GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Protestors say Grand Rapids Police must stop handcuffing innocent, unarmed African American children at gunpoint.
But Police Chief David Rahinsky says officers showed good judgment on Oct. 9 when they put the handcuffs on a 12-year-old girl.
Officers were responding to a 911 caller who said she heard a woman screaming followed by gunshots at a home on Batavia Place. While searching for suspects they patted down a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother in the house and briefly handcuffed and searched a woman and her 12-year-old daughter.
►Related: GRPD chief releases body cam footage, says race had nothing to do with handcuffing of 12-year-old
“The decision was made to handcuff the 12-year-old very quickly while she was patted down for weapons” explains Chief Rahinsky. “She was un-handcuffed in under two minutes. They did just what they are trained to do.”
Kent County Commissioner Robert S. Womack disagrees. “If this is how they are trained then they are trained totally wrong,” he says. “It is traumatizing for kids to be in handcuffs.”
Womack says this is the fourth time in less than two years that Grand Rapids Police have handcuffed African American children at gunpoint before eliminating them as suspects.
“They have been doing that to adults forever,” he says. “Everyone has accepted it. I’m black, I’m walking down the street, I might get handcuffed. But now we are drawing a line in the sand because this is our kids.”
“When we respond to a call of someone getting shot, this is the response you are going to get,” says Chief Rahinsky. “Our training is consistent, regardless of the neighborhood, regardless of the race.”
To protest GRPD policy, Sunday afternoon Womack is organizing what he calls an All Kids Matter” march outside the police department headquarters.
“It doesn’t matter what color you are, it doesn’t matter what age you are,” he says. “If you believe innocent children shouldn’t be handcuffed we are meeting in front of the Grand Rapids Police Department at 5 p.m."
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