Potential changes to an East Lansing ordinance governing police accountability are under scrutiny, following highly publicized welcome week police confrontations and allegations of excessive force.
The proposed changes would curb the powers of the East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission, the public body responsible for investigating police misconduct. Debate over the changes has marked council meetings since early August and continues to loom over investigations into multiple viral incidents.
Critics argue the modifications would create a lack of accountability, wherein misconduct goes unchecked, as the police department will get to decide which allegations it wants to internally investigate. Some East Lansing business owners, however, have recently spoken in support of the police department, saying its presence is increasingly necessary as the downtown scene has become less safe.
Welcome week reintroduces policing concerns
On Aug. 23, East Lansing Police Department arrested 10 individuals, two of which were Michigan State University students. Two people also complained that they were pepper-sprayed by ELPD. Controversy has also swelled around the Tasing of a man by ELPD that evening.
El Azteco General Manager Johnny Vlahakis saw the Tasing incident while working downtown. Once it hits 2 a.m., the bar crowds usually begin to congregate in Ann Street Plaza, nearly always resulting in some sort of violence, he said at a recent city council meeting. The violence isn’t unique to the past two weeks. Vlahakis has worked downtown since 2009 and said things began to escalate after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Around 11:30 p.m., Nathan Leslie Warner, 21, engaged in an argument with two other men, waving his bandana and making various hand gestures before dropping his bag to the ground, according to body-worn camera footage released by ELPD. Police officers were nearby and watched as Warner drew a nine-inch knife from the bag.
The surrounding crowd began to run, nearly 50 heading for nearby alleys, according to an ELPD press release.
“They all started running, assuming the same thing that I did, that the guy had a gun and he was going to start shooting,” Vlahakis said.
Police officers intervened, ordering Warner to drop the knife. Warner did put the knife back in his bag, but disobeyed further orders given by the officers, according to ELPD. An officer then Tased Warner, who fell to the ground.
“Only at this point was a Taser deployed to stop the threat related to the knife and the threat of other potential concealed weapons due to the proximity of the offender,” a department press release said.
ELPD released videos of Warner’s Tasing Friday following his preliminary examination on Sept. 11. Even with the videos, it is hard to discern exactly what happened in the moments before Warner was Tased.
He can be seen drawing the large knife, then putting it back into his bag. But none of the back-and-forth with police can be heard, as the videos have no sound. East Lansing Chief of Police Jennifer Brown told The State News that the body-worn cameras didn’t retrieve audio because they were turned on after the Tasing. When activated, the cameras can retrieve footage from the previous two minutes, but lack the ability to retrieve sound, she said.
Additional footage from Aug. 23 will be released once the investigation has been closed, Brown said.
Later that night, Vlahakis watched additional fights break out from the rooftop of El Azteco, where pepper spray was used to subdue the crowd. Vlahakis said that had it not been for ELPD, the night would have been a lot worse.
A separate pepper-spraying incident was publicized by a series of viral TikToks posted by MSU alum Sade Sellers, who says in the videos that her brother was unfairly detained. Sellers clarified that her brother was not part of the fight in front of El Azteco, nor the viral video of a man being handcuffed in front of Dave's Hot Chicken. As of Aug. 26, Sellers' family was actively seeking footage of his detainment.
At approximately 1 a.m. on Aug. 23, Sellers’ brother was waiting in line at Dave’s Hot Chicken to pick up his order. A friend then began a “verbal disagreement” with an unknown individual. In his attempt to deescalate the situation, Sellers' brother was then pepper-sprayed. According to Sellers, no verbal warning or deescalation effort was given by the police.
As Sellers’ brother attempted to wipe his eyes, police officers handcuffed and placed him in a police car with no clarification on whether he was being arrested or detained, she said. Sellers declined requests for comment.
Sellers later says in the videos that her brother was given a "misdemeanor ticket for disorderly conduct for physical fighting,” despite there being “no fighting” and only a “verbal disagreement.”
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“It’s not just an overcorrection, it’s an abuse of power, because he did nothing wrong,” she says in one TikTok.
Advocacy by a local nonprofit has also drawn attention to the case. The Honey Bear Project has issued statements condemning the use of force, and its CEO has said at city meetings that her organization is investigating the incident.
The Okemos-based nonprofit focuses on “empowering inner-city and underrepresented youth,” according to its website. It has previously worked on turf restoration projects for historically Black colleges and universities.
It appears that The Honey Bear Project’s CEO, Nadia Sellers, is the mother of the person pepper-sprayed and ticketed, according to a TikTok Sade Sellers posted on Aug. 28, where she refers to the organization as her “mother’s nonprofit.”
The NAACP has also come to the defense of another individual claiming excessive force in a separate Aug. 23 pepper-spray incident.
Lansing Branch President Harold Pope told the city council last week that Brown said he must file a public records request for footage of other incidents that occurred on Aug. 23.
“That is the complete opposite of transparency,” Pope said.
Both welcome week incidents come after years of controversy over ELPD’s policing of Black residents. In 2022, 66% of use-of-force incidents during the month of August were against young Black men, according to an ELPD report. Earlier that year, two ELPD officers shot a 21-year-old Black man at Meijer. In 2021, 500 East Lansing residents presented a survey to city council showing that Black residents trusted ELPD officers by 45 points less than other residents.
That history led ELIPOC Chair Ernest Conerly to buy a house outside of the city out of concern for his younger cousin's safety.
"The ELPD are not getting better, even with the transition of leadership, they have not gotten better," Conerly said at a recent meeting. Brown was appointed chief of police in May.
Community expresses worry over changes to Ordinance No. 1533
Ordinance No. 1533 lays out the functions of the East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission, which advises ELPD on policy and oversees cases of alleged police misconduct, but holds no administrative authority.
On Aug. 12, the city’s labor attorney introduced amendments limiting the commission’s oversight by restricting its investigative powers, including hosting a panel of investigators and collecting information from the city for investigative purposes.
The amendments are “required” by a new police union contract, according to the agenda item report.
The proposed changes were reviewed by ELIPOC during a special meeting on Aug. 18 and again during a special meeting on Aug. 29, six days after the night of the viral incidents.
During a Sept. 9 city council meeting, councilmember Dana Watson attempted to move the second reading of the ordinance to Oct. 21 out of concern that ELIPOC members would not have enough time to address the amendments to the ordinance. The motion failed 4-1 with councilmember and MSU psychology professor Erik Altmann dissenting.
The council then opened the meeting to public comment.
MSU digital storytelling senior Elena Forman condemned the changes to the ordinance, saying that while the police can be a “life-saving force, they are not immune to corruption and bias.”
“A system where police themselves choose which complaints are to be investigated allows for a biased dismissal of complaints,” Forman said.
Nadia Sellers spoke in support of the ordinance’s “checks and balances, not just to rubber stamp when something was done right, but to call out when something was done wrong.” The lack of accountability will only deepen the “damage,” she said.
East Lansing business owners largely spoke in support of ELPD.
Hospitality business owner Tom Bramson thanked the council and city manager for appointing Brown as chief of police.
“The reaction she had three weeks ago to last week, the number of police officers—I've never seen that many police officers in this town,” Bramson said. “I think we're on the right track. I certainly feel bad for people who had negative connotations, but everything I've seen over 40 years, the East Lansing Police Department has been pretty reasonable.”
Others echoed similar sentiments, saying that downtown has become increasingly more dangerous and that an increase in police presence is needed. Ali Haider, owner of the Grove St. 7-Eleven, said that he’s losing up to 200 customers a month as a result.
“I don't think downtown is safe or secure for families or children,” Haider said. “We need more police protection there, and it's not a matter of race as it's a matter of safety. I'm a brown man, been here for 20 years, never felt anything like that.”
On Sept. 10, ELIPOC met during a regularly scheduled public meeting to discuss the commission's own proposed changes to Ordinance No. 1533 and concerns over the events of Aug. 23.
Nicashia Phillips, the political affairs director for the MSU Black Students' Alliance, spoke on behalf of one of the students that was hospitalized after a police encounter during welcome week. Phillips said he should have been treated with "dignity."
“Are we expected to fear every other interaction with police officers?” Phillips asked the commission.
Following the public comment session, members of the ELIPOC addressed the limitations of their current investigative powers. Conerly referenced the inconclusive investigation into the 2022 Meijer shooting.
The commission also raised concerns over apparent blockades to filing a complaint through the police department, including engaging with citizens who are operating under the pretense that they have filed an official complaint after conversing with an officer. In the meeting, Brown also introduced a new format for commissioners to view body-worn camera footage by logging onto a portal for a limited time period — a shared grievance for commissioners who worried it would further limit ELIPOC's investigative abilities.
There were also requests for the body-worn camera footage of Aug. 23 and Aug. 24, which Brown denied citing a request from Ingham County Prosecutor John Dewane. In Pope’s speech to city council the day before, he said Dewane had only been referring to Warner’s Tasing.
Brown declined to comment on Ordinance No. 1533.
The city council will host a regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 23 at the Hannah Community Center for a second reading of the ordinance. To postpone the reading, a motion must be introduced and passed to move the date to Oct. 21. The amendments will then be voted on by the council following discussion.
