GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom presented his plan to make changes to the police department to city commissioners Tuesday morning.
The plan comes after months of departmental reviews and analyzing policing data from 2015 until 2021. Winstrom said he participated in more than 100 meetings with community members, police officers and organizations like the NAACP.
Winstrom emphasized that moving forward, the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) will recognize the "sanctity of life" as its top priority. Additional training in de-escalation will be given to officers.
In addition, the department's use of force policy will be updated to require warnings before using deadly force. Officers will also be required to attempt to de-escalate the situation before resorting to lethal force.
Also included in the safety plan are improving victim support services and making the department more transparent.
Training on these policies will begin Tuesday, Aug. 2 and become effective immediately after training is completed.
Winstrom said many community members want to see more officers patrolling the city, and that mutual respect between officers and the community is crucial. The department currently has 31 openings. GRPD's Special Response Team has had to assist with policing during the shortage. Winstrom said the department will continue its recruiting efforts to have a team of 305 officers.
Below is a full outline of Winstrom's plan for GRPD:
While crime has increased in Grand Rapids in 2022, Winstrom says officers have done an "exceptional job" getting illegally possessed guns off the streets and making arrests in connection to auto thefts.
Winstrom shared a July 20 arrest as a success story for the department. A detective had arrested a suspect with six warrants and two fully automatic weapons in their vehicle.
"That is a machine gun. Those bullets...will go straight through the front and back of my bulletproof vest like it wasn't there," Winstrom said of one of the weapons.
Data from the Grand Rapids Police metric dashboard shows that though it is seven months into 2022, Grand Rapids has seen a total of 13 homicides. There was a total of 18 in all of 2021.
There have been 623 incidents of aggravated assaults, more than 1,700 incidents of simple assaults and 66 rape incidents. In all of those categories, Grand Rapids is above the year-to-date average in the past three years.
"The pathway to change is through the immediate community-informed steps I outlined today and the community-engaged steps for ongoing change and reform that will come through our strategic planning process,” Winstrom said.
Also in the meeting, Capt. Terry Dixon spoke about the DICE (Date Informed Community Engagement) program. The program is targeting crime in localized areas of the city, and using community feedback and ideas to address crime in those areas.
"This particular program will be moving forward for the next three months," Dixon said. "During that entire three-month period, I will be consistently evaluating and tweaking as we move forward in order to bring crime down in that particular area and make the area more safe for everyone."
To learn more about Winstrom's plan, click here.
Watch Winstrom's full presentation below:
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