Police in Grand Rapids Michigan are again facing criticism for their handling of young black children. Photo / Getty
Police in Grand Rapids Michigan are again facing criticism for their handling of young black children. Photo / Getty
Police were scouring a neighbourhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a 40-year-old attempted murder suspect. Instead, in a moment that has cast a harsh spotlight on this western Michigan city, an officer pointed his gun at, then handcuffed, a screeching 11-year-old girl.
The 45-second video clip from an officer's body camera, made public by the city's police department this week, was full of outrage-inducing elements: a petrified preteen who started shrieking when she heard the click of handcuffs; a police use of force with racial overtones; a law enforcement agency already criticised in March after an officer pointed a gun at black youth who had done nothing wrong.
On December 6, on the northwest side of Grand Rapids, according to Grand Rapids NBC affiliate WOOD, officers were searching for a woman named Carrie Manning, who was suspected of stabbing her younger sister.
Instead, at a nearby home, they encountered Honestie Hodges — the suspect's niece — who was walking out the door on the way to the shops with her mother and another aunt.
Manning is a 40-year-old white woman, according to the news station. Honestie is an 11-year-old black girl.
The officers asked the two women and Honestie to approach separately, then handcuffed and questioned them. But the most controversial clip involves officers' treatment of the girl.
The video released by police picked up as Honestie approached a pair of officers with her arms raised. One pointed a gun at her.
She appeared to be coming too fast for the officer's liking: He began to tell her to put her hands on her head, then instructed her to turn around and walk backwards towards him.
Her mother yelled for the officers to stop: "That is my child!" she screamed. "She's 11 years old."
The moment intensified when Honestie reached the officers. One told her to "put your right hand behind your back" and ratcheted open a pair of handcuffs.
Honestie began whining, then screaming in terror: "No. No. No! No!"
One of the officers handcuffing her tried to calm her: "You're not going to jail or anything," but the screams continued as the video clip ended.
"I didn't know what was going on," Honestie told Grand Rapids Fox affiliate WXMI. "I didn't do anything wrong. I've never got in trouble by the Grand Rapids Police. I used to want to be a Grand Rapids police officer, but ever since that happened, I want nothing to do with them."
Chief David Rahinsky, speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, said watching the video made him sick.
"You listen to the 11-year-old's response, it makes my stomach turn," he said. "It makes me physically nauseous."
He said he believed the officers behaved incorrectly and instead should have "asked the 11-year-old to back to you, take her behind the car and have a very different conversation with her." The department has launched an internal investigation.
"Are there incidents where you deal with young people who present a danger to either other people or themselves? Yes," he told reporters. "But I don't believe this is one of them."
Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said at a city commission meeting that she found the video "deeply, deeply disturbing".
"It was heartbreaking. This little girl, Honestie, she was clearly terrified. No child in our community should experience that, and we have a lot of work to do, and we know that."
Still, the police chief defended his officers' actions to an extent, saying they were searching for a person they believe tried to kill someone and were approaching with extreme caution. It's not unusual, the chief said, for a crime suspect to ask an innocent party — even a child — to hold a weapon, hoping that person won't be searched.
Still, Rahinsky said, the incident with Honestie "affirms what many of you know, what we have known for a long time, which is that we have a lot of work to do".
Police across the nation are under increased scrutiny for violent interactions. So far this year, police have shot and killed 926 people, according to the Washington Post's Fatal Force database. Of those, nearly a quarter — 212 people — were black. In 2016, 963 people were killed by police and 24 per cent were black.
Grand Rapids has not been immune to the debate: Honestie is the second black child to have police point a gun at her. In March, officers received a call about a fight at a neighbourhood centre in which one of the suspects may have had a gun, according to the Grand Rapids Press.
About 10 minutes later, Officer Caleb Johnson spotted five black boys, aged 12 to 14, including one who was dribbling a basketball.
The officer got out of the car, gun drawn, and demanded that the boys get on the ground.
As the officer held the boys at gunpoint, one wailed and cried, "I don't want to die". Before things were sorted out, at least eight officers arrived.
The boys' parents, and pretty much the rest of Grand Rapids, were incensed. Hundreds packed into a city commission chamber to comment on the incident, including many who wore buttons emblazoned with #WouldYouPullAGunOnMe, according to the Grand Rapids Press.
"We can't stop thinking of the fact that — what if one of our babies had made the wrong move?" said Shawndryka Moore, of Grand Rapids, whose 14-year-old son was involved. "And they wouldn't be here with us tonight. Would you be okay? Would it be proper protocol then?"
But Rahinsky defended the officers at that city council meeting and on Tuesday.
"The officers didn't do anything wrong. They acted on articulated facts from a witness moments earlier who said he saw them hand a gun to each other," Rahinsky said at the meeting. "I respect [critics'] emotion. I think what we're hearing is a lot of grief and frustration to systemic issues."
But nine months later, he again faced questions about those same systemic issues.
His department has tried to address them with diversity training, he explained to reporters on Tuesday.
And he said he would try to explain the officers' perspective to Honestie's family.
"You should feel safe running to an officer," Rahinsky told reporters. "You should not see an officer and have a response that's anything but reassuring. So we've got work to do. We've got work to do as a profession, we've got work to do as agency, and we've got hard questions to ask as a community."
But it was unclear whether Honestie was ready to talk to anyone in a police uniform.
"Chief or not," Honestie told WXMI. "I really don't feel comfortable around any cops."
