ELPD Captain Pride Speaks about East Lansing Crime, Policing

People are reporting more robberies in East Lansing – but that doesn’t mean robberies are up. Traffic patrols by the East Lansing Police Department are down compared to a few years ago, but this is due to the department being short officers, not a decision to stop patrolling the spans where enforcement used to be common. And no, changes in the disorderly conduct code have not made it impossible to enforce laws that cover issues like noise and skateboarding on downtown sidewalks.

This is just some of what we learned when we conveyed ELi readers’ questions to ELPD spokesperson Capt. Chad Pride and conducted an hour-long interview with him. Here’s a summary from that interview on Dec. 8.

People are reporting robberies more.

Public communications to Council are showing an increase of people expressing concern and frustration over crime downtown. We shared with Captain Pride this example from the Council mailbag:

“Numerous girls were robbed Saturday night on Grove Street in your city. Gangs show up at the downtown bars EVERY weekend. When is student safety going to trump politics for the City of East Lansing? Lighting may be a start, but it certainly doesn’t deter gun violence or gangs. Wake up EL.”

Captain Pride said the letter-writer in this case was correctly referring to a night where two groups of young women were robbed. In that case, police believe, the perpetrator might have been the same in both cases.

While the victims were shaken by the experience—one of the incidents, which happened on Grove Street, involved a gun—they were not physically injured and no suspect identifications or arrests have been made.

But Captain Pride questioned the assumption that robberies are up.

“I think they are consistent. [But] I think we are obviously seeing them a lot more from a level of people reporting it,” he said.

He explained that with messaging from schools (including Michigan State University) to young people about apps like OK2SAY, more youth seem to be reporting robberies. That said, there are still cases when officers are sent out to a call and the victim doesn’t want to cooperate in an investigation.

“We do see this [kind of crime] more in our student-housing population,” Pride explained, including places like downtown where student housing is now denser. MSU’s enrollment is higher than it used to be, and even though living on campus is now required for most MSU undergrduates for their first two years, the increased enrollment means more people and potentially more trouble.

But “when people say ‘gangs,’” Pride said, “I would try to steer away from that because we can’t confirm that what this is is gang activity.”

ELPD is doing what it can to deter crimes like robbery and assault, including bringing in extra lighting for busy nights, putting extra officers out on foot downtown, and being proactive about interactions with people who look like they may get into a troubling situation. He referred to the PEACE Team collaboration between MSUPD and ELPD which aims to prevent violence.

“We did have a couple of weeks where we did see a lot of violence in the downtown area,” Pride said, but the colder weather seems to have lessened the problem.

Officers are now working on figuring out how to keep the problem low when the weather gets warmer. A challenge is that amenities like Albert EL Fresco that bring out peaceful visitors can also attract people who end up in fights.

Fights downtown have changed over the years, from fist-based to weapons-based.

“In the past we did see violence downtown,” Captain Pride told ELi, “but we’re seeing a different type of violence. We saw a lot more, when I first started [in the early 2000’s], the fights downtown where a lot of college students coming out of the bars” would fight with bare hands.

Now, he says, police see more weapons. But both kinds of fights still happen. One night in September, there was a large physical fight “right in front of the Ann Street triangle.” Sometime later that night, there was an outburst of gunfire along M.A.C. Avenue that left at least 31 ammunition casings from three different weapons.

ELPD is still investigating those incidents.

ELPD is seeing fewer giant house parties these days, with student electing instead to party at downtown bars. That is concentrating the partying population downtown more.

Why aren’t more of these crimes solved quickly?

We shared with Captain Pride this question from an ELi reader:

“In the last year or so there has been a rash of very serious acts of violence in downtown East Lansing which seem to remain unsolved….To my knowledge, none of these shootings have had their cases closed. Am I not in the proper loop to hear official follow up, is the City not forthcoming with updates, are our detectives ineffective or what? Lack of info in these regards is disconcerting, assuming there are not updates to be easily had. ELi, please check this out!”

Pride explained that in some of these cases, investigations are still ongoing. In others, findings have been turned over to the Ingham County Prosecutors’ office.

“However,” he said, “we have not received any charges in reference to those incidents. It wouldn’t be right to comment on the charges that we sent down there until the prosecutors’ office makes that determination.”

The reason for not commenting is partly because ELPD doesn’t want to see a situation where someone is falsely or erroneously accused in public, a problem ELPD has taken heat for in the recent past.

People who don’t do police work sometimes have a false sense of how easy it is to solve these cases, Pride explained. Security cameras often provide inadequate resolution to make out faces and leads may go nowhere.

But part of the problem is also low staffing at ELPD, as open officer positions continue to go unfilled.

“We’ve had these acts of violence, but we also are minimized on how many detectives we have who can investigate,” Pride said. “And when you have these acts of violence, it’s not one detective that really does the work. It’s the entire team.”

The criminal investigation team currently includes three detectives and one detective sergeant. There is also a detective lieutenant who works with the community engagement team.

Pride noted that, when he started at ELPD in 2000, the size of the detective bureau was essentially twice what it is today.

ELPD has gone from 67 sworn officers in 2000 to only 40 today. That includes the Chief, Deputy Chief and Captain Pride, all of whom are not generally expected to be on patrol (though they may help out with that at exceptionally busy times). That leaves 37 officers for a city whose population stands at about 50,000.

With budgetary problems plaguing the City of East Lansing for years, a number of positions in ELPD that were vacated were left unfilled. Now, there is room in the budget for 49 sworn officers. While some progress has been made in recruitment recently, ELPD is struggling, like departments all over the state and country, to find qualified candidates.

“I love this profession, but people are just not wanting to become police officers,” Pride said.

And ELPD wants to remain choosy about its officers.

“We don’t want to hire just anybody,” Pride said. “We want to hire the best of the best. That’s what the community deserves. That’s what this department deserves. That’s what the officers on the road deserve.”

How does ELPD manage with so few officers in a town that can get pretty busy?

Mutual aid—where various police departments assist each other—helps with this problem. Pride explained that a single bad car accident could mean that all ELPD patrol officers on duty have to attend to that one accident. In that case, they reach out for mutual aid, including reaching out to MSU Police.

The COVID experience also taught ELPD some efficiencies that help with low staffing levels. For example, police reports are now often taken over the phone for minor crimes, rather than sending an officer out to a call. Neighborhood Resource Specialists can also be tapped to help the patrol division for low-level larcenies, accidents and the like.

But readers who have observed traffic patrols are down along routes like Burcham Drive are not imagining things. This drop, again, has to do with staffing problems.

For problems like speeding through neighborhoods, ELPD is looking to be creative, using options like electronic signs that warn people of their speed compared to the limit. They are also focusing on specific areas of traffic concern with “problem-solving kits,” and right now that means attention to Saginaw Street and West Grand River Avenue.

Changes in the disorderly conduct code have not hampered officers, according to Pride.

A reader sent this question via ELi’s contact page:

“I recently heard that the EL City Council did away with a ‘noise and disorderly conduct’ ordinance. Is this true? If it is, I wonder if it may be a contributing factor to the apparent increase in disturbances, violent acts, shootings and general feeling of EL being ‘unsafe.’ (I posed this question to a police officer and it was their sense that it was indeed a contributing factor.) When I heard that the city no longer has this ordinance, an experience my husband and I had this past summer while in downtown EL made sense. We were out walking around 10 p.m. after leaving a restaurant and had to leave the area because ridiculously loud boomboxes and numerous skateboarders literally descended on the square where we were walking. All I wanted to do was get out of there. The noise of the boomboxes and the skateboards on the concrete felt like an ‘attack!’ I asked a cop who was leaning up against their car watching if this was an acceptable thing to be happening…what about those of us who would like to enjoy the evening out and not get run over by a skateboarder and she literally said, ‘there’s nothing I can do about it.’ What an unfortunate situation.”

Presented with this, Pride said he does not agree that revisions by East Lansing’s Council to the disorderly conduct code have contributed to violence or a general feeling of unsafety. Pride also said it’s the job of the police to follow laws established by the legislative branches of government.

“We can’t focus on the past, we need to focus on moving forward, and laws are changed all the time. Look at the marijuana law,” he said.

But Pride also noted that there is a noise law officers can use to cite someone who won’t turn off a disruptive amplifier and a law against skateboarding in much of the downtown. So, he said, he’d like to know which officer claimed there was nothing to be done if there was really a vivid harassment problem that couldn’t be solved with a conversation.

In the event an officer says a problem can’t be solved or a citizen thinks the police are somehow being hampered in their jobs, Pride said, it makes sense to contact ELPD’s administration. They appreciate the opportunity to convey accurate information and correct any misperceptions on the part of their officers or the public.

ELPD wants to work with the Independent Police Oversight Commission, Pride says.

At ELi’s Facebook page and at City Council meetings, some commenters have claimed that the relatively new Independent Police Oversight Commission disrespects or denigrates the work of ELPD officers.

Asked about this, Pride, who regularly interacts with the commission at their meetings, said, “We have to work together to try to put best policy in place, work together to make this community a better place.”

He said he did not want to comment on how other officers feel, but he believes “every commissioner on [the oversight commission] has the best intentions to make the police department better and make their community better, and it’s about working together. If we can’t work together and we’re always butting heads, it’s not going to work.”

The oversight commission’s work, he suggested, is likely to impact which officers and how many officers apply for jobs at ELPD. Some may be disinterested in working in a city with such a commission, while others might feel it adds a layer of accountability that keeps systems in accord with their values.

And Pride hastened to note that ELPD officers are not just subject to criticism – they frequently feel support from members of the community, too.

He joked that the baked goods dropped off as thanks to the department have led to weight gain among the staff. But he also wanted to make clear that ELPD officers feel invested in and connected to the community that employs them.

“They are passionate about the city and trying to make this a better place to live, work and visit,” he said. “They do a phenomenal job in the day-to-day stuff that they are being asked to do, and we just need to keep recognizing those positive things that they are doing so then they feel more appreciated.” That gets balanced, he said, with disciplinary systems designed to elicit the best policing possible.

“I want to make sure people know the amazing things that our people are doing here,” Pride said. “They are doing some awesome work. You know, we are very fortunate to have the people we have here.”

The department now has, he said, “the largest budget we’ve ever had, and we’re asking them to do different police work than they did in the past.” This includes doing far more proactive positive community engagement.

The larger budget means much greater access for officers to specialized training in procedures, decision-making, leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion, “so they are the best of the best…because that’s what the community deserves.”

When one reader heard we were headed to this interview,  he asked us to convey his appreciation to the department.

“I am eager to hear how the interview goes with Captain Pride,” he wrote. “It is important for our police department to know that we are thankful to them for their service and that we support them when they have to make tough decisions in difficult situations. We expect and demand safety and respect for the law in our city and we respect the difficult work that they must do to provide that blessing to the rest of us!”

Pride expressed his thanks for this comment and said, “We appreciate hearing any feedback that we can get, good or bad….We can use the negative as a learning opportunity, but the positive always seems to lift people up as well. We appreciate that.”

---

ELi thanks the readers who submitted questions for this report and those who make this work possible through their financial support. Have something you want ELi to investigate? Contact us! Value ELi’s reporting? Make a donation of support today!