Latest news with #Winstrom
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Yahoo
17-year-old charged with murder in shooting of 15-year-old in Grand Rapids
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A 17-year-old now faces a murder charge in the death of a 15-year-old who was gunned down in Grand Rapids last year. Cartiyae Pascal was arraigned Tuesday on a count of open murder and a weapons charge in the death of Amillier Penn, Grand Rapids Police Department Chief Eric Winstrom confirmed. Winstrom said he is being charged as an adult. 'For nearly a year, GRPD detectives have been following every lead and every tip, painstakingly building this case to bring justice for Milli and his family,' Winstrom said in a statement. 'The brazen murder of a 15-year-old child, out playing football with his friends, is one that I hope our city will never forget. I know that there are many people in Grand Rapids and across the country who have been invested in justice for Milli. While it can never erase the sense of loss, I hope that gives some measure of healing to his family and loved ones.' Pascal's name had already when a docuseries about GRPD premiered in April. The first episode spotlighted the investigation into Amillier's death. 'There is just a ton of work to be done (in this murder investigation). And as was showcased in this episode, I think the biggest obstacle for this was the trust,' GRPD Chief Eric Winstrom told News 8 after the show aired. He said he hoped the docuseries would encourage people to come forward with information. Winstrom was skeptical that releasing the suspect's name before charges were filed would affect the criminal case. Pascal's attorney, who is representing him in a separate shooting, disagreed. 'If the Grand Rapids Police Department were also involved in the production or the disclosure of the information and discovery, I think that can be and probably is very prejudicial to my client,' attorney Barton Morris said. Amillier, who went by Milli, was shot and killed in broad daylight on June 2 while playing football with friends on Umatilla Street SE near Madison Avenue. 'In this case, this young man was playing football with friends. He wasn't engaged in some kind of illegal activity. He wasn't armed with a handgun. He's 15 years old. So I don't think when we discover a motive that it's gonna be a motive that makes any sense,' Grand Rapids Police Department Chief Eric Winstrom said in the days after the killing. GRPD docuseries names uncharged suspect in death of teen: Could that hurt the case? For months, Milli's family begged for information about the shooter. 'Fifteen years old and had his whole life ahead of him, taken from him, robbed from him for nothing,' Corey Penn, Amillier's dad, told News 8 in July. 'It still feel like the same day. It feels like when I got that phone call when my son was shot. That is what it feels like and it feels like that every single day.' A $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest was offered through Silent Observer. 'We are fighting against what seems to be a culture amongst the witnesses of a code of silence,' Winstrom said in July. 'You've got a child, a 15-year-old boy, who was playing football. Whatever the history, whatever the motive was, it doesn't make sense and it doesn't make sense for adults who were there and who have information not to come forward and do the right thing for Milli.' 'It's no honor amongst thieves. I can say that, and it runs parallel with this situation because my son was robbed of his life at 15 years old,' Penn said. 'So we as a community, as adults, we've got to start taking some accountability for the things that we allow. Somebody has got to stand up and set an example.' 'Stand up': Family seeks tips in Grand Rapids teen's death Penn said he would not watch the docuseries episode about his son's death. 'I didn't watch the documentary, because this is an everyday hell for me that I'm living in,' he told News 8 in April. 'I sat for six hours to get past that yellow tape to view my son's body. But I want to remember my son how I last seen him alive, as much as possible.' Father won't watch GRPD docuseries episode on son's killing: 'I'm still living it' Corey Penn and Seeds of Promise GR have asked the city of Grand Rapids to designate Umatilla Street SE from Madison Avenue to Union Avenue as 'Amillier Penn Way.' On Tuesday, the city of Grand Rapids Community Development Committee scheduled a public hearing on the requested commemorative street name designation for June 10. Milli was one of two 15-year-olds shot and killed in Grand Rapids within weeks of each other last year. La-kyijah Williams was shot dead May 18 in the city's Arena District. Josiah Pittman, 18, was . Pascal was in an unrelated shooting on Sept. 1, 2024, that injured a man. In that case, police say, a shooter '(lay) in wait' for the victim when he came out of a convenience store on Madison Avenue at Dickinson Avenue SE, then shot him multiple times. The victim's mother, who narrowly avoided gunfire, rushed him to the hospital and doctors were able to save his life. Surveillance, rap videos helped ID shooting suspect, detective says Police say they have video that shows Pascal was the shooter outside the convenience store, and that his mother also identified him as the person in the video when she accompanied her son to a police interrogation. Detectives said Pascal and his mother kept talking in the interview room after they left the room, testifying that Pascal's mother asked, 'How many times did you shoot him?' and Pascal replied, 'Um, about five.' 'She asks if there's any more bodies on the gun, and he says, 'No,'' police testimony continued. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Could the upcoming documentary help build trust in GRPD?
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A new documentary series set to start airing in just under two weeks will show viewers the inner workings of the Grand Rapids Police Department. The documentary's trailer touts it as an effort to increase transparency and trust and give the public 'unprecedented access.' It's called 'All Access PD: Grand Rapids.' New documentary series goes inside GRPD with 'total transparency' In his first three years as the head of the department, Chief Eric Winstrom says the department looks a lot different than it did when he arrived. 'When I moved here two years ago from Chicago, trust was at an all-time low. I knew that I had to break down the walls,' Winstrom said in the trailer. He began his tenure at a time when civil unrest and police distrust had reached their breaking point. 'It wasn't a matter of building trust. I am going to act like this is ground floor,' Winstrom said in an interview with News 8 Wednesday. Story from 2022: New GRPD chief on transparency, community trust His efforts to do so are soon going to be on display in the documentary, which in its trailer promises 'the most access a documentary team has had to a police department.' The production team followed officers for 100 days to get a glimpse of the day-to-day operations. Winstrom said GRPD did not pay for the documentary or receive money for it. He said nothing was left out. 'This show is not about making the police department look good,' he told News 8. 'Knowing the cases that they follow, I think there is enough gray in there that you are going to be able to see that humans are not perfect, including police.' Since his tenure began, Winstrom said he has been focused on recruiting and improving trust and culture in the department and the city. 'How am I going to build trust? I am going to do the right thing tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and I am going to keep doing it for as long as I am here,' he said. But for some, the trust has not improved. Cle Jackson, the president of the Greater Grand Rapids Branch of the NAACP, told News 8 that while trust has not gotten worse, it has not necessarily gotten better. 'That trust level from our vantage point is kind of the same,' he said. 'I don't speak for the entire Black community — no one should. I am going to speak from a NAACP perspective in terms of some of the complaints we have received on a daily basis. Their trust is not at an all-time high. It's just not.' Marian Barrera-Young, executive director of the Baxter Neighborhood Association, told News 8 that the documentary will help promote conversation between the department and the community. 'I hope people start talking, asking questions, start wanting meetings where we can pull the police back out and talk about the documentary,' Barrera-Young said. 'It's a conversation piece and I think that's good. It gets them more involved.' Winstrom said he hopes the documentary will serve as a stepping stone to increasing trust in the community. 'I hope that as an entire city we have been moving in the right direction for the past three-plus years, and I think we are heading in the right direction. I think there is a real opportunity that this documentary helps us get there,' he said. Episodes will air weekly on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on ID and stream the next day on Max. The first episode will be released on April 8. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Yahoo
GRPD addresses use of pepper balls following online video
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — After a crowd of people broke out into fights Friday night in downtown Grand Rapids, police brought out pepper ball launchers to clear the area — a move that caught criticism online. Friday night into Saturday morning, officers with the Grand Rapids Police Department were monitoring a crowd of about 400 people who had gathered at Commerce Avenue and Cherry Street in downtown Grand Rapids after a sellout show at a local music venue, according to GRPD Chief Eric Winstrom. Around 2:20 a.m., physical fights broke out in the crowd, he said. 'It really devolved into a chaotic situation. Numerous fights were breaking out, I had officers there try and break up the fights, try and you know, bring safety and peace to the area,' Winstrom said. That's when he said officers told people to get out of the way. When they didn't listen or leave the area for seven or eight minutes, he said officers brought out the pepper ball launchers, which they aimed at the ground to release little clouds of powdered substance. 'It's used in the same way as you would use (mace), it's just you can do it from a safer distance. That was good in this case because there were so many fist fights, so many hands-on confrontation between individuals where there was a lot of opportunities for people to get hurt and a lot of potential for police officers to get hurt. But because of this added tool, it really brought this situation to a halt quickly,' Winstrom explained. While he wasn't there that night, Winstrom said he reviewed bodycam footage and read the reports, commenting on a 'general air of lawlessness throughout the entire night.' He commended his officers on their restraint. 'This was a situation where people could have been hurt, we have seen unfortunately violent incidents of large crowds like this downtown and elsewhere in the city where we've seen multiple individuals shot,' Winstrom said, citing a shooting outside of a Grand Rapids bar in , one on the Blue Bridge in and the murder of in September of 2023 — all started as large gatherings of people that devolved into fights. 'I really think it was probably just a mix of the warm night, alcohol and bad decisions on the part of people who are just showing bad judgement and I'm very thankful that we're talking about an incident of fights downtown and not talking about a teen getting shot and killed,' Winstrom said. A video widely shared on social media of the night shows GRPD officers walking in an intersection, some shooting pepper ball guns. Amid coughs and sneezes, some pedestrians walk away and some yell at the police, accusing them of racism. Winstrom said leaders in the African American community forwarded him the video. He said he's thankful for more trust between police and the community. 'Whereas three years ago I think I would have heard the questions, 'Eric, why the police brutality?' or 'Chief, why are the officers shooting people, why are they doing this?' It was 'Hey Chief, we see this video, we know that this is just part of the story, just wanted to let you know, be aware.' One of the leaders said to me, 'Curb the behavior, curb the negative police interactions,'' Winstrom said. He said the incident and the video are great opportunities to educate the public on police protocol and set expectations for how Grand Rapids police are going to handle large-crowd situations that devolve into fighting. 'That's how it's going to be downtown this summer. … We want people to come out, enjoy downtown, enjoy the rest of our city, we love to see our spaces activated by people having a good time but doing it peacefully. And when it turns from peaceful to violent, we are going to take action,' Winstrom said. No one was injured in the incident but five were arrested — one for throwing a bottle at an officer and others for disorderly conduct for fighting and resisting and obstructing a police officer, Winstrom said. 'When you get a lawful instruction from a police officer trying to control a violent incident, if you do not obey you are subject to arrest,' Winstrom said. He said GRPD is reviewing video to see if more charges are warranted. 'We are holding individuals accountable and intend to set the tone that this sort of lawless behavior won't be tolerated,' Winstrom said. — News 8's Duncan MacLean contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What a federal ban on Chinese-made drones would mean for GRPD's program
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Federal lawmakers are considering banning Chinese-made drones over national security concerns. The and Grand Rapids Police Department are among many police agencies across Michigan and the country that use drones made in China. When GRPD in 2023, it saw from some community members and civil liberty groups raising privacy concerns. Chief Eric Winstrom said the drones would help make the city safer and that many other police departments were . In the end, the . GRPD has since bought 15 drones, a combination of small and large. Police use thermal imaging drone, K9 to track down driver who fled crash In a Wednesday interview with News 8, Winstrom said the drones have been 'extremely helpful.' He said they've been used to find lost children and adults, locate fleeing felons and photograph crime scenes. 'We used them during the campaign season,' Winstrom said. 'We had quite a few large events. Overall crowd assessment, making sure our traffic points are set up right, that vantage point you can't get from a camera on the ground, they're a very useful and helpful tool.' GRPD picked the same company as most police departments: DJI Technology, a Chinese-based manufacturer. Winstrom recalled being asked why the police department wasn't buying American-made drones instead. He said Chinese drones remain the most cost-effective and best-quality. 'We have to be a good steward of finances as the city of Grand Rapids,' he said. 'We just made the determination this was the best for the money.' But the drones' future is an open question. The federal government is on Chinese-made drones over national security concerns. 'If a ban came into effect tomorrow, it would cripple our drone program, to be quite honest,' he said. 'Every one of the drones we purchased would fall under that category.' Winstrom said he understands the concerns. 'It's the same sort of : Is there some sort of Chinese influence in the software itself that could in the long run be used for surveillance on us?' he said. Kentwood fire chief: Drone 'invaluable' in fighting fire at senior living community But if there's a ban, he hopes it's on new drones. When GRPD's current drones age, it would have to replace them with American ones. If that doesn't happen, Winstrom said police departments would need to ask for more money for the more expensive drones. They would also need to pay for new software and a whole new round of training, he said. 'It would be a significant upgrade in cost to maintain the same quality of drone fleet we have right now,' he said. 'It would be a big deal for us. It would be a big challenge.' GRFD takes to skies with expanded drone program Nearly all of the Michigan police and fire departments that use drones use ones made outside the U.S. In a written statement, the Kent County Sheriff's Office said its drone program has been an 'incredibly successful tool for public safety, providing critical assistance in search and rescue operations, disaster response, and emergency situations —far beyond its role in law enforcement.' 'If the legislation moves forward and impacts our current drone fleet, we remain committed to continuing our drone program with a different vendor,' the sheriff's office said. 'Our priority is ensuring that we have the best tools available to keep our community safe and respond effectively to emergencies.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
