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Special reports, clips and features from Impact 89FM's news department.
More than a month after the pepper spraying and arrest of two black men, Lonnie Smith and Mason Woods, both men have filed federal lawsuits against the city of East Lansing, specifically police chief Jennifer Brown and officer Anthony Lyon, alleging excessive force and libel for a misleading press release. More than a month after the incident, the city council has not responded to multiple calls for chief Brown's removal. And more than a month after the incident, community leaders and officials worry that they still aren't being heard. On Sunday of MSC Welcome Week, Lonnie Smith attempted to break up an altercation between his friend and East Lansing resident Mason Woods and several other young men outside of Dave's Hot Chicken. After the police were called, Officer Anthony Lyon deployed pepper spray within inches of their faces.
Speaker 1:Both men were arrested that night. Their charges weren't dropped until October 21, and the East Lansing Police Department later issued a press release that has been the subject of scrutiny from community leaders. The release included blurry and shaky body cam footage, no security camera footage, and named both Smith and Woods. Smith's attorney released the security footage supporting that the altercation was not a violent fight, And the lawsuits describe that both men neither knew of police presence nor received adequate care for injuries inflicted on them by the police.
Speaker 2:The leadership chief Brown displayed is dangerous, not just to her officers, to the community, to visitors to East Lansing, and to the badge. You released my son's video. You released his full name to the press. You shared only the police body cam footage prior to even his attorney viewing it to the press. To justify injustice, not the Dave House chicken security footage which you had in your possession, That clearly shows your officers committing a crime against my son, deliberately trying to blind him?
Speaker 2:Then you tell the press my son was a drunk when he blew sober? You called my son a criminal when he has not even had his day in court? He's never been arrested. He's never been suspended from school. He has never had a fight in his life.
Speaker 2:My son is a 21 year old senior at at a major university. He's an entrepreneur who had a business right here in East Lansing for two years. That young man is a philanthropist. He's a kid without a record until somebody arrested him unfairly. You can't find one person anywhere in the world to say a bad thing about my son.
Speaker 1:When asked about the arrest and accusations against the police department, police chief Brown said in a statement to WLNS that a disproportionate number of minorities are coming to the city and committing crime, sparking public outcry. Of the organizations that have called for Brown's resignation, the Women's Center of Greater Lansing was the first to issue a formal statement. Rebecca Kazen, executive director of the Women's Center, explained that the organization was willing to take the heat for speaking out, supporting other black organizations raising similar concerns about police leadership.
Speaker 3:So I'm a I'm a commissioner on the Human Rights Commission. And before we had even made that vote, Nadia Sellers, who is the mother of Loni Smith, came to the Human Rights Commission meeting and really filled us in on what had happened and her perspective as a mother. And I sat down with a couple of board members, that evening, and I just said, this is a women's issue. There was a demand letter sent to the city, with what Lonnie and Mason felt that they needed to feel to be made whole in the situation, and it was completely ignored. It wasn't even acknowledged.
Speaker 3:So they are filing a lawsuit Thursday morning after the press conference. One of my major concerns, and it's not just the East Lansing police, but Michigan bars municipalities from requiring their employees live within city limits. So the majority of the police force does not live in East Lansing. They don't know our our kids. They don't know what we need, And it it's they don't know the community.
Speaker 1:Community leaders have voiced that this isn't an isolated event. In fact, it's contextualized by a long history of racism in East Lansing. The city was widely considered a sundown town, a town exclusionary toward black people, the term originating from the posting of signs warning black people to leave before sundown, until the nineteen sixties. In 1954, Clarence Underwood watched an integrated Spartan team in the Rose Bowl and decided that Michigan State University was where he was meant to be. In 1955, Underwood stepped off of a train with his wife and three month old to be met with dozens of leasing offices refusing to rent to a black man.
Speaker 1:Underwood was later able to find an apartment to rent with the help of a Black man he ran into on Butler Street, but housing discrimination in East Lansing persisted throughout the decade. Another well known victim of housing discrimination in the Lansing area was the Earl Little family, who were ordered by the court in 1928 to move from their home because it was in a white neighborhood. The house was burnt to the ground before the Littles could vacate. One of the Little children, Malcolm, viewed this as a formative experience, which shaped him into the separatist activist Malcolm X. After protests and sit ins across the city and MSU campus during the 1960s, the East Lansing City Council eventually passed an ordinance on 04/08/1968, to end race based housing discrimination in the city.
Speaker 1:Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Interstate 496 was constructed to connect Lansing to the freeway system, largely seen as controversial for its location, Main Street through St. Joseph neighborhood, Lansing's most densely populated black community. The route was deliberately built through this area, which displaced over 600 black families, led to the demolition of dozens of black owned businesses, and cut the community off from the rest of the city. The city of East Lansing has racism embedded in its history, but the question stands. Has it moved away from that history?
Speaker 1:East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission, also known as ELEPOC, Vice President Kath Ed Edsall referred to the city as a sundown town in 2021, the same year ELEPOC was established. Both the comment and establishment of the commission came after a four year study on the ELPD revealed racial biases within the department. Here are some key points from the study and other data releases in 2021. Out of four sixty eight cases between 2017 and 2020, one hundred and eighty four Black people were subjected to use of force by the ELPD, which accounted for thirty nine point three percent of cases, whereas White people were subjects of use of force 179 times, thirty eight point two percent of cases. As of 2021, White people outnumbered Black people 11 to one in East Lansing, raising concerns with the disproportionate amount of arrests of black people.
Speaker 1:Black residents were three times more likely to be stopped by police than white residents. Throughout the 2010s, black people accounted for anywhere between 18% to 41% of arrests while only making up 7.8% of East Lansing's population. Data as recent as 2024 uphold similar statistics, finding that despite identifying 12% of East Lansing residents as Black or African American, 46.2% of people subjected to use of force were Black. All of this data comes with recent ordinances passed by the city council that lessen the power of LIPOC.
Speaker 4:I think the city council is satisfied with doing nothing without properly investigating the situation and and putting weight behind her comment, even though the city manager agreed that it was a racist comment. I don't think that he has the capacity or the desire to consider terminating her. I think that he and others in the city are worried about being sued, but they're not worried about the safety and well-being of blacks and other minorities. And I absolutely agree and believe that city council was more concerned with the upcoming elections, than trying to fix a wrong.
Speaker 1:Outside of community leaders, East Lansing citizens have also commented on recent events and developments. On the rmsu subreddit, one user posted, Downtown has really become a disgrace this year. This is the only year in my twenty two years of living in East Lansing that I've been nervous and on edge while being downtown.
Speaker 5:Honestly, this city, is kind of similar to the outskirts of Atlanta where I'm from. I've had many not great situations happen with the police, which is kind of ironic because my dad and my stepmom are slash were cops for the city of Atlanta for a really long time. So you would think that I, of all people, would know how to interact with police officers, but sometimes, things just happen. It could be training. It could be a person having a power trip.
Speaker 5:You never know.
Speaker 1:Since the last city council meeting on October 7, where calls for chief Brown's resignation dominated public discussion, there has been no definitive action from the city. Both the city council and police department declined to comment when reached out to. For Impact eighty nine FM, I'm Mako Jalaniewski.