City Says Race Was Irrelevant, Doubles Down on Disputed Police Pepper Spray Narrative

The City of East Lansing has been mum on an incident for which two young Black men are suing the city for police brutality on the basis of race. But documents show the city doubling down on a disputed version of events in a state civil rights investigation and asserting that race did not play a factor when an officer pepper sprayed the men.

Both men are suing in federal court after the city and the East Lansing Police Department published a since deleted news release from Sept. 26 naming the men, Lonnie Smith, 21, and Mason Woods, 22. The release included obstructed police body camera footage from the Aug. 24 incident in downtown East Lansing and announced the two men had been charged with misdemeanors related to fighting.

However, security camera footage of the incident shows Smith physically holding Woods back from a group of men, at one moment placing his hands on Wood’s chest, separating him from men he had been in an argument with. 

Since the security footage was released, many residents and members of city commissions have challenged aspects of the city’s narrative, disputing that a fight ever occurred and saying police did not give any opportunity to comply with commands. 

City prosecutors dropped the criminal charges against both men in October and officials haven’t said much publicly about the matter since. City Council has discussed the legal battle in closed door meetings and moved to have a confidential independent review of police actions in the fall. 

Documents capturing the attorney representing the city’s responses to a Michigan Department of Civil Rights investigation, however, shows that the city is still leaning on aspects of its disputed narrative, maintaining that ELPD Officer Andrew Lyon only deployed pepper spray to break up a fight after verbal commands were ignored.  

Smith’s mother, Nadia Sellers, who has been a vocal presence at city council meetings since her son was pepper sprayed, told East Lansing Info that the damage the city and its police department has done to her son by singling him out by name on false charges is irreversible and is rooted in racism.

Neither her son nor Woods came to downtown East Lansing that night to fight, Sellers said. The city’s insistence on running with a narrative where it calls what either man did as a fight is based in its own racism, Sellers said, and if anything her son did everything in his power to deescalate the situation so everyone could continue on with their nights.

“So when I look at my son, my son was a hero. My son was dressed nicely, not there for a fight with his friend, not there for a fight with anyone,” Sellers said.

But race was not a factor at any point before or after the incident, the city asserted to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, according to the written correspondence in the civil rights investigation dated March 13. The documents were given to ELi by Sellers.

The documents say that according to the city’s legal representation, attorney Timothy Ferrand, the officers who arrived on the scene did not know when they responded what the race or skin color of either of the men was and that race did not play a role in Lyon deploying pepper spray. 

A police expert ELi previously spoke with said the use of pepper spray appears to be unnecessary, and the city’s Police Oversight Commission filed a complaint stating the pepper-spray, deployed within inches of Woods and Smith’s faces, was discharged from an unsafe distance. 

Lyon resigned from his position earlier this month after less than two years with the department, according to WLNS.

The documents from the state civil rights investigator says that the city emphasizes that the news release, which currently can be read online as an archived document, also outlined that ELPD responded to 52 service calls and made 10 arrests that night and “there was no evidence that the decision to make the release was in any way motivated by Claimant’s race.”

But only two people were named in that release, Smith and Woods. Areview of police press releases from 2025 showed only one other occasion where an individual was named in a pre-trial press release. In October 2025, former East Lansing Mayor Aaron Stephens said he believed ELPD implemented a policy to stop including names in pre-trial press releases in most cases after ELPD incorrectly claimed to have stopped a sexual assault in action in 2020, naming a man who was later exonerated. 

As to why two Black men were singled out, Sellers said people need only look at what the police department’s own leadership has said.

Outrage has been heard by the public during several City Council meetings in regards to comments made by East Lansing Police Department Chief Jennifer Brown in an interview with WLNS late last year. She has since issued an apology.

“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,” Brown told WLNS.

The state civil rights investigator says in the document that the city touts its creation of a Human Relations Commission which works to implement the City’s civil rights ordinance and investigate and seek resolution of reported incidents of discrimination.

City attorneys have discouraged the Human Rights Commission’s investigation into the  incident, and earlier this week Mayor Erik Altmann rejected the commission’s request that the city waive a nearly $900 fee to obtain body camera footage, police reports and other information about police officers’ actions last fall.