Grand Rapids Police face new civil rights charges of discrimination

• Michigan Department of Civil Rights filed two charges against Grand Rapids Police Department for discrimination. 
• The cases involve unfair treatment of an 11-year old girl and a mother of three children. 
• These charges come three months after a police shooting in the city.

The Michigan Department of Civil Rights submitted two formal charges of discrimination against the Grand Rapids Police Department after complaints that officers unfairly treated two Black residents in two separate incidents spanning from 2017 to 2020. 

Related: Grand Rapids Police release video on deadly shooting of Patrick Lyoya

The charges were the latest blow for a police department that is under investigation for discriminatory practices, and come three months after the police shooting of a Black man made headlines nationally.

John Johnson, the executive director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, told Bridge Michigan that they levied the charges because they felt “it was a public service” and “felt that there was discrimination based upon race.” 

The first incident occurred in 2017 when officers were searching for a suspect in a stabbing case and instead pointed a gun toward Honestie Hodges, who was 11 years old at the time. Officers also put her in a police cruiser. 

Honestie died of COVID-19 in 2020. Her mother, Whitney Hodges, filed the complaint on her behalf with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. 

The second incident, which took place in January 2020, involved Melissa Mason, a Black woman who was stopped by police for an expired license plate. She was with her three children at the time. While stopped for the traffic violation, Mason was handcuffed and put into a police cruiser for about 20 minutes. 

Johnson said that in both incidents, his office found no evidence that people of other races, in similar situations, were treated in the manner that Hodges and Mason were treated. 

The Grand Rapids Police Department will have 20 days to respond once it is served the documents by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. If the issue is not resolved via mediation between the department and the person who made the complaint, it will be sent to an administrative law judge, who could recommend penalties to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. The commission would have final say on which penalties to impose, ranging from monetary compensation to victims, to procedural changes or more training for police officers. 

The Michigan Department of Civil Rights is investigating 28 complaints against the Grand Rapids Police Department, including these two.  The office launched an investigation in 2019 looking into complaints that the Grand Rapids Police Department’s practices and patterns were discriminatory. The investigation was stalled as a result of insufficient resources and staffing. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for the City of Grand Rapids wrote the city was “committed to ensuring all people are treated equally under the law” and that it “has been fully cooperative and engaged with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) since at least May 2019 when investigations began.” 

These filings also follow the killing of Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese immigrant, by Grand Rapids Police Department officer Christopher Schurr in April. There have been no formal complaints filed in that death with the state civil rights office. 

Schurr was charged with second-degree murder in June.