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A member of East Lansing’s Independent Police Oversight Commission says the police department is blocking the public release of a report detailing the use of force by officers in August.
The East Lansing Police Department has released monthly reports on the use of force since October 2021.
Earlier this year, the department stopped including the names of officers in the reports to comply with the collective bargaining agreement the city reached with its police union.
But Police Oversight Commission member Chris Root said the department included officer names in the report for August, which they told commission members makes it confidential.
The police department has come under scrutiny for using a taser and pepper spray in August while responding to multiple incidents during Michigan State University’s welcome week, including a brawl downtown.
“We are in a position of being told we can’t reveal something, and having the report be reconfigured so that it becomes confidential, where the month before, and, you know, the four months before, it wasn’t confidential,” Root said.
She said she isn’t sure how commission members should proceed, since they were not expecting the report to be classified for the first time.
“If you are going to say the labor attorney told us to do it this way for four months, and now the labor attorney is telling us to do it a different way for the critical month of August, what changed?”
The commission isn’t currently scheduled to meet again until mid-November. But Root floated the possibility of holding a special meeting.
WKAR News has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for August’s use of force report.
Some groups have asked for Police Chief Jen Brown to resign after she said the city had a “disproportionate number of minorities come into the community and commit crimes” when asked to explain the department’s use of force against a disproportionate number of Black individuals, including during the August incidents.
Brown has apologized for “unintentionally offending members of the community.”
Several members of the East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission indicated during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting that they have lost faith in Brown’s leadership.
Earlier this year, Brown apologized for saying some members of the oversight commission “hate cops.”
Other changes proposed through contract negotiations with the police union would strip the commission of its ability to investigate complaints and recommend disciplinary actions and would prohibit members from commenting on pending complaints or investigations.
East Lansing City Council members will consider the proposed changes at their Oct. 21 meeting.
You can read the proposed changes here after City Council members voted 4-1 to release the document to the public and delay consideration of the proposal.
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