In recent months, ELIPOC has also continued discussions with ELPD about their body-worn and fleet camera footage viewing agreement, and hopes to discuss changes at their September meeting.

Below is a list of ongoing concerns:

Use of force data

Commissioner Chris Root questioned ELPD about a certain use-of-force incident being omitted from the April 2026 reports. That incident was the April 15 officer-involved shooting of MSU senior Isaiah Kirby.

Additionally, the race and gender of officers were omitted from both the May and April 2026 reports.

Ojerio said that he speculated the report may not have been flagged as a use of force incident in ELPD's system due to Michigan State Police taking over the investigation and ELPD being considered the assisting agency.

“In this latest incident, the Kirby shooting, that officer-involved shooting, a number was pulled, but the number was taken as an assist agency and then because the Michigan State Police came in immediately, that number was not generated with an RCR (Reportable Crime Record) use of force flag, which would automatically be caught by our system and would be pushed to your report,” Ojerio said. 

This data is crucial for ELIPOC’s annual report, which includes analysis of ELPD’s use of force reports, a description of that year’s work, a review of complaints against ELPD officers and observations about officer encounters with individuals in crisis, juveniles and people experiencing homelessness.

The commission has hired a consultant, Cedric Heroux, to analyze the 2025 use of force reports provided by ELPD after requesting access to the reports since January of this year. This year’s process proved to be much more difficult than years prior, Root said.

Their request was fulfilled on June 4, but the data they were given was not consistent. In a use of force sub-committee meeting held on June 17, Heroux described at least four different “formats” ELPD used for recording their data, which makes it increasingly difficult to create a full analysis.

At the use-of-force meeting, Root questioned ELPD’s reasoning for changing the way they collected the data.

Root said that in the first version of the ELIPOC October 2025 ordinance amendments, the names of officers were to be redacted in use of force reports, but that’s not what ended up in the final amendments. Still, she alleged that ELPD continued including them until the August 2025 report, which would’ve included a report of the Michigan State University welcome week pepper spray incident.

“The first report we couldn’t put on our agenda was the one in August,” Root said. “I just don’t get why they claimed they required that it be deleted, and then they undeleted it for one section.”

Then, the reports from November, December and January of 2025 went so far as to remove descriptions on incidents including date and location information and replacing it with “two sentences that were just standard for every single incident about ‘the police department follows practices and policies,’” Root said, which the commission “objected strenuously” to, but were still not given legal justification from ELPD.

At the Aug. 5 meeting, commissioners said that Heroux would be giving an update on the progress of his use of force analysis at their September meeting.

Use of force policy

At the July 1 meeting, commissioners discussed East Lansing City Council’s efforts to review ELPD’s use of force policy, which they had not been notified about.

Brown was present and said that ELPD was planning on taking the commission’s use-of-force policy recommendations from 2023 into consideration. Root advised that they’d like to have the opportunity to give updated recommendations and be included in ongoing conversations about such matters.

At an ELIPOC policy sub-committee meeting on July 29, City Attorney Carlito Young and Brown were present to discuss multiple ELPD policies, including use of force, civil disorder or crowd control and trespassing. The meeting was largely focused on their civil disorder policy with only some discussion of use of force, but Brown said that she hopes to review the other policies in more detail still.

Now, after reviewing the draft of the revised use of force policy, commissioners are concerned about some of the changes being made.

At the Aug. 5 meeting, Root pointed out an area of major concern within the proposed policy changes.

“I'm very concerned that, in my view, the revision is taking the use of force policy backwards. (Vice Chair) Kath (Edsall) has mentioned that the reference to the sanctity of human life and the importance of preserving life has been removed from the policy,” Root said. “Adding sanctity of life was one of the very few recommendations that we made in 2023 that the department accepted, and now it’s being taken out.”

Root added that with that removal, the definition of sanctity of human life was also removed, which mentioned equity for people of color and any other potentially vulnerable groups of people in terms of bias and over-policing.

Brown stated that two city attorneys, Holly Battersby and Carlito Young, are reviewing the policy, and that Battersby specializes in police civil rights matters.

“This is what Holly (Battersby) has created based on her knowledge of best practices and her knowledge of the law across the country and in Michigan,” Brown said. “I think there’s conversation to be had, based on the draft response to revision comments that you sent back.”

Root emphasized that she’s unsure if the city attorneys are on the same page with ELIPOC about what constitutes a sufficient use of force policy for the East Lansing community.

“I’m not even sure that we’re trying to go in the same direction. He (Carlito Young) said several times, ‘well, there’s nothing illegal in the policy, it meets the constitution, it meets Supreme Court basis,’” Root said. “That’s not where we started from in 2023 when we were trying to make a better policy about use of force in this community.”

Brown said that she hopes to further discuss the use of force policy at later policy sub-committee meetings.

“I do find importance in the sanctity of life statement,” Brown said. “I think that needs to guide all of our policies, not just use of force.”

The next policy sub-committee meeting is currently scheduled for Aug. 20, when the ELPD use of force and trespassing policies will both be discussed in more detail.

Footage-viewing agreement

On April 15, the day of the officer-involved shooting of Kirby, ELIPOC was set to meet with ELPD to discuss the commission’s footage-viewing agreement for use-of-force incidents. However, that meeting did not occur due to the events that unfolded that day, and has been continuously pushed back. Now, they plan to discuss it at their September meeting.

“He (Interim City Manager Chad Pride) wrote us a memo saying you have to come watch, and we objected and said that isn't how we've done it before and made the case,” Root said. "After that, we established this little working group to meet with them, which Kathy Swedlow talked about. We’ve probably had four meetings, but then it all got renewed after the (ELIPOC) ordinance was amended in October.”

The matter has been continuously pushed back since then, Vice Chair Kath Edsall explained at the July 1 meeting.

“Way back in March, or maybe in February, we decided we wanted to meet with the city manager, the city attorney, have our liaison here, and have the chief here,” Edsall said. “And that was scheduled for April 15, and we all know what happened, and then you couldn’t get it in May, and then we tried to schedule one, and then (City Manager) Robert Belleman is gone.”

Previously, commissioners were able to view police body-worn and fleet footage of such incidents using a secure password-protected drop-box.

In May 2024, ELPD Interim Police Chief Chad Pride told commissioners that they needed to come to the EL Police Department to view the footage after consulting with a city attorney, the day he stepped into the new position. Since commissioners maintain that none of them had ever violated the terms of their previous agreement, they’ve pushed back on the change for months.

Previously, at the June 4, 2024 City Council meeting, City Attorney Anthony Chubb explained the reason for the change.

“The question is not whether they should be able to review those videos, we have no problem with them reviewing the videos,” Chubb said. “It’s simply developing the process to ensure we can maintain their confidentiality to protect investigations, to protect the confidentiality of some of the individuals in the videos and things of that nature.”

In the commission’s ordinance, it states that if any members reveal confidential information, that they may be kicked from the commission, which has not once occurred.

In an interview with The State News, Root explained that the unprecedented rule places significant logistical strains on their ability to review footage. Since the commission is made up of volunteers with careers and other commitments, the time slots offered by ELPD to view footage are often inconvenient for their schedules.

“We need to get access to the footage. As (Vice Chair) Kath Edsall explained, it's not like going to a movie where you say, ‘oh, the movie is 90 minutes, I will allocate 90 minutes,’” Root said. “It is difficult to watch body-worn camera and dash camera footage. And it is rare that you don't re-watch various pieces of it.”

In many cases, there are multiple officers and police cars on scene, each with their own body-worn camera and fleet footage. In some cases, the incident may involve more than one time-period. As such, when viewing footage, it can be difficult to discern exactly how the events unfolded without re-watching it multiple times.

“It can be hours of video that's difficult to figure out and sometimes very difficult to watch. And it just doesn't work to have to go somewhere else, particularly when that somewhere else is the police department that you're concerned about,” Root said. “We watched video on our own time, multiple times. Nobody violated the procedure.”

Since then, ELPD has offered that commissioners go to City Hall to watch footage instead.

At the Aug. 5 meeting, Vice Chair Kath Edsall explained that since the commission has been at odds with ELPD about the issue for several months, they have reluctantly followed their process to ensure complaints are reviewed, but wish to return to the previous format.

The commission plans to discuss the footage-viewing agreement with Chief Brown at their September meeting.

“The uncertainty just continues and the frustration continues,” Root said. “And as I explained during the meeting, what we are trying to do is exactly what the ordinance still allows us to do.”