GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — People marched for hours through Downtown Grand Rapids Friday night night, calling for justice for Patrick Lyoya, the 26-year-old shot and killed by a Grand Rapids police officer last Monday.
The video of his death was released two days ago and police have yet to name the officer involved.
During the rally, the group stopped outside Grand Rapids Police Headquarters multiple times. For about four hours, about 100 marched through the city.
Dorothy Sewe joined because she couldn't stay silent anymore.
"Because they keep on saying 'See Something, Say Something,'" she says. "So I've seen something really wrong in this city. And every time I talk to them, they say 'My hands are tied'... This city has refused to listen to us."
In 2017, a study was done on Grand Rapids Police traffic stops. Black people were twice as likely to be pulled over by an officer. At the time, the Black population was about 14%.
"I think that this police officer didn't care about Patrick as a human being. He saw Patrick as something," Sewe says.
"In this case, it was not just a negative outcome, but a tragic outcome, if unconscious bias was, indeed, at play," Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce Director of Inclusion Andre Daley says.
He says implicit bias exists in everyone.
"Our past experiences, the patterns, the cultural patterns that we're used to, and the perspectives that we bring to encounters with people who are different, oftentimes, are the fuel for this behavior that can trigger our unconscious biases," he says.
Daley knows police officers can act on that bias.
"I do have a story to tell of a traffic stop in my own neighborhood, I too, have a story to tell of a traffic stop of my own son, my oldest son, in my neighborhood. I couldn't get an answer for why I got stopped, or why he got stopped," he says.
Daley says everyone can work on recognizing their own implicit biases.
"It's important to be aware that you might have a bias that doesn't acknowledge that because it's not your lived experience. For those of us who have that lived experience, I think it's important for us to not press down or cover the trauma," he says.
The Kent County Prosecutor shared with 13 ON YOUR SIDE Friday that he has not yet received the investigation report from Michigan State Police to potentially file charges.
FULL INTERVIEW WITH ANDRE DALEY BELOW:
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