Grand Rapids Police Chief holds press conference to release videos of the shooting of Patrick Lyoya 4/13/22 Transcript

Mark Washington: (00:04)
Sincere condolences to the family of Patrick Lyoya, who is grieving the death of a son, a father and brother. This is also a very difficult time for the members of our police department and the officer specifically as they process this very regrettable event, in which a life has to be taken in enforcement of the law.

Brandon Davis: (00:30)
And given the history of our country, when a life, particularly the life of a black man is lost during an interaction with law enforcement, there’s a great deal of emotion, frustration, and anger. As an oversight professional, it is important that I review, monitor and audit all investigations impartially, based on law and policy, and I will do that. However, that does not remove my humanity or empathy. And as such, I grieve with our community.

Eric Winstrom: (00:59)
Am I planning on naming the officer and usually over the past few days, that question has been framed. And if this was anybody but a police officer, you would’ve said the name. I’m going to treat the officer like I would anybody else. We don’t name suspects. If the officer is charged with a crime, we will name them at that time. But, the short answer is no, I’m not going to be naming the officer.

Speaker 4: (01:14)
Were the actions taken by this officer, in accordance with Grand Rapids Police, support policy?

Eric Winstrom: (01:19)
That’s a great question and one that we will definitely come to an answer with. However, I’m not running the investigation. This is the video of the information that I have. But, there is an entire investigation being conducted by the Michigan State Police, which I do not have access to, by design for conflict of interest. I will not make a policy decision, nor will I come to a conclusion of criminal law at this time. As soon as that investigation is completed and handed over to my agency, we will come to those conclusions.

Eric Winstrom: (01:52)
So just to be clear again, the reason that we’re having this today is this is transparency about the use of force incident. I want to be as transparent as possible. There’s a lot of factors. There’s what happened before, how the stop, stop? Why the foot pursuit? This is what happens after, when CPR was started and asking about that. How long did the body stay on scene? There’s a range of questions. I don’t have all those answers because this is not a Grand Rapids Police Department investigation. What I wanted to do today was provide to you, the basic information that I have in the spirit of transparency, on the use of force incident itself.

Robert Womack: (02:29)
This shows what the family saw, but it also shows you some more information because you have so many cameras. From talking to the family, and seeing what they had saw, one version of this. Now, you get a chance to see three or four different versions of this. It’s still very close to what the family said, because the knee does go on the back. The gun goes to the back of the head. He pulls the trigger and I believe that America’s going to say there’s a lot of other things that could have happened. The fact that calling back up, if he felt he was not big enough to bring this person down, calling back up, having another agency, East Grand Rapids Police department get there before the Grand Rapids Police Department, that also assists in this escalating instead of being deescalated.