East Lansing Human Rights Commission Says Records Fee Hampers Police Brutality Investigation
The East Lansing Human Rights Commission has hit a roadblock investigating police officers involved in an August incident where two men were pepper-sprayed by police, as the city has requested almost $900 to fulfill a records request that commissioners say is vital to the investigation.
The investigation stems from an Aug. 24 incident where an ELPD officer deployed pepper spray on two young Black men downtown. ELPD initially justified officers’ actions in a press release that named the two men and said they were charged with crimes related to fighting. However, the attorney for the men later released footage of the incident that painted a much different picture. Charges against the men were dropped and the incident is now subject of a lawsuit filed in federal court.
The commission is concerned about the actions of two officers, Officer Andrew Lyon for deploying the pepper spray and Officer Jacey Kingsbury for her demeanor during the arrest, including using explicit language. The commission filed a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request to review these officers’ actions in other interactions around the same time period, and to try to determine if they’ve displayed a pattern of racial bias.
The commission requested a list of training Lyon and Kingsbury completed, in addition to body camera footage, arrest records, police reports, and demographic data of individual encounters during Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights for seven weeks in August and September.
While the training documents were provided at no cost, the commission must pay $887.27 for the rest of the documents and footage. Under Michigan FOIA statute, public bodies may assess a fee for the amount of time it takes to retrieve and redact records.
In a text message to East Lansing Info, Commissioner Karen Hoene said the commission has never had to file a FOIA request because it never had a complaint it investigated against any city department since she joined the commission in 2019.
“[Since] I’ve been on the commission, we’ve had a working relationship with council,” Hoene said at Monday’s commission meeting. “If we have wanted funding to do things, they’d given it to us, but that doesn’t seem to be the case now. They want to charge us that kind of money, and we don’t have that kind of money.”
The commission is adamant about receiving this information to establish if there is a pattern of disparate treatment in how the officers treat white versus non-white individuals.
“I think allowing us to actually show this treatment would be the proof we need to actually build a good case,” Commissioner Joshua Hewitt said. “Anybody can pretty much say ‘they were bad officers, treated them [two men] poorly, but it has nothing to do with race,’ and we don’t want them to get off by just saying that.”
The commission believes the fee should be waived since it is a branch of the city, but Hewitt shared that before the meeting, City Attorney Carlito Young told him there’s nothing in the ordinance that states there’s an automatic waiver of the fee, so the city is not not waiving it.
The mayor has the authority to reduce or waive FOIA fees in cases when the requester believes the cost is too high. Despite Young’s response, the commission plans to send an appeal letter to Mayor Erik Altmann.
Commissioners urged council liaison Mayor Pro Tem Chuck Grigsby to advocate that the fees be eliminated.
“Is that something you can support us on … waive the fee so we can get the documentation needed to fulfill the investigation?” asked Vice Chair Tina Farhat.
“I can certainly talk to him about how important it is for you guys,” Grigsby said.