Law Professor and Journalist collborate to hold police accountable for actions

“I think this will be our Ferguson.”

Sitting in his office at the University of Chicago Law School just over a year ago, attorney and professor Craig Futterman was talking about a video almost no one had seen. It was a dashboard-camera recording of a white Chicago police officer killing a black teenager.

The details, then still unconfirmed, rang with an ominous echo of the police shooting of Michael Brown, whose death in a Missouri street sparked weeks of protest.

Futterman, who runs the university’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project, hadn’t seen the video yet either; but he’d been pushing the city to make it public for months, ever since a confidential source had called and described it to him. “An execution,” Futterman’s source had called it. He searched for his own words. Finally he said simply, “This kid, his name is Laquan McDonald.”

Article here (via abajournal). 

Man with gunshot wounds won't cooperate with investigators

The victim, so far, has refused to cooperate with investigators and is offering little information on what happened. Police are working to identify a possible suspect.

Article here.  (via mlive).

The alleged shooting occurred in an area where another shooting recently took place.

Attempted suicide by cop? Prosecutor says only injured man knows.

Police were told that 19-year-old James Spivey was distraught, suicidal and would “take out” anyone who tried to help him.

Spivey fled upstairs when police entered his apartment on North Castle Ridge Dr. SE.
Police lost sight of him.

Officer Benjamin Hawkins tried to get Spivey to come back down, with his hands up. Spivey started “yelling and screaming” at police and told them to leave. Incoherent at times, Spivey would not promise Hawkins he wouldn’t hurt himself, and said that “it will get nasty.”

Later, Spivey charged the officers and officers shot him in self-defense, according to the Kent County Prosecutor, William Forsyth.

Article here. 

Apparently it was a busy weekend in Grand Rapids

Multiple shootings kept the Grand Rapids police busy this past weekend.

 Police search for man with a gun near Boston Square, article here.

And, about five blocks away, multiple homes shot-up in SE Grand Rapids, article here.