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Grand Rapids Annual Surveillance Report Released

The City of Grand Rapids released its first Annual Surveillance Report on April 23, 2024. 

 

This project came to be when the Grand Rapids NAACP joined forces with Mayers Solutions, LLC to lobby the city to change its surveillance technology policy. In a Fox 17 article Mayers said, “We want to get ahead and be proactive instead of being reactive and make sure that we get these safeguards put in the policy now and not after a Black person or a Brown person has been killed or brutalized by another Grand Rapids police officer.”  

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Key Takeaways:

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  • First annual surveillance report for the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan (second largest city in Michigan next to Detroit)

  • First time that the annual surveillance report was presented by the Office of Oversight and Public Accountability to the newly created Surveillance Oversight Committee (also called the Public Safety Committee), which has the power to discontinue the City’s use of surveillance technologies and services when there is evidence of violations of constitutional rights

  • Besides the Grand Rapids Police Dept. (GRPD), other city entities like the Grand Rapids Fire Dept. are also using surveillance technology

Report Findings

Fire Department

  • Related to municipal use of surveillance technologies and services, provides a framework for analyzing all:

    • violations of constitutional rights (such as the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments) broken down by race, sex, age, and location;

    • costs to purchase and/or use the technologies and services that year; and

    • sources of funding for the purchase and/or use the technologies and services that year

  • GRPD’s use of unmanned aerial drones will be covered in the next annual surveillance report

Police Department

  • Analysis of civil rights violations related to the GRPD body-worn camera deactivation in the tragic officer-involved shooting and death of Patrick Lyoya in 2022 will be included in the next annual surveillance report, which will be published towards the end of 2024

  • The City of Grand Rapids’ use of camera trailers throughout the city; especially in areas where gun violence was recently reported, was not covered in the first annual report but will be included in future annual surveillance reports

  • Carve out language is needed in the law so that automated traffic enforcement mechanisms like GRPD’s use of license plate readers and the City of Grand Rapids’ use of speed light cameras and red-light cameras are not exempt from being included in future annual surveillance reports

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