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Kirk McConer was arrested and jailed while talking to a friend outside a convenience store, where he had just purchased a soda. Tyrone Hightower was arrested and jailed after sitting in his car in the parking lot of a nightclub, as he waited to make sure his friends were admitted to the club. And Jacob Manyong was stopped and placed under arrest after the back tire of his car barely crossed the property of a private business, as he drove out of an adjacent public lot. The charges against McConer, Hightower, and Manyong? Trespassing. Although the charges against each of them were eventually dropped, memories of the experience still linger—so much so that each of them remains fearful that he could be victimized again at any moment. And they’re scared for good reason. Their respective ordeals were the product of a practice introduced by the Grand Rapids Police Department decades ago, which relies on the use of generalized “No Trespass Letters” to justify arrests for criminal trespassing on commercial property. But more to the point, the policy gives police in Michigan’s second-largest city an excuse to stop and search people immediately based on nothing more than a gut reaction to the way someone looks or acts—without bothering to determine whether the person is actually trespassing. Carte blanche to profile? Here’s how it works: Grand Rapids police officers solicit business owners in select “high-crime” neighborhoods and ask them to sign a No Trespass Letter, stating that they do not want unauthorized people on their property and that they will cooperate with any efforts to prosecute trespassers. The signed letter, valid for one year, is then placed on file with the police department and can be renewed. So far, so good, but here’s the rub: According to Grand Rapids police officials, the signed letter allows officers to stop and arrest people for trespassing at the business in question—even while the business is open—whenever the officer thinks the person is on the property without a “legitimate business purpose.” In other words, cops are given unrestricted discretion to decide who does and does not belong on the property of an open business, without ever talking to the business owner or any employee to find out why the person is on the property, how long they’ve been there, and whether the person is welcome on the premises. Which raises the question: How can Grand Rapids patrol officers possibly know who is and is not a trespasser without first determining whether the business has authorized the person to be there? The short answer is: They can’t. But if the business has a No Trespass Letter on file, police officers are given carte blanche to make that very judgment. The results have been predictably disturbing. Between 2011 and 2013, the Grand Rapids Police Department either cited or arrested approximately 560 people for trespassing on business property, pursuant to the trespassing-letter policy. In a city in which black people make up roughly 20 percent of the population, 59 percent of those detained for trespassing under this policy were black. Perhaps even more telling is the fact that African-Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to be arrested, rather than simply ticketed, when the police bring charges for trespassing on the property of an open business in Grand Rapids. To make matters worse, police department officials are quite proud of the No Trespassing Letter program, referring to it repeatedly as a “valuable law enforcement tool” that allows the police to stop, question, and, sometimes, search individuals who they would otherwise have no justification for detaining. That’s why the ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Grand Rapids in May 2013, challenging the constitutionality of the No Trespass Letter policy on the grounds that it violates the Fourth Amendment and gives unfettered discretion to police officers in the enforcement of the trespassing law. The case is still pending. If the Grand Rapids policy sounds familiar, it should. Such an approach is just one example of police departments around the country using aggressive enforcement of low-level crimes in communities of color—known as “broken windows” or “order maintenance” policing—purportedly to prevent more serious crimes. This is the policing model touted by the likes of Chief William Bratton in New York City and Chief Ed Flynn in Milwaukee, who have doubled down on their commitment to reducing various low-level crimes in certain areas, offenses such as disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and, yes, trespassing. These policing practices continue in many U.S. cities, even though it was the attempted enforcement of low-level crimes in Ferguson (jaywalking), Staten Island (selling loose cigarettes), and Milwaukee (sleeping in a public park) that led to the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Dontre Hamilton, respectively, at the hands of police officers in 2014. Even in smaller cities like Miami Gardens, Florida, broken windows policing has wreaked havoc on the very communities that are supposed to benefit from it. Under a policy similar to Grand Rapids’ No Trespass Letters, Miami Gardens’ police officers were given the discretion to identify individuals who they believed were trespassing on the property of open businesses as part of the department’s “Zero Tolerance Zone Trespassing” program. As detailed in a recent “This American Life” episode, it was African-Americans, yet again, who bore the brunt of the program’s implementation. Neither business patrons nor store employees were safe from Miami Gardens’ officers, who embarked on a terrifying and unnecessary trespass enforcement spree that contributed significantly to the roughly 99,000 total stops made by officers over the course of five years—in a city of only 110,000 people. One African-American man was stopped more than 250 times for suspected trespassing on the property of the convenience store where he worked. More than 60 of those stops resulted in his arrest. So what’s the takeaway here? Despite the best intentions of law enforcement, broken windows policing can have dire consequences for communities of color, especially when police officers are given broad discretion to enforce certain laws more aggressively in those communities, with little guidance from their superiors and no fear of meaningful consequences in the event that innocent people are swept up—or even killed—in the process. If police departments are serious about establishing strong, healthy relationships with communities of color based on mutual trust and respect, they will abandon the broken windows approach altogether. Instead, they should work in partnership with community members and experts in the field to determine the best ways to provide responsive, effective police services to the communities most impacted by crime, while also respecting the constitutional rights of everyone they are sworn to serve and protect.

For decades, law enforcement has struggled with the proper, legal application of non-lethal weapons. From rubber bullets to chemical mace, technology has come a long way, but there is still no substitute for proper training. Especially when you're talking about a couple thousand volts electrifying a human body.

In March, the Grand Rapids City Commission formally adopted an administrative policy governing the purchase and use of surveillance equipment. Adoption of this policy makes Grand Rapids one for the first cities in the world to try addressing the issue of mass surveillance in a serious way.

In light of the growing number of state legislatures taking pains to introduce laws written to “protect” religious liberty, you’d think that the idea of safeguarding religious freedom is one that just occurred to the United States. 

Fifty years ago, Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five from Detroit, was shot dead by Ku Klux Klansmen on an isolated road outside Selma, Ala. 

By now, many of us have seen the gut-wrenching video that shows white South Carolina police officer Michael T. Slager shooting Walter L. Scott, an unarmed black man, in the back eight times as Scott flees the scene. Although Officer Slager claimed he fired in self-defense, the video contradicts that story. Along the way, that video also tells a devastating truth—about the culture of policing in America today, about how Black men and communities of color are brutalized, about how excessive force is so easily explained away.

Ever wonder who’s behind the work here at the ACLU of Michigan? In our new blog series Five Questions, ACLU of Michigan staff will talk about the incredible day-to-day work defending civil liberties. We'll be asking our fellows to speak about their experiences in the office as well as the passions that drove them to engage in the social-justice work in which they are currently engaged. Today we're sitting down with Legal Fellow Linda Jordan.  What is being a legal fellow at the ACLU of Michigan like? As a legal fellow at the ACLU of Michigan, I assist staff attorneys on a variety of legal projects. These include drafting memoranda addressing the merits of potential cases and constitutional theories, investigating civil rights violations, interviewing potential plaintiffs and drafting complaints and briefs. What brought you to the ACLU of Michigan? As a native Michigander, I have always been invested in the affairs of our state. After graduating from Fordham Law School last May, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in public interest law, and I couldn’t think of better place to start than in Detroit. I was interested in a variety of civil rights and social justice issues, and I deeply admired the breadth of the ACLU of Michigan’s work. How has your work here shaped your interest in public interest law? There is tremendous value in working at an ACLU affiliate like the ACLU of Michigan. My work is not confined to one substantive area of civil rights law, but rather, it is tailored to the particular needs of the state. I have gained experience on a variety of issues including free speech, Fourth Amendment search and seizure, reproductive justice and religious refusal. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned a great deal about impact litigation strategy. The ACLU of Michigan not only brings cases to protect the rights of individual plaintiffs, but also to achieve broader relief. Limited resources force attorneys and staff members to make careful determinations about where to focus their efforts. The ability to weigh the various factors involved in bringing an impact litigation suit and make the right decision is a skill I hope to further develop and to employ throughout my legal career. What are your plans for your career after your ACLU of Michigan experience? I would like explore other public interest careers in Detroit. I am particularly interested in the intersection of poverty law, racial justice and community economic development. Given the current pro-development climate in Detroit, an important question to ask is “development for whom?” Public policies should promote equitable development to ensure that new projects benefit the entire community, not just the wealthy few. Eliminating hazardous blight that detracts from the neighborhood is a laudable goal, but how do we prevent the blight in the first place? How do we as a community help keep people in their homes and make sure they have access to safe drinking water? I am interested in addressing the root causes of poverty and combatting the insidious processes and systemic racism that have caused vast racial inequality. What civil liberties issues are you most personally drawn to? In addition to economic and racial justice, I have always advocated for women's rights and reproductive freedom. I am particularly troubled by the trend toward "religious refusal," and its implications on women's and LGBTQ rights. More and more often, individuals, corporations and other entities are using religion as an excuse to discriminate against women and the LGBTQ community. Medical professionals are denying women basic reproductive healthcare in the name of religion. Catholic-affiliated hospitals mandate that doctors make decisions based on religious doctrine and not their medical expertise. Along the same vein, business-owners are refusing to provide services to LGBTQ people in the name of religion, and recently a doctor even refused to treat a newborn solely because her parents were gay. I consider myself fortunate to be working at an organization that both protects religious freedom, and is working to expand anti-discrimination laws to ensure that religion is not being used a license to discriminate.

Much of the recent outrage about police violence directed against the black community is about the lack of consequences for the culpable officers. For many, assertions that the circumstances of certain police crimes don’t satisfy legal requirements for prosecuting the officers provide little comfort in the face of what sometimes seems like a calculated campaign of racial violence by the law enforcement community.

Our state can’t come up with a consistent definition for truancy. Yet many lawmakers do agree that children in poor families who fail to come to school should be dealt with more severely than their counterparts in more affluent households. That is the consequence of HB 4014, a bill that would end cash assistance to needy families of children who are declared chronically truant by their school district.