Mother’s Narrative, Police Reports Paint Detailed Picture of Confrontation at ELPL
On the afternoon of Jan. 11, 2023, mother-of-four Stelisha Foreman and East Lansing Public Library (ELPL) Director Kristin Shelley crossed paths for the first time. Although they saw the confrontation that happened that day quite differently, it left them both deeply frustrated.
The matter has also led to a special investigation ordered by the library’s board of trustees and a complaint to the East Lansing Human Rights Commission.
In an attempt to ascertain what happened that day, in this report, ELi brings together written records (including police and fire department records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act) and an in-depth interview with Stelisha Foreman. Library Director Kristin Shelley did not respond to requests for an interview.
A frantic phone call from her son leads Stelisha Foreman to rush to the East Lansing Public Library.
Foreman was at work on Jan. 11 when she received a phone call from her sons. (ELi is not naming the sons as they are minors.) Both are students at East Lansing High School and were spending time at the ELPL until their mother got out of work and picked them up.

“[My younger son] called me really frantic and upset,” she said. “I was at work and I was trying to get a clear understanding of what was going on. There was a lot of yelling. [My son] was saying, ‘she’s accusing me of starting a fire.’ I was trying to figure out what was going on, so I asked him to put [the library staff] on the phone.”
Subsequent police records show the person Foreman was speaking to at this point was Library Director Shelley.
“She was not trying to hear anything I was saying,” Foreman recalls. “Because there was so much chaos, I told my boss my kids needed me and I needed to go.”
Foreman, who works as a medical assistant in addition to taking college classes, made it to the library in a matter of minutes.
By that point, Shelley had called police to the library on Foreman’s youngest son, accusing him of being one of three youths involved in what Shelly described to police as “lighting fires in the restroom” in October.
That earlier incident occurred on Oct. 13, 2022. On that day, the East Lansing Fire Department (ELFD) was dispatched to the library as a result of a fire alarm going off, according to ELFD records. Staff and patrons were evacuated and ELFD officials found no smell or smoke in the bathroom. They did find a “half burned paper towel in the trash and what appeared to be a mark on the wall where someone may have put out a cigarette butt.”
According to the fire department report from October, ELPL Assistant Director Brice Bush was informed of the findings before they departed and she stated her intention to look at the library’s security cameras.

That footage – eventually lost, but not before a few screenshots were made – showed three young men, two Black and one white, exiting the men’s bathroom just before the alarm went off.
Her youngest son, however, was not at the library that October day, according to Foreman.
“The day that that happened,” she said, “it’s weird that [her older son] remembers that day specifically because they had to all evacuate the building and he just happened to be there.”
On Jan. 11, however, library staff were convinced Foreman’s youngest son was one of the three. Shelley called the police, and East Lansing Police Officers Jeremy Hamilton and Dean Kelley responded to the scene.
East Lansing Police officers’ reports show how the situation developed after the call from ELPL Director Kristin Shelley.
According to the police report written by Officer Hamilton, Shelley and her staff reported how the situation had developed after they asked the youngest Foreman son to leave the premises.
“Shelley stated it is a half day of school, and then began to describe that the library had ‘issues with teens’ who have stolen bikes, burned the wall in the men’s bathroom, used abusive language towards staff, and had stolen snacks the first week of school,” Hamilton wrote in the report. “Shelley told us, referring to one of the unwanted subjects, [this was] ‘one of the young men we issued our exclusion letter to.’ She said he was excluded on October 13th. She noted he was excluded for one year, and he is now back. She noted the male [Foreman’s younger son] ripped up the exclusion letter and threw it at her when she issued it. She said they had just approached him to get him to leave, and he said to staff, ‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.’ He said the teen’s brother got up and told staff to, ‘Fuck off.’ She said her next recourse was to ‘call you guys’ while looking at Officer Kelley. Officer Kelley asked for a copy of the exclusion letter, and Shelley provided it, saying they did not have the subject’s name because he would not provide it to her back in October.”

Exclusion letters have been common means of deterrence and punishment used by administration of the library since 2014, three years after Shelley became director. They may be issued for perceived violations of the library’s code of conduct.
In this case, the three young men who were assumed to have been responsible for “the fire” in the men’s bathroom in October were expelled from visiting or utilizing the library for one year. However, because the three students seen in the library’s security video were not known by name, the administration prepared exclusion letters for them with blanks where their names would go.
“I asked Shelley if they had the copy [of the exclusion letter] with a name on it and she indicated that on the date of the incident, the juvenile would not give her his name so they did not have a name,” wrote Officer Kelley in his report. “One of the other staff advised that the subject in question was sitting on a bench in the library and gave a clothing description. I advised Shelley that she would have to ask him to leave in front of us and we would proceed from there. Shelley advised that they’ve met with school administration to try to not involve law enforcement but to try to avoid this step, meaning contacting law enforcement to have the juveniles removed from the library.”
Foreman takes issue with how Shelley acted at every stage of the confrontation with her children.
“What happened was Kristin Shelley tried to manipulate my kids in different ways,” she said. “She kept trying to get [her youngest son] off on her own to speak with him. [My older son] stood up and said, ‘No…I am his older brother and I have to care for him. You can speak to both of us.’
“She tried to give [my youngest son] paperwork to say she was serving him and banning him from the library for the year. He did not know what that was for,” Foreman said. “She did that to [her youngest son] but she had already served two [Black] boys back in October and one white boy. Then it was the manipulation. Then she told him that he was trespassing. [My older son] said there’s no way they could be trespassing because they’re on public property.
“And finally, she said she was going to call the police. That could have gone wrong in so many ways. That’s what upsets me the most. Had my children not been intelligent and known their rights, if they had not been calm, the police could have reacted in a whole different way.”

After Officer Kelley told Shelley she would have to tell the younger brother to leave – that they would not do it for her – Officers Kelley and Hamilton went with Shelley into the teen room where the brothers and approximately eight to 10 other youths were gathered. Shelley asked the youngest Foreman brother to leave and, again, both brothers said the boy had not done anything and he was not one of the three young men who were involved with the Oct. 13 incident.
It was during this exchange that the older son got his mother on the phone and Shelley ended up speaking briefly with her. According to Hamilton’s report, “Shelley told the mother there are cameras right outside the bathroom and [the younger son] was ‘walking out with two other young men [in October].’
Kelley’s report continued, “I did ask complainant Shelley if anything had happened today that would lead to a reason to have them leave and she advised that no, nothing happened today, just that he was trespassing because of the exclusion letter.”
Kelley attempted to speak with the younger son, but he “refused to tell me [his name] and told me he was not talking to the police until his mother arrived.”
Kelley asked Shelley to retrieve video footage showing the younger Foreman brother being served with an exclusion letter while he and Hamilton waited for the mother to arrive.
Foreman told ELi what she recalls having happened when she arrived at the library, just five to seven minutes after receiving the call, by her calculation.
“The police are already there and I’m trying to figure out what is going on. Shelley and her pack were nowhere to be found. The police officers tried to explain what was happening. While we were talking, Shelly, [Assistant Library Director Brice] Bush, and some other people came to the [teen room] where the kids are. I asked her, ‘What is going on? Why are you accusing my son of starting a fire? Where is this video?’”
At this point, Foreman, Kelley and Hamilton report Shelley indicated the video footage was no longer available, as it had been deleted after 30 days. She did, however, have screenshots of the three young men leaving the restroom just before the fire alarm went off in October and, Shelley said, there were two young Black students and one white.
Hamilton’s report shared this exchange: “The mother said, ‘You don’t have the right to accuse two Black children just because…. [that] you saw Black children does not give you the right to select two random Black children and say, ‘Oh, I served you papers and I kicked you out of the library.’ Shelley responded, ‘You are exactly right, I have no right to do that.’ It was difficult to understand what Shelley said after that.”

As soon as Shelley produced the video screenshots from October and Foreman and her sons had an opportunity to view them, the Foremans denied any of the young men were Stelisha Foreman’s sons.
According to Hamilton, the photos were given to Officer Kelley to examine.
“While he was doing so,” wrote Officer Hamilton, “Shelley stepped in and said, ‘I don’t need to share this information, but let me just tell you something: my husband is Black.’ She said, ‘I’m trying not to be racist.’
“Officer Kelley handed me the photos,” Hamilton continued in his report. “I examined them and, in my own opinion, determined the subjects in the still photos were not [the younger son] or his brother. Officer Kelley told me he did not think the photos matched the subject that was with us that day. I attempted to compare facial features such as eyes, eyebrows, nose shape, mouth shape, chin shape, etc., as is my training and experience. While both [the younger son] and the subject in the photo were black males with dreads, my more detailed comparison led me to the conclusion they were not the same person.”
An unnamed library employee then joined the conversation, according to Officer Dean Kelley.
“[She] stepped up and indicated she was the one that was there on the date of the [fire alarm] incident and that she had ID’d from the pictures thinking it was him,” Kelley wrote.
Hamilton’s account continued with, “She apologized to the group. She also stated they work with the school but the school does not identify the students even when the library is having issues with them. The staff member also said she ‘take[s] full responsibility for misidentifying [him]. She said, talking to [the younger son], ‘I take you for your word and I am very sorry.’ Although I do not recall seeing her name as her name badge was hanging low on her scarf and facing towards the floor, she was wearing a blue dress, yellow scarf, and glasses.”
At this point, Library Director Shelley and Officer Kelley stepped away from the teen room and spoke privately.
“I indicated to her that I didn’t think he was the subject in either of the pictures,” Kelley wrote in his report. “She said to me that they all smelled of MJ [marijuana]. Shelley said, ‘You don’t think it’s him?’ I indicated that the chin was different and I did not believe it was him.
“At that time,” Kelly’s report continues, “I asked complainant Shelley what she wanted to do as this was her place. She said she did not want any of them staying after the way they talked to her as she would have no control in the library. I indicated to her that I did not have a good reason to kick anyone out. Complainant Shelley paused for a long time so I asked her if she wanted me to call my supervisor and have him come up and she indicated that she didn’t know what to do because apparently she doesn’t have any rights.
“Complainant Shelley indicated that one of the young men in the picture was the one that ripped up the exclusion letter and threw it at her when she handed it to him. She indicated that she thinks that was [the youngest Foreman brother] and I indicated to her that I didn’t think it was him, that I think it was their cousins based on what they said. Complainant Shelley indicated that none of them are going to give up their names and that from here on out, we were all going to be a bunch of racists so it doesn’t matter.
“I asked complaint [sic] Shelley if she wanted to speak with the mother away from the rest of the crowd of people that were witness to all of this and she indicated that the mother wouldn’t hear her. At that time she said it would be great as [ELPD] Chief Johnson, as a black man, would come up and help them negotiate something out. I advised her that I could call and see if he would come up and that I doubted that he would come up. And she said, ‘Well that’s who I called originally.’”
Director Kristin Shelley’s letter to staff says she apologized for an “incorrect identification”; other accounts dispute that claim.

Through the use of FOIA, ELi obtained a letter Shelley sent to library staff on the morning of Jan. 12, the day after the confrontation.
In it, Shelley begins by identifying library employees “Rheanna [Reed] and Scott [Drapalik]” as the ones who identified the younger Foreman son as one of the students who allegedly caused the fire alarm to go off on Oct. 13.
Shelley told staff in her letter that, after speaking with the police, “We apologized for what they claim to be an incorrect identification. I specifically apologized to the mother and her teenage sons, and the other teens in the room. Brice also specifically apologized to the mother and sons, along with the other teens in the room.”
This account differs from the aforementioned one in Officer Kelley’s report, in which Shelley demurs when Kelley asks if she wants to speak to the mother. Other teens who were present have also said Shelley never apologized, while Assistant Director Bush did.
Stelisha Foreman also says Shelley never apologized to her that day.
“Shelley left,” Foreman told ELi in our interview. “Brice Bush apologized to me more than once and she apologized to the children. [Shelley] never apologized to me. The police officer told me that the police chief was going to come and asked me to wait, but I couldn’t because I had to drop the kids at home and get back to work.”
Shelley sent an apology email several weeks later, Foreman said, but she felt it was too little too late. ELi has previously reported City Attorney Tony Chubb said the delay in a written apology to the mother was caused, in part, because his office had to review it before it could be sent.
In the day-after letter to her own staff, Shelley wrote about what sounds like her own frustration with how the confrontation turned out.
“One of the biggest takeaways from the incident,” she wrote, “according to the police officers who responded, is that we have nothing to enforce when a patron (minor or adult) is unwilling to identify themselves by name when we issue an exclusion letter. Because we did not have a name associated with the teenager identified by staff as being one of the people involved in the men’s room fire, we had to apologize for misidentification because the mother and teen insisted he was not involved. In the past we (ELPL) have been very cautious and apprehensive about calling the police to the library to deal with incidents. Over the next few days, we will be reconsidering how we have handled incidents in the past and whether we should change our protocol moving forward.”
Stelisha Foreman filed a civil rights complaint against the city after an emotional ELPL meeting.
After an emotional meeting of the ELPL Board of Trustees on Jan. 18, Foreman said she was inspired to file a civil rights complaint against the city. The complaint, filed in late January, was referred to East Lansing’s Human Rights Commission.

“After that [Jan. 18 library board] meeting, it was brought to my attention that she really has violated the rights of the children,” she said. “And to not get an apology or anything was just wrong. So many other people in that room and supporters of my family have inspired me to get justice for what happened.”
Foreman also recognized the reporters of the East Lansing High School newspaper, Portrait, for their support of her sons.
“Those children really supported my kids and supported justice for the situation. I hope they know how much I appreciate them,” she said.
Foreman’s complaint to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) hasn’t moved far since she filed it on Jan. 29, nearly three months ago. It was first taken up at the HRC’s meeting on March 13. At that time, a subcommittee was formed with Human Rights Commissioners Julia Walters, Kayla Gomez and Tina Farhat. The group was charged with advising the HRC on whether to begin a formal investigation.
In an interview with ELi, Walters reported they had reached out to Foreman via email before the HRC’s most recent meeting on April 10.

“We have not yet heard back,” Walters said. “But we’re hoping to bump that because we definitely want to hear from her, we want to hear from her sons if she’s comfortable with that.”
When asked if City Attorney Chubb would be involved in the investigation, Walters said Chubb agreed it would be a conflict of interest as he represents the library. She also indicated there was no timeline but wanted to ensure “the complainant has resolution.”
When ELi spoke with Foreman, she said she had not yet heard from the HRC subcommittee or City Attorney Anthony Chubb.
She had, however, spoken to East Lansing’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director Elaine Hardy. Hardy staffs the HRC and is also Chair of the Dr. Martin Luther King Commission of Mid-Michigan, on which Kristin Shelley and Mayor Ron Bacon also serve.
“I spoke to Hardy initially because for some reason, our case got kinda shuffled,” Foreman said. “It was really weird that we hadn’t heard from them. She wasn’t sure why it had happened. They [the HRC] had a meeting the following Monday and I would have been there for that if the case went on the [February] agenda instead of waiting [until March].”

Foreman told ELi no one informed her of the March meeting of the HRC, or that that was when her case would be taken up. Consequently, she missed that discussion.
When asked what she wants to see happen as a result of her complaint, Foreman doesn’t mince words.
“I definitely would like to see Kristin [Shelley] removed from her position,” she said. “She does not need to be the director. She needs to be removed. She has no remorse for what she did. If she did, she would have apologized that day. Her apology weeks later just isn’t sufficient enough.”
Foreman also wants to send a message to parents of children of color.
“Teach your children to advocate for themselves,” she said. “Stand your ground. Your dreads are beautiful. Your skin is beautiful. Stay true to yourself and keep your heads up.
“I really want people to think about this situation and how it could have escalated to something else than what it is. I would like people to know that we are a village. We should look after each and every child like it could be their own.”
Editor’s note: The police and fire reports used in this article were obtained via FOIA requests submitted by editors at Portrait. ELi is grateful to them for sharing the materials. You can see materials related to this story and obtained via FOIA here.