GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) has formally announced two discrimination charges against the Grand Rapids Police Department on Monday.
This comes after the department claimed it is looking into 28 discrimination complaints involving GRPD.
The Civil Rights Department held the conference at the Delta Hotels by Marriott at 10 a.m.
Watch the news conference here:
One of the charges stem from a 2017 incident involving Honestie Hodges, a Black 11-year-old girl who was handcuffed despite not matching the description of the suspect in an investigation.
Both Honestie's mother Whitney Hodges and her grandmother Alisa Niemeyer were in attendance of the news conference.
"So grateful and thankful that steps are being taken to change a broken department," Niemeyer said during an interview afterwards. "Change has to come. No one should be treated the way Honestie and the twins and all the other people that are involved in this investigation, in these charges, none of them deserved it."
The second charge involves a January 2020 traffic stop in which a Black woman was placed in handcuffs despite complying with police, the MDCR explains, adding she was placed inside a police cruiser for 20 minutes.
"Right now we are happy to see that the Michigan Department of Civil Rights is proceeding on Honestie’s case and the other case, and we hope very frankly on some others, the two boys that were stopped at gunpoint, I represent them as well," said Stephen Drew, attorney and legal redress chair of the NAACP. "We hope the charges are brought in so that we can deal with the bigger picture of the difference in treatment between persons of African American descent and the fear they seem to have of us to want to pull guns on children, to pulls guns on members of the community, on working people."
In both cases, MDCR says GRPD was unable to offer examples of similar situations happening to people of other races.
The city of Grand Rapids released the following statement in response to Monday's charges:
The City of Grand Rapids is committed to ensuring all people are treated equally under the law and has been fully cooperative and engaged with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) since at least May 2019 when investigations began. The City has been in constant communication with the department through their changes of leadership and transitions in staff handling cases. The City has received two matters from MDCR and a hearing has been requested for each matter. The City intends to respond and attend all hearings as provided by the MDCR administrative rules and looks forward to presenting relevant facts to the Commission.
The MDCR said they've been in regular contact with Attorney General Dana Nessel's office and that she could get involved later, if need be. Currently a judge is reviewing the evidence.
