police – who can turn off the camera or stonewall the board – but also leave intact the basic institutional functions of the police, which have never really been about public safety or crime control.”
Indeed, the GRPD union has been making the claims that the public video taping of their actions against people of color in recent weeks has “altered public perception.” Of course it has, because it is in direct conflict with the GRPD version of what happened. More importantly, as Vitale points out, accountability with the GRPD is near impossible when the police are allowed to police themselves, when they use one-third of the City’s budget and when the police union contract allows them to remove formal complaints from individual officer files.
The notion of accountability with the GRPD is almost a joke. What is needed, is not accountability, but a completely different conversation on the fundamental nature of policing and whether or not its primary functions is to protect systems of power and to manage certain populations, specifically communities of color and any communities of dissent.
Anyone who is familiar with the DeVos family, knows that the two central ideological pieces their family embraces are, Christianity and Capitalism.
To be clear, the kind of Christianity that the DeVos family practices is a mix of Calvinism and Christian Reconstructionism. Calvinism is evidenced by their, “we are part of the chosen, therefore God has blessed us with great wealth,” and Christian Reconstructionism can be seen in their desire to put biblical law over US Constitutional law. For more on the family’s history see our DeVos Family Reader: We’re Rich and We Do What We Want.
Within the past two weeks, with two separate announcements, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, put God and the Market as talking points for recent policy decisions.
On March 11, DeVos made this announcement:
The U.S. Department of Education, in consultation with the U.S. Department of Justice, determined the statutory provisions in Section 1117(d)(2)(B) and 8501(d)(2)(B) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that require an equitable services provider to “be independent of … any religious organization” are unconstitutional because they categorically exclude religious organizations based solely on their religious identity.
DeVos went on to say:
“The Trinity Lutheran decision reaffirmed the long-understood intent of the First Amendment to not restrict the free exercise of religion. Those seeking to provide high-quality educational services to students and teachers should not be discriminated against simply based on the religious character of their organization.”
So much of constitutional law comes down to interpretation, but what is really at issue here is not the discrimination of religious educational institutions, but the use of public funds for said institutions.
The second major announcement came on March 21st, with Betsy DeVos’ statement on the Trump administration’s Executive Order on higher education.
We believe that these important reforms, along with the Department’s ambitious negotiated rulemaking agenda, will make college more affordable, break down barriers to innovation in higher education, and encourage new approaches and new partnerships for the benefit of students.
While this Executive Order does deal with tuition costs and loan payments, the important point to note in the statement above is “new partnerships for the benefit of students.”
What Betsy DeVos means when she talks about new partnerships, is specifically partnerships with the private sector – the corporate and business community. This focus, from the Secretary of Education was reflected a few days earlier, on March 18, when Betsy DeVos was speaking at a meeting for the National Council for the American Worker.
Here Betsy DeVos is very clear about what the objective of higher education should be, when she says:
“To meet the needs of our nation’s students and our growing economy, we must rethink higher education. Right now, there are 7.3 million unfilled jobs in the United States, yet too many Americans remain out of the workforce because they lack the skills necessary to seize these opportunities. We must do better for our students and workers.”
In many ways, these two major announcements, which have occurred within the past two weeks, are a clear indication of Betsy DeVos’ desire to make God and the Market central aspects of the US education system.
Last week, the DeVos-created org Start Garden, posted a story from Crain’s Detroit Business, about two guys who received funding from Start Garden’s 5×5 event.
The article tells the story about two siblings who were migrant workers with their parents in various parts of the country, who eventually made their way to Michigan. Michigan has one of the largest migrant worker populations in the country.
The Paredes brothers won $5,000 from the 5×5 event to help support their new project called AgHelp. The brothers have also won other funding sources, notably from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which is the largest agribusiness organization in the country.
The Crain’s Detroit Business article also stated:
Michigan relies on more than 94,000 migrant farm workers to hand-harvest more than 40 different crops, Feliciano said. It’s typical for the state’s farmers to lose millions in unharvested crops because of a shortage of workers, or to have to mow millions of pounds of asparagus that are rotting in the field.
Heeren Brothers of Comstock Park, near Grand Rapids, turned to AgHelp to ease some of those challenges. Heeren has a large apple orchard, a packing facility that serves apple growers from around the state, a produce distribution operation and a warehouse in Iowa.
So here is the thing. While this story might seem like a feel good story, it omits a great deal about the realities of those who work as migrant farmworkers. As was mentioned above, the agribusiness sector is constantly looking for migrant farmworkers to do the hard labor of harvesting their crops. US immigration policy, which is never mentioned in the Crain’s Detroit Business article, makes it increasingly difficult for undocumented immigrants (which make up a large portion of migrant farmworkers) to work in the agribusiness sector, since Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has created a climate of fear within the undocumented community.
In addition, there is nothing said about the wages and living conditions of migrant farmworkers, which is one of the lowest paying jobs in the country. In fact, farms that employ migrant farmworkers don’t have to pay them minimum wages, since migrant farm work was never included in the federal minimum wage guidelines. Migrant farmworkers often get cheated on their wages and there is not much they can do, unless they are unionized.
The United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee are two of the largest migrant worker unions in the country. These migrant worker unions began organizing because farmworkers were underpaid, worked in dangerous conditions and lived in substandard housing, often on the farms they worked on. What each of these migrant farmworker unions will tell you is that unless there is a union to represent the migrant farmworker interests, migrant farmworkers will be exploited. There are also groups like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which is a workers center that also fights for issues of migrant farmworker rights.
For example, according to a Michigan Civil Rights Commission report from 2010, the working and living conditions for migrant farmworkers was as bad, if not worse, then it was in the 1960s. (see photo on the right of the type of housing they are forced to live in.)
The Michigan Civil Rights Commission published an update in 2017, to see what improvements had been made since the 2010 report was issued. There were some improvement, but many urgent issues had not been addressed.
In contrast, the DeVos-created org Start Garden saw fit to invest money into AgHelp, which while it connects the agribusiness sector to migrant labor and social services, does nothing to challenge the deeply exploitative dynamic that exists within the agribusiness sector’s treatment of migrant farmworkers. However, there is no money to be made in unionizing migrant farmworkers, so it makes complete sense that Start Garden would financially invest in a project that perpetuates the exploitation of migrant farmworkers.
When white people defend the actions of the GRPD
(This post was updated with new information at 12:23pm on March 20.)
Yesterday we shared some observations about the GRPD press conference that was held on Monday, a press conference that was held to respond specifically to the arrest of two Latino youth and a separate arrest involving an African American motorist.
People in the black and latino/latinx community have responded with outrage, frustration and more calls for police accountability. This reaction is completely understandable, considering the 2017 report demonstrating that the GRPD engages in the racial profiling of black and latino/latinx motorists at a disproportionately high rate. In addition, the black and latino/latinx community has been deeply impacted by numerous high profile cases involving the GRPD, with black youth being held at gunpoint in recent years, immigrants being arrested because of the GRPD’s cooperation with ICE, and now the most recent incidents.
The response from many white people has been just the opposite. There is a Facebook page called Friends of GRcops. There are over 1,700 people who follow the page. There are people from all walks of life who follow the page, several local politicians and even community organizers. The group even has a website, that pretty much mirrors the Facebook page, with commentary supportive of the GRPD, with regular sharing of posts from the Grand Rapids Police Officers Association.
The Friends of GRCops was started by Ed Kettle. On Kettle’s website he states, “I am presently working with the Grand Rapids Police Officers Association to build their community and political profile. I formed Friends of GRCops, essentially a social media effort, to help solidify public support for our police officers and to create opportunities for public dialogue.”
The Friends of GRCops posted the following on Monday, in reaction to the GRPD press conference:
Interim Chief Kiddle did a great job handling the latest encounter incidents. He’s a by the book guy and stuck by his officers regarding the two young guys walking in the street and ignoring a direct order to stop and give their names. He also stood firm on best practices and behavior regarding the speeder pulled over and resisting arrest. Only those on site know what actually happened, but until all that is sorted out Kiddle presented the best possible response. The loyal opposition responded as expected. An earlier story regarding the young guys by Barton Dieters began with a description of the various conditions in that neighborhood. High crime, drug activity and gang tagging among others. What the ACLU and NAACP seems to forget is that there are hundreds of families and people who live in that area who are afraid for their children and the value of their property. Nothing happens in a vacuum. It would be nice if the opposition could take a broader view of what police actually deal with every day.
This response is not surprising, but it is instructive in terms of who they define as the “loyal opposition,” mainly the ACLU and NAACP.
Then there was the comments. There were a few that didn’t fully agree with the above statement, but there were specific comments in support of the GRPD’s treatment of the two recent cases (the black motorist and latino/latinx youth), and those people were white.
One white guy wrote:
If these kids would keep their mouths shut and do what the cop asks their wouldn’t be such a problem. If I had talked back to anybody of authority I’m sure my punishment from my folks would be much worse than any I’d get elsewhere.
Another white person wrote:
I was also impressed by the Interim Chief’s response. He described the mutual responsibility of the officers and the community. I do believe the situation with the drivers arrest would have been much different if the driver had cooperated with the instructions given by the officers, but it also troubles me that one officer decided to continue to punch the driver. The other officers did not intervene, so I am unclear as to why that occurred. In the situation with the teens who refused to cooperate and follow directions, I fully support the officer. His safety is more important to me than the feelings of the teens who refused to follow simple instructions. They can complain after the fact if they feel they weren’t treated fairly, but instead they chose to create a dangerous situation for all. At the end of the day, we will only have the type of law enforcement that we accept. This community needs to step up and understand the men and women in these uniforms are human beings and they deserve respect…as does the community.
One last comment from a white guy stated, So good to see he stood by the Cop’s! Wait till City Hall back’s away though!!
In the first two longer comments and the original post, you can see the themes of obeying authority or obeying the cops would have resulted in no harm done to those involved in these two incidents.
The post I cited above had received 109 likes as of last night, with most of those liking the comment being white.
So what is it about white people defending the GRPD? Of course, such a question always results in an element of speculation. However, there are some things we can say that begin to answer the question. First, the reality is that for most white people, their lived experience tends to be one that falls on the more positive side of interacting with the police. This is in sharp contrast to black and brown communities, which have a very negative lived experience of police in the neighborhoods they are part of.
Second, there is a great deal of systemic and structural racism in Grand Rapids. From the founding of the city – with the theft of native land – to the red-lining and apartheid practices of discrimination and the exclusion of black and brown people, to the outright targeting of black and brown neighborhoods by the GRPD – Grand Rapids practices what Todd Robinson identifies as Managerial Racism. The same kind of defense of the police was reflected by white residents during the 1967 uprising, as we noted in the comments from the Grand Rapids Press at that time.
Lastly, it must be pointed out that the pushback from black & brown residents of Grand Rapids (including some white allies) receives even more animosity from the systems of oppression, like the GRPD, and their supporters, which are disproportionately white. This push back from black and brown communities is necessary and important, because it will force white people to have to chose sides, thus often illuminating what Dr. King said in a 1967 speech entitled, Which Way Its Soul Shall Go:
I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racists, either consciously or unconsciously.
Yesterday, Interim Chief of Police David Kiddle addressed reporters after two high profile incidents in the community, where people of color were arrested by the GRPD.
My take on why the GRPD was holding a press conference was simply to respond to two separate incidents that were also video taped by residents in the neighborhoods where the arrests were made. Both of these videos have generated a great deal of attention on social media, so the GRPD wanted to formally respond to “public concerns.”
In fact, Interim Chief Kiddle even stated during the press conference that, “Public videos were release and have created a narrative of public concern.”
We are posting the video of the press conference, so people can make up their own minds about what the GRPD are saying, but people are warned that the Press Conference does include footage of the arrest of two Latino youth from last week, footage people might find disturbing.
Interim Chief Kiddle essentially repeats GRPD report findings, saying that the arresting officers actions were appropriate in both instances. Furthermore, Interim Chief KIddle stated, “these are not racialized incidents.” Alex Vitale, in his important book, The End of Policing, states: Well-trained police following proper procedure are still going to be arresting people for mostly low-level offenses, and the burden will continue to fall primarily on communities of color because that is how the system is designed to operate – not because of the biases or misunderstandings of officers.
During the Q & A portion of the press conference, Kiddle was asked by a reporter, “was it appropriate to use pepper spray with an infant in the car?” Kiddle responded by saying, “Yes, it was appropriate.”
Another question asked during the press conference was, how these incidents could have avoided officers using force or guns and Interim Chief Kiddle said that in both cases, residents demonstrated a “complete defiance of authority. If they had obey the officers, none of this would have happened.”
This last comment from Interim Chief Kiddle is particularly instructive. Most of us have been conditioned from early in life to obey authority. We are told to obey elected leaders, religious leaders, even police officers. However, it is vitally important for us to as ourselves, where has obedience got us. The late radical historian Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, once said:
As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.
Now, I am not suggesting that the African American motorist or the two Latino youth should have disobeyed the cops, because that could have resulted in the police shooting them. What I am saying is, is that the police are not really here to protect us. The primary function of law enforcement is to protect systems of power and oppression. For instance, when a corporation fires hundreds of people and relocates to another country, leaving workers and their families economically devastated. Then those same workers want to confront the corporation at their headquarters over their loss of jobs, the police will always be there to defend the corporation and arrest workers who do anything to threaten the power of that corporation.
Next week, President Trump comes to Grand Rapids to hold a rally, a president who has repeatedly lied to the public and has encourage his supporters to act on their White Supremacist beliefs. When people show up to protest Trumps visit, who do you think the police will be protecting? Of course, the police will always say they are protecting our right to protest, but only if we protest in a manner that doesn’t challenge those in power.
Maybe it is time that we see that the GRPD and any law enforcement agency for what they really are. Maybe we need to learn from what the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense understood, when they said that the police were an armed occupying force in their communities. In the case of the GRPD, it sure seems like this is the case.
How many more incidents of police abuse must we put up with before we take action and resist this state-sponsored violence? How long must we wait before we defy their authority?
Media Bites: Biopharmaceutical ads talk innovation, but ignore that greed of pharmaceutical companies
There are millions of people in the US who cannot afford health insurance, nor the outrageously high costs of medicine produced by the pharmaceutical industry. Millions of people have to chose between buying prescription drugs and paying the rent or having enough food in the house.
Millions of Americans cannot afford health care costs, while the health insurance industry and pharmaceutical companies are making record profits. This is why the last round of commercials that are circulating on traditional media and digital media, from the biopharmaceutical industry, are nothing short of offensive.
One example of these commercials from the biopharmaceutical industry (shown above) presents us with a montage of people who represent researchers in the biopharmaceutical industry. The people depicted in the commercial are supposedly finding cures for cancer or helping people to restore their site.
Towards the end of the commercial it says, America is the leader in medical innovation. While this might be true, it completely ignores the fact that the companies that are engaged in “medical innovation” are massive Fortune 500 companies that are driven by larger and larger profits. These massive profits are made by the biopharmaceutical industry, while millions are dying from treatable disease or cannot afford the necessary medicines because of the high cost of pharmaceuticals.
Then at the very end of the commercial we seen a several dozen corporate pharmaceutical company names or logos, which are apparently those who make up the biopharmaceutical industry the commercial is referring to.
Several of the companies that appear at the end of the commercial made it on the Fortune 500 Global list. Within the US, many of these pharmaceutical companies contribute massive amounts of money to influence the outcome of elections. According to OpenSecrets.org, the pharmaceutical industry contributed roughly $400 million to candidates since 1990.
In addition, the pharmaceutical industry has spent on average some $240 million on lobbying each year to influence health-related policies that Congress is voting on, as you can see in the graphic above.
Lastly, if we wanted to see which political party was most guilty of accepting money from the pharmaceutical industry, we can see that it is pretty much even. There is, and has been, a bipartisan consensus about maintaining a health care system that is highly profitable, while millions of families are suffering from poor health and lack of access to affordable treatment or medicine.
We should not be fooled by these new commercials from the biopharmaceutical industry. Medical innovation means nothing if profits come before the welfare of the people.
The parents of Betsy DeVos, Edgar & Elsa Prince, have had their own foundation for numerous years. While Edgar is deceased and Elsa has remarried, Elsa still uses the foundation name of her late husband to fund the religious right and politically far right groups throughout the country.
The following analysis is based upon the 990 documents for the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation from 2015 – 2017.
The Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation has contributed to numerous religious groups, too many to name. However, there are a few that have received substantial funding between 2015 and 2017.
The largest recipient of funding from the foundation started by the parents of Erik Prince and Betsy DeVos, was the Haggai Institute, receiving $600,000 each of the three years for a total of $1,800,000. The Haggai Institute trains Christian leadership to promote conservative values around the world.
Another religious organization that has received significant funding from the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation is Focus on the Family. Based out of Colorado, Focus on the Family endorses what they believe to be a biblically-mandated patriarchy, where women are submissive to their husbands. Another major belief of Focus on the Family is that LGBTQ people are misled about their true identity. Focus on the Family promotes the harmful and discredited practice of ‘conversion therapy,’ claiming ‘just as there are many paths that may lead a person to experience same-sex attractions, there are likewise multiple ways out. From 2015 – 2017, the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation contributed $585,000 to Focus on the Family.
Another religious group that embraces patriarchal norms and anti-LGBTQ values is the Family Research Council. Founded in 1980, the Family Research Council, which had connections to the Reagan administration through Gary Bauer, has received $742,000 from the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation, according to the last three years of 990s that are available.
Another Christian Institutions that have received major funding from the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation between 2015 – 2017, are Calvin College, Prison Fellowship Ministries, Bethany Christian Services and Potters House.
Then there are the religious institutions that act as advocacy or policy change organizations. These groups have a more overtly political agenda, even if they share similar theological views to the organizations listed above.
Of course there is the Acton Institute, since Elsa Prince has been a board member with Acton for years. Another think tank organization the Prince Foundation has funded is the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. There are also organizations that are anti-abortion, such as the Pregnancy Resource Center, the Lakeshore Pregnancy Center and Michigan Right to Life, all of which received steady funding from the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation.
One last group that advocates policy change at the federal level are the Freedom Alliance, the Council for National Policy and the Center for Military Readiness. Each of these groups believe that the US should be led more by Christian values that democratic values. These groups, like the ones listed above, cause real world harm and promote an ideology that undermines civil society. It is no surprise then, that Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince are continuing their parent’s legacy.
Latino youth stopped at gunpoint by the GRPD because they were walking in the street in the southwest part of Grand Rapids
For several years now we have been reporting on various incidents of the GRPD engaged in racial profiling, specifically of black and latino youth. During this same period of time we have also been reporting about the arrests and detention of dozens of immigrants by either the GRPD, the Kent County Sheriff’s Department or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
These documented instances, along with a recent report that the GRPD disproportionately profile black and latino motorists, provides sufficient reason for communities of color to not trust the local police. The black and immigrant communities have made it clear that the live in fear of having cops pull guns on them, they live in fear of being stop, arrested and detained.
Yesterday, I received word from a friend that a family member and a friend of theirs had been stopped by the GRPD for walking in the street. A resident in the area had video taped two GRPD officers with gun pointing at the two youth, as you can see from the video below. The person filming was clearly trying to get the youth to get on the ground, knowing full well that people of color who do not cooperate with cops could get shot.
I was also able to obtain a copy of the police report, but before I get to that, I wanted to share what the family member had said to me, which was:
We have to expose the unacceptable behavior GR police are committing towards our community.
The incident happened on Monday, March 11, right around 6pm in the southwest part of Grand Rapids, on Lynch Street. Lynch Street, for those of you who are familiar with that part of town, is a short street that run between Clyde Park and Century, SW. The street is only a few city blocks long and is made up primarily of of working class latinos.
The GRPD report states that they were in this area “to proactively patrol, due to the recent increase in gang activities, including robberies and gang graffiti.” Of course, another way of looking at this is that the GRPD was patrolling a latino neighborhood, where the majority of its residents are of low income. In fact, we know that the GRPD disproportionately patrols in poor black and latino neighborhoods, since they believe that there are higher rates of street level crimes being committed in those areas.
The GRPD officer, who was in his patrol car, had noticed in his rear view mirror that these two latino youth were walking in the street. The officer circled back and attempted to stopped the youth and get them out of the road. The officer said he then got out of the car and asked them to get out of the road and while proceeding to the sidewalk, the officer said that both youth were questioning the officer as to why they were being stopped.
The officer also said that both of the youth had their hands in the front pockets of the jackets they were wearing. The officer then writes, “I order both suspects to take their hands out of their pockets, however they both continued to disobey my commands.”
The officer also states that he asked them to show him their IDs, but they both said they did not have IDs, since they were minors. In the report the officer says that one of the youth was reaching behind him, and feeling threatened, the officer pulled out his gun and pointed it at the youth.
As you can see from the video, a second officer was on the scene and both of them had their guns out, pointed at the youth.
After cuffing and searching the two youth, the officer said that neither of them had weapons, but one of them was found with one gram of marijuana. The one caught with marijuana was taken to the Kent County Juvenile Detention facility, “where he was lodged on assault, batter, resist or obstruct a Police officer.”
The GRPD will no doubt argue that this was just good policing. However, considering the current political climate and the level of collaboration between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the immigrant community has every right to live in fear and take this most recent example of the GRPD pointing guns at latino youth as further indication that their community is at risk of police intimidation and youth.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 