Twin controversies involving the Police Department rattle East Lansing

Two weeks ago, Lansing Branch NAACP President Harold A. Pope prepared to request a formal investigation into the East Lansing Police Department’s documented disproportionate use of force against Black individuals.

The WLNS story reporting that announcement also included an interview with ELPD Chief Jen Brown, in which she said that over MSU’s Welcome Weekend, “we had a disproportionate number of minorities come into the community and commit crimes.”

Then the lawyer for Lonnie Smith, a Black man arrested alongside Mason Woods for disorderly conduct during Welcome Weekend, released a surveillance video to WLNS that appears to show Smith pulling Woods away from an altercation, rather than participating in it. The two were promptly pepper-sprayed at close range.

Those two incidents motivated Pope and the Lansing NAACP to call for Brown’s resignation. They joined the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing and have since been joined by the local Kappa Delta Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a national Black fraternity.

“Her statement indicating that there were multiple fights and people weren’t obeying commands and needed to be sprayed appeared to be completely false, based on the video,” Pope said, adding her comment “rings racist, and echoes what we used to call the sundown city” — the last a reference to towns that once banned non-white people after sunset.

Pope called the case a “perfect example” of “the need for the police to have oversight, to be checked and not be allowed to just run rampant.”

The ELPD’s use-of-force reports have been a cause of concern for the East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission and others. In 2024, there were 80 incidents where officers used force against Black individuals compared to 85 cases where it was used against white individuals, according to the 2024 report. Census data shows the city’s population is around 12% Black. The most recent report, in July, shows 10 out of 11 use-of-force instances targeting Black individuals.

Brown apologized publicly for “unintentionally offending members of the community I serve.”

Her controversy coincides with a debate over proposed changes that would weaken the Police Oversight Commission, which was founded in 2021 with a priority of promoting racial equity. The changes, the result of a new contract between the city and the East Lansing Police Department patrol officers’ union, would weaken the commission’s ability to review and comment on complaints before a final decision.

At last week’s East Lansing City Council meeting, several speakers discussed the interplay between the issues.

“It’s ironic that as we talk about ordinance changes, we are getting more news about people being upset about use of force,” said commission member Amanda Morgan. “It’s more negative advertisements in the last few months than I’ve seen since I’ve been on the commission.”

“The local news, as some previous citizens commented, released footage of a recent incident, and the accompanying headline was very disheartening to see  that it contradicts the East Lansing Police Department’s narrative about the incident,” said Thasin Sardar, who sits on East Lansing’s Human Rights Commission. “I hope you will use this as an example as to why we need more checks and balances, and not weaken whatever is in place right now.”

A ELPD representative said the department could not comment and directed City Pulse toward City Manager Robert Belleman and Brown herself. Belleman declined to comment, and Brown could not be reached. An automatic email response says she is out of the office until Oct. 20.

In an interview, Police Oversight Commission Vice Chair Kath Edsall said the changes mean the commission’s already limited power to apply pressure in these cases has been further diminished.

“In the past, when a complaint came in, we would get a copy of the complaint form and any initial data retrieval,” she said. “They would do their investigation, and they had 90 days to do that. And then it would come back to us, and we would have 60 days to make recommendations, and then it would go on to the chief to either implement our recommendations or to sign off.”

She said that “99% of the time they just signed off but during that entire time, we could discuss the complaint. We could ask questions and make statements, we could do all those things to make the public aware that the incident had occurred and of the concerns we had.”

Now, under the proposed changes — some of which, because they coincide with the collective bargaining agreement, are already in place despite not being voted on until next week — the commission cannot even comment on the case until three to six months after it happened, losing the chance to apply public pressure.

Edsall said the proposed ordinance goes beyond the collective bargaining agreement in covering “all employees of the Police Department” from having their names released, including those who are not union members, including Brown herself.

“Even though it hasn’t been adopted, she is acting in that manner,” she said. “She would say it applies to her and simply give us a number until she’s investigated herself. And so, we wouldn’t be able to discuss it for two months.”

Edsall said she had spoken with another commission member and with one of the arrested men’s family, asking them not to file complaints “so that we aren’t silenced while the complaint is investigated.” The family filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission instead, Edsall said.

Rebecca Kasen is the executive director of the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing and sits on the Human Rights Commission. She said removing the Police Oversight Commission’s ability to conduct independent investigations would leave people’s only recourse a state-level complaint, which would lead to increased state-level investigations.

Kasen clarified she was speaking on her own behalf, not that of the Human Rights Commission.

Looking forward, Pope said any potential replacement for Brown should be a “change agent.”

“The chief was on the force before she became chief, so it’s not new to her, right?” he said. Brown joined as deputy chief in 2023 and had worked for 15 years as an officer for the MSU Police Department beforehand.

“When she took the role, she knew that, and that should have been a priority for her to fix and address,” he said, referring to previous instances of police racism.

“And that doesn’t appear to be the case. They need someone who will come in and be a change agent to help improve the operation of the ELPD and remove what appears to be the embedded thought that minorities are committing a crime.”

— LEO V. KAPLAN