GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — President of the Grand Rapids Command Officer's Association Capt. Geoff Collard spoke with FOX 17 one-on-one Tuesday, addressing what some consider the elephant in the room.
“The general consensus, and the decision making within the city, has been that we’re not going to properly staff from our perspective, the police department,” Collard said.
These staffing issues were highlighted by a recent spree of gun violence, particularly in the downtown area. The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce made their concerns known in a letter to city leaders last week.
“The main difference right now is you’re also seeing it for the first time in my career, coming from the business community in the downtown area,” Collard said.
But, this isn't a problem unique to downtown Grand Rapids, says Collard.
“There are police officers in our department right now that have been responding to tragedies in our neighborhoods for as long as I’ve been here,” Collard said.
However, when the business community is affected, Collard says the city tends to take violence into much more careful consideration.
“There seems to be a common theme: once some bad stuff happens downtown and the 'right' people start yelling, they absolutely have a different response,” Collard said.
The problem is across the board, not just with patrol unit numbers, which Collard points out are severely lacking. They'd typically like to staff around 30 officers to patrol each day.
“On a daily basis, it is not uncommon to have less than 20 police officers for the entire city of 45 square miles,” Collard said.
Collard says on any given night in Grand Rapids, two officers are assigned downtown. That problem was highlighted in one captain's post about shootings in the downtown area that hurt four people early Sunday morning. GRPD officers transported victims to the hospital because the large chaotic crowd proved too difficult to provide an ambulance, according to the chief.
Collard says officers are hearing frustrations over stolen cars driving recklessly and stray bullets striking homes.
“We’ve got officers going out door-to-door in the highest-crime areas in the city right now. The feedback they’re getting is, 'Where have you been? Why are you not out here?'” Collard said.
On top of patrol staffing, Collard says investigations are piling up too. The department, once staffed at 400 officers, now has at least 100 fewer officers. More are leaving all the time, Collard says, as officers seek employment with better staffing, fewer special events and less required overtime due to staffing shortages.
“There are tens of thousands of police reports in the city of Grand Rapids that we don’t have the investigators to investigate either,” Collard said. “They’re not even getting looked at, those cases.”
Collard says the lack of staffing also affects the department's ability to be transparent with local news outlets.
“As you know as media, a 7–8 month wait time on FOIA requests ... it’s not just patrol,” Collard said.
As far as solutions, Collard says the best thing voters can do is talk to their elected leaders. He fears a small majority has taken hold of the conversation regarding policing in the city, specifically at commission meetings.
“The public in Grand Rapids has to speak up," Collard said.
READ MORE: Grand Rapids Chamber alarmed by growing issues going on in the city
The communications liaison for the Grand Rapids Police Department tells FOX 17 that aside from patrol, officers are in downtown Grand Rapids as part of the Homeless Outreach Team, Special Response Team, Vice Team, Traffic Unit, and additional staffing is brought in for various special events. Department communications staff say the number of patrol officers is not an accurate representation of the totality of officers in downtown Grand Rapids.
