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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
WDBM East Lansing.
Speaker 2:This is East Lansing Insider brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. In this show, we break down all of the news and happenings in the East Lansing community. And now, today's East Lansing Insider.
Speaker 1:Hi, everyone. I'm Eli's Deputy Editor, Annalys Nichols.
Speaker 3:And I'm East Lansing Info Managing Editor, Lucas Day.
Speaker 1:And today we're going to be talking about data coming out of the East Lansing Police Independent Oversight Commission, also known as LIPOC, that illustrates there is a racial disparity in use of force used by East Lansing police. This information comes amidst weeks of controversy for the city's police department surrounding racial bias with members of the community and city officials calling for Chief Jen Brown's removal and city council moving to hire an outside attorney to perform an independent review of the police department. Joining Lucas and I today is Cedric Herreau, who was hired by the city to review that use of force data we talked about a second ago from 2024.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. Always happy to help out.
Speaker 1:Why is LIPOC looking into this data and what purpose does it serve for the community?
Speaker 4:So the initial formation of LIPOC and I was on the study committee that established the ordinance was just basically to establish some transparency from ELPD as a best practices issue. Civilian oversight is, I wouldn't necessarily say common, but it's increasing. Most often, unfortunately, there is relatively little power. It's typically a recommendation that gets made, if that. And so from the beginning, LIPOC, to enhance transparency, has been interested pretty much in getting as much data as possible from ELPD about a number of different things.
Speaker 4:So traffic stops, encounters with individuals experiencing a mental health crisis, encounters with juveniles, and traffic stops. And then for a certain subsection of the LIPOC, the use of force was sort of what they had honed in on. So they have previously produced some reports based on pretty minimal data. And so we as a subcommittee, so the members of LAPOC and myself worked with EOPD for probably six months prior to so probably the last half of 2024 in trying to establish what good data looked like. So that the 2024, so gosh, that was probably back in 2023 then, so that the 2024 data was reasonable to work with, that we could make some meaningful assumptions based on that data.
Speaker 1:And then what was what was in the presentation you presented to? I believe it was Elli Pak. It was on use force.
Speaker 4:Yes. So that was just the use of force from East Atlantic Police Department for every response to resistance encounter that they had. So East Atlantic Police Department officers, when they use force are required to fill out a response to resistance form. And that gets put into sort of a separate database. So that was the data that I analyzed for essentially a portion of their annual report, which includes all of those other things that I had mentioned.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that report covered a lot of ground. I was wondering, like, just an overhead view, what your main takeaways from the data were.
Speaker 4:So I think two different paths. Right? One is that we still didn't really get optimal data. And there's one particularly big hole there that I can discuss in a little bit, if that would be helpful. And the other is that given that we have this hole in the data, that the East Lansing Police Department actually uses force fairly well in line with national averages.
Speaker 4:That there's nothing particularly unusual about how often or the type of force that the East Lenting Police Department uses, right? And one of the things that I tried to make clear in the meeting with Ellipod is that each one of those incidents, so there are 131 instances in which force was used, each one of those incidents represents the potential for things to go wrong from the standpoint of the individual having force used against them. And so there's a pretty big distinction to be made in looking at the aggregate level. On the whole, East Lansing isn't abnormal in terms of the way that they use force compared to national averages. That doesn't necessarily say anything about whether or not force was appropriate or not in any one particular incident.
Speaker 3:Well, the thing I was wondering about when I read through the report was you had a section in there about when they identified that people were having a mental health crisis, and that was also broken down by race. And the numbers were a lot lower than I expected. I was just wondering if you could expand upon that a little bit. Maybe there's something that I wasn't understanding with the data. Sure.
Speaker 4:Probably one of the most important principles for policing on the street to the average patrol officer is what is my ability to correctly perceive threat, correctly perceive danger? And it turns out that just sometimes human beings in general aren't very good at doing that. And so there are a lot of sort of human performance factors there where there might be individuals who objectively are not a threat, but are perceived as a threat. There might be individuals who sort of, again, in hindsight, are clearly experiencing mental health distress. But in the instant, it doesn't necessarily appear that way to the officer.
Speaker 4:They might have tunnel vision based on how they were dispatched to the encounter, what the call came in as, as those sorts of things. But even taking those things into account, the officers were far more likely to correctly identify that white subjects were experiencing a mental health crisis than black subjects were. And so we see that reflected in not just whether or not they are defined as being in crisis, but also then whether or not they are taken to Sparrow as what they refer to as a PRT, a person requiring treatment. And so, you know, the officers are just a lot better at making that judgment call when it comes to white individuals that they encounter than it comes to non white individuals that they encounter.
Speaker 1:Did those disparities, did those show up in other areas of data that you went through?
Speaker 4:So not as much as I think people anticipated, but so one of the findings that people were probably most surprised about was that there aren't statistically significant differences in the severity of force that gets used on the basis of race. So we're talking about the distinction between soft empty hand controls, grabbing somebody using a pressure point control technique versus pointing a gun at somebody. And I think there was sort of generally the expectation that if there was a racial bias present in the data, it would be reflected as officers are more likely to use higher levels of force against non white subjects than they are against white subjects. We didn't find that, right? Probably the reason that we didn't is because white subjects were actually a lot more likely to engage in active resistance or active aggression, right?
Speaker 4:And so it turns out just from, again, a proper perception of danger, that race doesn't matter as much when somebody is presenting an objective, active threat to you like they are fighting you, are physically resisting you. So a lot of those effects wash out. And again, that's in line, I think, with a lot of research over the past few decades that realistically, the higher the level of force we're talking about, the less we see a distinction on the basis of race. And so where most of the disparity is, is not the type of force that gets used. Most of that disparity is actually in the decision of whether or not to use any force at all, right?
Speaker 4:And so for me, that was the biggest problem that we had. That's the big hole in our data, right? Because I only have incidents in where force was used, And so I don't have a comparison group of incidents where force did not get used to see what influences decision of whether or not to use force. That's something that, You know, I mean, there's been a lot of turnover at the higher levels at LPD, and that that is something that we approached Chief Johnson with initially and then Chief Pride. And then by the time we were getting the data, Interim Chief Brown was in place as interim chief at the time.
Speaker 4:But it was we weren't able to go back and retroactively get all of that data. So this is something that we're gonna try to be more mindful about going forward. I was told that the data is publicly available, you could just get it from the website, but the way that it is presented on the website is not in a way that is usable to me in order to make those comparisons. There's not as much detail.
Speaker 3:Right, and is that since the change in, I think it was April, they stopped using the officer names and use of force reports, and then in August, they stopped making the reports public?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's been the case even well before that. So the LPD presents on the website what they call their weekly arrest reports. And those are basically just, in this one incident, two people got arrested, they were charged with these offenses. And that's not enough level of detail for me to take that data and compare it to the data on the incidents where force was used. Because in those situations, I have data on obviously the demographic characteristics of the officer, demographic characteristics of the person who had force used against them.
Speaker 4:We have things like how the officer was dispatched to the scene, So was it officer initiated? Was it dispatched? What was the initial call for? So was it for a person with a weapon? Was it a suspicious person?
Speaker 4:And all of those things together influence this decision on whether or not to use force, right? So if I don't have that information for any incident in where force wasn't used, it's basically useless to me, right? I need the same type of data in incidents where force wasn't used that I have in incidents where force was used in order to statistically make that kind of comparison.
Speaker 1:Why, you know, we at Eli have so much interest in this topic right now is we're in the midst of a highly controversial time in East Lansing police stemming largely from leadership positions but also from recent events, especially during Michigan State University's Welcome Week. What is the significance of this data and how is it used in the city? Because button issue the city is looking at right now is surrounding use of force incidents involving black individuals. One recent incident that East Lansing Info has done a lot of reporting on is one where during welcome week, officers came onto the scene to a skirmish outside of Dave's hot chicken in the downtown, and Pepper sprayed one man in the eyes and arrested him as he was actively holding his friend back away from the conflict. Many questions have been raised that night questioning why officers would not only attack someone who was physically keeping one party away from any fight that could have occurred, notably the city has dropped the criminal charges against the individuals involved, but also why the city even formed these charges as the video evidence from the incident, which surely was reviewed in the month in between the incident and the announcement of the charges, had to have been reviewed in order to make these charges.
Speaker 1:But, yes, what's the significance of this data and how will it be used in East Lansing?
Speaker 4:So when we're looking at a statistical analysis of a large pool of data, that allows us to present one piece as context for any particular incident, right? So if you take those welcome week incidents, obviously part of the concern is, these are two young Black men who have had force used against them in a manner that strikes a lot of people unfair, unprofessional, or whatever term you want to use. And so there has to be caution there. I think it's not appropriate to say, well, the statistical analysis found that ELPD doesn't use more severe force against black subjects than against white subjects. So that means that this incident is okay, that use of force in these particular situations is okay, right?
Speaker 4:There has to be that context of looking at all of the factors within that incident, is this an appropriate use of force or not, right? Because we might be able to say as a pattern, right? I think when it comes to statistics, a lot of people don't trust statistics because of this very point, because there's a sort of misunderstanding about what a statistical analysis represents versus looking at, you know, any numbers in the particular context of a specific incident, right? And so it's not appropriate to say, well, there's no pattern based on statistical analysis. And so everything must be fine here, right?
Speaker 4:There are still incidents that we can identify where things have clearly gone wrong, right? And sometimes where things have potentially gone wrong are also things that don't get captured within the data that is used for statistical analysis. So again, if you take the welcome weekend example, that shows in terms of the dataset that pepper spray was used. But there are a lot of other things going on there that people found problematic that Eli Pokh and the Human Rights Commission discussed in terms of how those officers interacted with those subjects. And most of that stuff actually doesn't get caught in the in the statistical data.
Speaker 4:Right. So, you know, it's now you're sitting there watching six hours of body cam footage and surveillance footage from Dave's Hot Chicken and trying to figure out, you know, how all of these pieces work together and what does that mean in relation to the bigger statistical analysis. And like I said, if we had data that shows Similar situations right by me, but that situation, that particular incident, I can guarantee you that that sort of thing happens dozens of times a night when the bars get lit up dozens of times a night, right? So if we don't have data on all of those other incidents in which this sort of thing occurred and an officer came into contact with somebody but didn't use pepper spray, it's impossible to make a comparison and see why was it used in this instance versus another instance. Right?
Speaker 4:And then in the immediate instance, obviously it, you know, it looks bad. And so a lot of people, You know, like the video says what the video says, right? There's there's not a whole lot outside of. I don't know if you've watched the entirety of the body cam footage, but there's there's not a whole lot to be said. In favor of a lot of the behavior during those encounters that night.
Speaker 4:Yeah,
Speaker 3:yeah. And are you just referring to some of the language used by officers?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that the one that bothered the HRC the most was when she was putting him in the car and he was asking for something for his eyes and
Speaker 4:Yep. Okay. 100%, right? I mean, the even if you are patting somebody down, you're emptying their pockets to take them to jail per procedure from a humanity standpoint when somebody is clearly suffering and they can't do anything about it themselves and they ask you to do something and your response is just no. And then you follow that up with, you know, the other things that were seen on that video.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, that that presents a a pretty unflattering picture of, you know, how that incident was handled.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And just taking a step back, I'm kind of interested in your background just in sociology and criminal justice. I was just wondering if you could tell me how you ended up on this track. Then, you know, when you're not analyzing police data in East Lansing, some more about your career.
Speaker 1:I'm morbidly curious about this, too.
Speaker 4:So I was I was born and raised in New York City in the eighties and 90s when New York City was probably the most violent city in the country. And I had a lot of friends who got into a lot of trouble, and a few friends who wound up joining NYPD and other things. And as I was growing up, I was always really struck by, you know, I had a very diverse group of friends and I was always pretty struck by how differently I would get treated by the police than my friends would. And at one point I had this, I'll make change from the inside sort of mentality. And I went to graduate school to get my master's and then started applying for federal law enforcement jobs.
Speaker 4:But long story short, was medically disqualified. So I didn't really know what to do with my life. So I decided to just go on and get my PhD, which I got from Michigan State. And at MSU in the criminal justice program, they require you to take two cognates, two outside interests. So I took sociology and psychology.
Speaker 4:And all of those things combined with some research experience that I had during my master's where we spent an entire summer in St. Petersburg riding with officers, investigating, researching community policing, all of those things together sort of pushed me to want to study police behavior and police use of force behavior more explicitly. So that's what I wrote my dissertation on. And then for three years, I worked at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data at the University of Michigan. Working on, you know, when you when you hear the crime rate is up or crime rate, that's that's from the FBI uniform crime data.
Speaker 4:So I worked on that data a little bit and then a few other things related to crime mapping. And then I decided I just wanted to get into teaching because I had really enjoyed that part of my my Ph. D. Experience. So I just started teaching, you know, a few classes here and there and then eventually got a full time job.
Speaker 4:So I've been at Adrian for fourteen years now.
Speaker 1:You talked a bit about the fact that, you know, the data that you have in front of you doesn't always paint the clearest picture of what happened or the circumstances for which force was used or what the person was doing beforehand. Just there's every situation seems to be unique or is unique. Is there any either from a research standpoint or city or policing standpoint with compliance with providing this data, what are some of the avenues any part of our community could take that would make it easier to analyze use of force and other parts of policing?
Speaker 4:Realistically, that has to come from the department itself. Right? The I'm not gonna say the easiest, but probably the surest way for any member of the community to get that sort of data is to file Freedom of Information Act requests. And that is a very burdensome process, as I'm sure you know, and can be expensive depending on how much data you want, and then you get things that are redacted and all this and that. So that was part of what we tried to address in writing the ordinance initially to establish LIPOC.
Speaker 4:And a lot of that is now on the verge of being rolled back essentially by the city rolling over for the police union unfortunately. When there are a lot of things that are not in the collective bargaining agreement, but that the city has sort of been willing to wave away, which are significantly going to impact the the level of transparency and the ability for L. POC to do anything. At this point, L. E.
Speaker 4:POC can file a complaint against an officer just like any member of the community can, And that's probably going to be the extent of their power if, you know, these changes eventually go through.
Speaker 3:They did go through last night.
Speaker 4:Did they? Wasn't sure when the meeting was. Okay.
Speaker 3:So they're they're not, you know, Chris Root, I'm sure. I'm very interested. They kept changing them up until last night. And then I guess the final draft they passed was dated October 17. That wasn't in the agenda like stuff usually is.
Speaker 3:And Chris told me after me, she was absolutely incensed. She told me I've got no idea what they just passed. So that's par for the course, I feel. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I understand it was chain it was kind of evolving up until this point. The most recent meeting, they couldn't get the August or they got the August data with officers' name. But for the first time, it wasn't public. So my understanding is that they're still not 100 sure what these changes do, even though they've been put in place in some form since April.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And related to something like officer names, this is another one of those distinctions that probably the average person is, or somebody who doesn't sort of do research, is looking at it as being very problematic, right? From my perspective, as long as I can track an officer over time, I don't necessarily need to know what their name is, right? As long as officer number one is still officer number one next year, and in every incident, and officer number 37 is. So the removal of names represents realistically one of those points of tension and is something that the original ordinance allows for and is now getting rolled back.
Speaker 4:As you said, there's still some question about that. But I think that's indicative of the extent to which we're kind of going backwards here. And, you know, for whatever else it's worth, Chief Brown and I have discussed, you know, we make changes to data going forward that presumably will provide more transparency. But obviously, it also from an administrative standpoint or from a labor law standpoint, if now something is passed, you know, it's not something that she can decide. She wants to start putting names back in.
Speaker 4:Right. So. You know, it's I think a lot of people on LIPOC are feeling kinda like we're back at square one.
Speaker 3:Besides the names, I mean, you helped create the commission. You're on that study committee. Yeah. Besides the names, is are there are there any other changes that have kinda been in place last few months that stood out the most to you as kind of hampering what the commission does?
Speaker 4:Yeah, mean, for for a period of time, as I said, when we were meeting with the LPD and their data analysts and we were talking about how to improve the data, they were they they were receptive to those ideas. You know, it wasn't perfect. And then, you know, from what has happened between what has happened between now and then, I think the changes that have been made in general are just providing a lot less clarity on how these incidents unfold. So officer names, I'm not as concerned about, but they've said that they're gonna do away with officer demographic characteristics entirely, right? For a department that is overwhelmingly white, again, that's not as big a deal, but certainly generally see gender differences in terms of male versus female officers and how they use force.
Speaker 4:We won't be able to do that anymore. So I think there are just a lot of changes that are going to make life a lot more difficult in terms of transparency. I think a lot of the conversation about East Lansing Police Department revolves around how relatively young and inexperienced their officers are. Right. They've they've lost a lot of to retirement, a lot of seniority.
Speaker 4:I mean Park just had them Park just retired the other day. So I think Lieutenant O'Harriel, he may be a captain now, is probably the most senior other than Chief Brown. But it would not. So if so within the data, one of the pieces that we collected that we are now no longer going to be able to get, is years of experience of the officer. And it was just a band, zero to five, five to 10, and a significant proportion of them were still in that zero to five band, right?
Speaker 4:So we're talking about relatively young individuals, in some cases individuals not too much older than the people that they're policing in terms of downtown East Lansing, making pretty significant judgment calls on the basis of not a lot of experience. And for right now, and I think Chief Brown has acknowledged this, that's showing signs of being responsible for a lot of the tension in that they're making decisions that probably could have gone another way. We talk about police behavior, but use of force more specifically, there's a phrase that comes up quite often, which is lawful, but awful, which is, you know, this officer may have done something that is perfectly constitutional, doesn't even violate department policy. But the average person looking at it thinks to themselves, why did that happen? That should not have happened.
Speaker 4:Something else could have been done differently. And that's a real gray area for police to operate in, right? If somebody violates policy, then it's easy. You file an internal complaint and you dock them a vacation day or whatever. Now we're talking about is this behavior a violation of the policy regarding professionalism, right?
Speaker 4:And those sorts of things. But there are a lot of things that slip through the cracks where it's just a matter of inexperience, maybe not having developed the right temperament for the job yet in terms of how to deal with people, right? Any experienced officer that I know will tell you, a day that I have to go hands on with somebody is a bad day. I would rather talk to people and talk them into handcuffs. And that's not what we're seeing now.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 3:Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 4:I appreciate your time. Thanks.
Speaker 1:And thanks to everyone for joining us on this week's episode of East Lansing Insider. We'll talk again next week.
Speaker 2:East Lansing Insider is brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. We are on the web at eastlancinginfo.news and impact89fm.org. Thanks for listening.