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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.

Hi, everyone. I'm Eli's Deputy Editor, Annalise Nichols, and today we're going to unravel some of the details of a recent incident that's been making headlines in East Lansing. Back in August, as students were returning to Michigan State University, East Lansing police reported an influx of public safety incidents, which also had local residents concerned as some of the incidents involved officers deploying pepper spray and using other means of force and crowd control. One incident in particular, which the city released a news release for in late September, told the community that amidst the chaos of the August weekend, when there were 52 calls for service and 10 arrests, Two of those individuals who were arrested and charged with crimes in conjunction with engaging in an altercation outside of Dave's Hot Chicken in the downtown area, body cam footage of the incident was released back in September, and the two arrested individuals were publicly named. The two young men, Lonnie Smith, 21 years old of Okemos, and Mason Woods, 22 years old of East Lansing.

But amid recent comments made by the city's police chief, Jen Brown, to media, the city has been having a large conversation in public venues about racism in policing. Recently, the defense for Lonnie has released other footage of the incident, surveillance footage, that he says paints a very different picture of what happened that night. Joining me today is managing editor Lucas Day, who's been covering this issue. Lucas, what's all in this new footage that's different than the footage we've already seen?

Yeah. So this is this is quite a bit different. So what we had before was we had four different angles of body camera footage that kind of painted a hectic scene. It's very shaky as body camera footage often is. It's shot into a crowd.

It's obstructed by people. It's hard to see. This new camera angle is from overhead of the Dave's Hot Chicken entrance. It's stable, is the biggest thing, but it also shows how the altercation starts. Doesn't look radically different from something that you might see two dozen times if you're in downtown East Lansing late on a weekend night.

It looks like Woods is kind of stumbling. It looked like he had a little bit too much to drink, which in the press release, they said that he was transported to the hospital and bumping into people. This seems like it kind of leads to an altercation, a bouncer. I I believe the man at the bar was a bouncer. He had some issues.

There was some pushing. There weren't any punches thrown. And then you see Lonnie come into the view of the of the camera. Lonnie's not there for very long. He's only there for maybe fifteen seconds before ELPD comes in and starts pepper spraying people.

I don't even think it was fifteen seconds. But he grabs Woods from behind. And in an interview with Lonnie Smith's attorney, the attorney clarified that Lonnie was running in to grab a man that was his friend. So the Woods, who had been kind of stumbling around, Smith comes in from behind and he grabs him, and it's not really the video doesn't look that aggressive. It doesn't look like what was described in the press release, which you've got these two kids violence downtown is a very real issue.

We've heard business owners, not just the last couple months, but for years, talking about this problem. And I know that they're not lying. I've got friends that have worked at the restaurants and they say there's large fights every time they're leaving work. These business owners aren't lying about the existence of violence in the downtown area, But what you get from this press release and I I didn't learn much from the body camera footage, to begin with. But what what you get from the Dave's Hot Chicken video, it's it's pretty different from what you'd imagine if you're talking about violence in Downtown East Lansing.

This looks like a drunk kid that's kinda stumbling into people. It's obviously irritating. A bouncer gets involved. And then Lonnie Smith runs in. It seems like he's trying to get his friend out of there.

He grabs him from behind. Woods is yelling at another man in line. Lonnie gets between the man and, his friend, and then ELPD runs on, and within a couple of seconds, they spray pepper spray within, looks like, inches of Lonnie's face, and they hit, Woods and a couple of other people there.

But East Lansing Police has put out a press release painting the picture of it being this fight that Lonnie was a participant in. Right?

Yeah. And that's that's I I think that's the key distinction is so the timeline of this is this incident happened at about 01:30 in the morning, August 24. This press release goes out September 26, so it's more than a month later. And starting within a few weeks of this incident, Lanny's mother, Nadia Sellers, has been coming to city council meetings and talking about how her son was mistreated, about how he was lumped in with, you know, she acknowledged that there were some incidents down there, but she said that he was being lumped in with people for things that he didn't do essentially. And I think that this video really backs up what she's been saying all along.

I also think it's important to note that this video came out maybe three hours before the city council meeting started. And I think you could see that from some of the council members speaking. Think you could see that from city manager Robert Bellman. It seemed like they were pretty jarred by something, and I'm not sure if it's the comments that Jen Brown made last week that have been perceived as racist. I'm not sure if it's that they didn't expect this video to come out.

We've heard people speculate that's what it is. Or I'm not sure if it's that they all hadn't seen the video. So Lonnie Smith's attorney, Jack Rucker, in this interview with WLNS if if you haven't read the WLNS story yet, you you should. They did it's a really great they've done some really great work around this. Yeah.

But Lonnie's attorney, Jack Rucker, said that East Lansing has had this video from Dave's Hot Chicken since before this press release came out that, again, it really did paint Lonnie and, again, Mason Woods as kind of the face of violence in downtown East Lansing. And if you watch this video, that's not what you're gonna get from it. You're gonna see something that happens dozens of times every single weekend in East Lansing. It looks like Lonnie's trying to help his friend. Even Mason Woods, he doesn't seem overly aggressive.

It seems like he's drank a little bit too much bumping into people that escalated, but not to a point where people were throwing punches, which, again, the violence in downtown East Lansing is real. That's real. What I'm struggling with is why these two kids, or college aged people I guess, were kind of made the face of this more than a month after the fact. If we acknowledge that the violence issues are real, which they are, and if we acknowledge that there's plenty of people that are contributing to it, why are these two why were these two singled out in the press release? Because we get press releases all the time.

If you see people named in press releases like this, it usually means they did something serious. This they were charged with misdemeanors. It it a lot of it just doesn't add up to me.

Yeah. And this press release was sent out a month after the supposed incident.

Yeah. I I I think that's a point that just can't be made in office that it it was a decision that was made. And if Jack Rucker, Lonnie Smith's attorney is right in that East Lansing had this footage when they sent out the press release, I think that brings a very important question of the narrative they were trying to create. Because they, again, they previously, with the press release, they put out four different body camera footage clips from different officers that tell you less. That footage is not as good as the footage that WLNS put out.

And WLNS spoke with a Michigan State University criminal justice professor previously after the body worn camera footage came out, and he said that the use of pepper spray was justified. And then they spoke with him again after this new footage came out, and he said that it paints a radically different picture. And so we're not just talking about the decision to put out the press release, but it changes how people are gonna perceive using the pepper spray in the first place. And I I being a cop's a hard job. Like, I'm not trying to take anything away from these guys.

It's a job I cannot do. It's it's very spur of the moment. I'm sure there's gonna be mistakes made. It's inevitable, I think, with that kind of a job. But it just seems like putting out the body camera footage instead of this overhead angle, which is a better angle.

It was intentional, and this criminal justice professor that WLMS talked about, he said that he changed his mind after watching it. He said that they made mistakes. So it's just a lot of a lot of questions about who knew about this footage, why they made the decision to single out these two young men, and if if there's gonna be anything that happens going forward. You see things in East Lansing that's a big deal locally. I think that this is gonna be something that sticks around.

I I think that this is something that's gonna get picked up by bigger media. Think that this is something that's gonna be around for a little bit because it's not just a spur of the moment thing where cops deploy pepper spray when they probably shouldn't have. We're now two we're now a month and a half in, and we're just now seeing this footage. The police decided to name these kids in a press release. That's that's a decision that they made more than a month after the fact.

So they're going have to answer to all that.

Yeah. And I think our local residents are already addressing this and recognizing that it is a huge deal, that this is conducive of a pretty pivotal moment in how policing is going to work in East Lansing and what's going to be allowed. You kind of alluded to the city council meeting recently where tensions were high, emotions were high. There was a lot that was being demanded from our governance in terms of accountability for ELPD. A precursor to this whole conversation, we have for years had a large conversation.

The state has had the same conversation about the ethics of use of force in policing and accountability. But recent comments from police chief Jen Brown have really spurned a pretty heated argument about racial understanding and policing. Like Lucas said, public safety, especially in the downtown area, especially now that students are back in the area, been a huge topic. It's invaded our conversations about the upcoming election, what our look our potential elected leaders will do about public safety. But the comment made to WNS really served as a fever point for this conversation where this is the quote that she gave.

We have a very transient population. And over the last month, starting with welcome weekend, we have had a disproportionate number of minorities come into the community and commit crimes. And as police officers, we are simply responding to those crimes. These comments have been supremely inflammatory to the local community. There have been calls for her removal from

The Women's Center.

From, yeah, the our local domestic violence organization, the Women's Center, has called for the chief's dismissal.

Several city commissioners.

She has since issued a statement after these comments offering, you know, clarity on what she might have meant. But I don't think people are really receiving that very well, very genuinely.

Yeah. And watching the meeting, people talked a lot about Jen's comments at meeting, and there had been some pushback even before the meeting. I didn't really know what to expect going into the meeting, but the statement from the city manager, who's East Lansing's top employee, it was much stronger than I expected it to be. And I'm not sure if he'd planned to say this beforehand. I'm not sure if he said it because he saw that that footage of Lonnie Smith and Mason Woods came out a few hours before the meeting.

I'm not sure if it's some sort of combination of those things, but the city manager Robert Bellman said that Jen Brown's comments were offensive and racist. He said that verbatim at the meeting. And I I I did not expect him to take a stance that was was that strong.

Another person who spoke during the meeting, as we've said previously, Lani's mom, Nadia Sellers, has been a vocal advocate for her son and is on a mission to really call for accountability and and clarity on why her son's name has been put in the public eye like this.

Yeah. And Nadia's comments at the meeting, there were people in the room that were crying. She's spoken pretty powerfully about this for more than a month now, but I think that seeing this footage, it really gave some perspective.

You can't find one person anywhere in the world to say a bad thing about my son. Your police department has a history of getting away with discrimination and lawful arrest, but not this time. Not this kid, not my kid, and not on my watch. Look at me, mister city manager, because I mean business. I forgive you, your officers, and the chief.

You know why? Because god's gonna judge you. And when he does, I will not be praying for you to him to have mercy on any one of you. Now I'm sure those of you looking at me, I'm sure some of you guys are really, and ladies, good people. I just haven't seen it.

You stayed so silent when your sheep chief make reckless, discriminatory, inflammatory, MAGA comments to the press. How can we even think for a second? Any one of you are decent. But I'm sure you probably are. So I'm gonna ask you.

Do something bold. Stand up You have thirty seconds. And show up. I know what I'm just telling my half. Stand up and show up even if it's not popular.

We didn't report from the press release, about this previously. We didn't put Lonnie's name in any of our stories, I don't think, until the most recent one when we got this new footage. But if you looked up Lonnie's name, he'd been in the news for good things. And I haven't met Lonnie. I don't know him.

I don't want to editorialize on this stuff. But he was in the state news because he was running a business in downtown East Lansing. Nadia referred to her son as a philanthropist. In our perspective as journalists, we try to cover this, I think, in an unbiased way. As I just said a second ago, don't like to editorialize, but unless there's something else that shows something drastically different, I don't know how you spin this as Lonnie doing anything other than helping his friend.

Like, he acted like I think that the city would ask their residents to act to look out for each other, and then he was put in a press release more than a month later that's about issues with violence. There's only two people named in that press release. It's not like it's a wall of names that he blends into. Nadia talked about this hurting her son's ability to get a job. I know that his attorneys talked about this too.

In the press release it said that he was held until he was sober. Lawyer said that he was sober when he was arrested. Nadia said during her comments he blew sober. The lawyer in the WLNS article also said he was sober. So just the way that he was depicted, and again, we cannot stress enough, this press release came out more than a month later.

Were I'd have to imagine that there were lots of people with eyes on this thing, and there was a conscious decision to put it out. And why that decision was made is a bigger discussion. Actually, this morning, I was on the city's website. We're recording this Wednesday, so the day after the city council meeting. So I I was on the city's website this morning.

We're recording this on Wednesday, so the day after the city council meeting, the day after that new footage came out. And on the city's home home page of its website, if you scroll down past, like, the main links, that press release was on the home page. So, again, we don't like to editorialize, but I don't know how you look at this press release and think anything else unless there's something wildly different. Lonnie seemed like he was under control in this video. He seemed like he was trying to help his friend out.

And even the friend who I said was pushing, he's not doing this happens dozens of times every weekend in East Lansing. I don't know why they put that kid's name in a press release either.

Yeah. So obviously, this has been of great interest to the local community, but as Lucas has clearly displayed, it's of great interest to journalists as well. This is about transparency, honesty, how information is being made available to the public and to media. Also, is a matter of due process. Local law enforcement will release information like what we saw in this press release after charges have been announced, so that would explain the month long timeline.

But the choice to release information about this particular case, I have questions about what the rationale was. I'd like some clarity on what the thought processes were and how this what are the I'd love to know what are the the criterium that make it appropriate to release someone's name, because my understanding and I, as Lucas knows, my background is criminal justice reporting. When an office or agency releases someone's name, there's typically like a clear purpose to why that's being included in a press release, because it's a case that has bearing on the health and safety of the community. A good example being an active situation that the public should be made aware of that there's an open and ongoing threat to their health and safety, and that they should take certain precautions for their own wellness. Another good example being sexual abuse cases.

Those are crimes that are typically not confined to one instance and also a crime that people don't often report to police. Maybe hearing that there's another instance and and another person has been believed by authorities will encourage them to come forward and and have their day in court. So, like I said, I'll be really interested in hearing as this progresses what the city's rationale was for releasing this information, if it was meant to call attention to violence in downtown or something else.

Yeah, and I sent some questions in through the city's portal today. We'll see if they'll talk to us or not. I've seen some other outlets like WLNS, it seems like they're being pretty quiet. I think that there's got to be some sort of explanation about who had seen this footage, who made the decision to exclude it, and who decided to put these two young men's names in that press release. Because again, this isn't me on WordPress publishing stories to ELI.

This is a team of people within the city that made this decision.

I think another thing that makes this conversation, you know, bigger than even this one moment, is the fact in East Lansing, we are currently in the process, our city council in the process of taking, approving an amendment to the ordinance that dictates the power of our police oversight commission, is run by citizens, to offer insight and an opportunity for the citizen body to offer their perspective on what might best serve the community. And so that's already getting declawed, I think is the word we've been using. So it admits the and it's been a very unpopular process. We've had Michigan State University students come in. We've had members of other city commissions come in to say that they do not approve of these changes.

So as we're in the midst of a change to our city ordinance that would, in many people's opinions, chip away at transparency for policing. This is this moment really raises some questions of what we're going to see in the future from ELPD.

Yeah, and as you know from reporting around cops, it's hard to get information on anything in the criminal legal system. Cops Which

is half a good thing. Right. Because due process. You should be considered innocent until proven guilty. You should when it is not in and this isn't isn't me talking.

This is due process. Right. Your name shouldn't be thrown around until it's it's of public safety concern.

Ironically, we've got those two young men's names that were in the press release, and as Nadia Sellers pointed out, they had not had their day in court. This happened a month and a half ago. A press release came out a month later. So we're not talking about the media doing this though, we're talking about well some of the media picked it up, which you've got to be careful about that. It was the city's decision to put this out.

It's not the first time the city's put out a press release about things involving crime in East Lansing that they probably shouldn't have. So in late twenty twenty, and I wasn't reporting with Eli at the time, I'm looking back at some of our old reporting, there was a man that East Lansing Police put out a press release about and they said that they stopped sexual assault in action. He ended up being completely exonerated, charges were dropped, I think he spent ten days in jail, and there was a phone camera running of the entire incident. It did not match the police narrative. It didn't match what it said in the police report.

Was sleeping when officers entered the room. There was a woman there. She'd called the police, so I'm not saying they were just bursting into his house. They were there for a reason. But the police narrative wasn't accurate.

The charges were dropped. He was exonerated. But you still had his name and mugshot that was sent to media. People ran stories about it. I'm I'm not sure what the city's gonna do with this most recent incident.

It's I don't it's not the same as the late twenty twenty incident. That one was pretty egregious. There he was one person, you know, literally a mugshot, accused of a very serious crime. I'm not diminishing what happened with this press release either. I I I just think that that's a harmful way to disseminate information.

But I'm just wondering what their criteria is to put people out information about people out I'm just wondering what they get out of putting these two college aged kids' names in a news release. Was misdemeanors. There's misdemeanors that happen every weekend. Like I said, and I really, really encourage everyone to watch this WLNS footage so you can see it for yourself. This doesn't look unusual.

So I I don't know why these two kids were singled out.

In this vein of, you know, what this means for policing and for the city, in the recent city council meeting, Mayor George Brookover used his time during council communications, which he doesn't normally do, to read a prepared statement. It said, In view of recent events, I call on our city manager and city attorney to undertake immediately a complete review of our police and personnel policies and report back to counsel with recommendations as to how the city can best utilize outside resources, such as the MSU School of Criminal Justice to ensure our continuing progress towards effective and just law enforcement.

And so Brook over wanted to look over personnel and policies within the East Lansing Police Department, something that's been discussed a lot at city meetings, not just the last, you know, year or two, but East Lansing Police Department has been fully staffed since 2019. They may have actually reached that in the last month or so with cadets committed, which isn't, you know, fully being a police officer. But our our staffing is better now than it had been, but it hasn't been good in years. And that's despite the department carrying close to 20 less officers than it did in the early 2000s. And so with this constant turnover, not only do you have leadership changing pretty drastically.

In the last year, we've had three different chief of police. You had about a year stretch there before Jen Brown was named the full time chief where you had Kim Johnson, he was put on leave in April and then he resigned in May. Then you had Chad Pride step in as interim chief. He was in that role for about seven months, six months. Then you had Jen Brown step in and she kept the interim tag for, I think, five or six months.

Then they gave her the job going forward just this past May, May or June. So you've got a lot of turnover up at the top. Even before those three, there was quite a bit. That was three in a year, that's pretty drastic. But even before them, had a lot of top level leadership turnover, but you've also lower down the ranks, you've a lot of turnover.

So Cath Edsall, who's on the Police Oversight Commission, she's referred to this incident in McDonald's a couple of times where a man was tased, and I agree with some of the things that she said that there were issues with how that was handled. It didn't seem like it was somebody that needed to be tased. It didn't seem like somebody that was really a threat to the officers. And Jen Brown would agree that there are issues with that too because in a report that the commission and the police put together after viewing the footage of this McDonald's incident, which was I think back in April. A report that the Oversight Commission made in conjunction with, Jen Brown and Adam Park, who's an officer, they say that the seniority profile of officers is an issue.

It's written right in this report. Brown said the seniority profile of ELP officers at the present time does not allow for more recent hires to routinely be paired with more experienced officers. So what she's saying is that once they go through a four or five month training period where they're working with their field training officer, they're not getting paired with these older officers who may know how to handle more tense situations, which, you know, I think it's important to note that I I don't think that anyone's complaining about police responding to this incident outside of Dave's Hot Chicken. The way that they've responded has been what's driving criticism. And so I'm wondering if this review that and the mention that Brookover had was pretty vague, I don't know what it's gonna look like.

But I I wonder if what we see is that ELPD officers are you know, they're very young and they're gonna have to learn. Jen said in her report police chief Brown said in her report that it is a problem and it did cause an issue with this McDonald's incident that Cath Edsall's referred to a couple of times.

Like you said, this is a story that potentially could be picked up by larger media outlets, certainly other outlets within Michigan that the connotations of what's happening in East Lansing is pertinent to their community. As someone who, you know, comes from statewide coverage, used to be a correspondent for the Associated Press in Michigan, I could totally see that happening. And like we keep saying, like so much of this conversation, it's not just that the presidents have a stake in what the outcome of this case is and, you know, how procedure on releasing information by the city and police works in the future, this has connotations for us as journalists. Journalists absolutely have a responsibility to exercise discretion when writing things from a press release. However, there is like, this isn't an excuse to simply write from a press release as if I did the reporting myself.

However,

in this case, in the one we're talking about, there are media outlets that ran this press release, that wrote up the details, that, you know, probably in the interests, same interests that we have of conveying public information that helps keep the community safe, you know, published these names and and published what the police said about them before we saw this other video.

Yeah. And I I think we can't stress the point enough that if you haven't seen this video on WL and S, you should watch it. And if I don't know if the city's planning to back down their position on this incident or not. Maybe they'll stick to it, but if that press release is up, I'd read the press release after you watch that video because what's captured in that video is not what I got from the press release. And I think if I would have written a story that put those two kids' names in there when discussing violence downtown, I I think I would have felt pretty bad.

I mean, quite frankly, this is a reminder just on a journalism ethics level to exercise an even higher level of scrutiny for information, even if it's coming from a public body.

So we brought the podcast back about a month ago, and I'm glad that we did because usually I like covering things through print. I'm a print journalist. But there's some things that I think are better covered when we speak about them because there's so much history and there's so much nuance and there's things that we've got to tie together that if you're looking at a wall of words that can be intimidating. So we're gonna keep covering this going forward. I'm sure that this isn't the last that we hear about the process that went into putting out this press release or the last we've heard about the police chief's recent comments.

Stick with Eli. We'll have more more out on this in the in the coming weeks.

Yeah. And I wanna thank everyone who's been joining us on this new season, this new era of, East Lansing Insider. I've been deputy editor, Annalise Nichols.

And I'm managing editor, Lucas Day. We'll be back next week.

East Lansing Insider is brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. We are on the web at eastlancinginfonews and impact89fm.org. Thanks for listening.