Black Metro Detroit Residents Urged to Stay Out of Eastpointe

DETROIT, MI — A coalition of Detroit pastors has issued a “travel warning” that encourages black Metro Detroit residents to stay away from Eastpointe, where several police officers allegedly beat an African-American man until he was unconscious while he was in custody for suspected drunken driving.

The Rev. W.J. Rideout III, founder of the group Defenders of Truth and Justice, and several activists who are members of his All God’s People congregation plan to picket the Eastpointe Police Department at a date to be announced.

Frankie Taylor, 38, of Warren was arrested on Aug. 10, 2015. In a September 2016 federal civil rights lawsuit, he accused Eastpointe police of placing him in a restraint chair in the booking room, binding his arms and legs, and punching him in the head and face more than 10 times. Named as defendants in the lawsuit were Eastpointe Public Safety Director John McNeilance and five police officers.

Eastpointe police have denied any wrongdoing, and have characterized Taylor as uncooperative, The Macomb Daily said, reporting on a news conference.

In court documents, the attorney for the police department said Taylor bit and spit on officers, sprayed Windex in his face and intentionally fell twice and hit his head in an attempt to injure himself. Some of the officers involved reportedly admitted they delivered open-handed blows in an attempt to subdue Taylor.

Taylor’s attorney, Royal Oak attorney James Rasor, said the officers “created and escalated the situation” and that his client suffered partial blindness and brain damage. “It went from police procedure to torture,” Rasor said, calling the police department’s account of the incident “a spectacular work of fiction.”

Rasor said research backs up “institutional racism” in Eastpointe, citing a 2010 Wayne State University study that found black motorists in Eastpointe were more likely than white motorists to be stopped and ticketed.

“You’re taking your life in your hands driving through these communities if you are black,” Rasor said. “Isn’t it time we grew out of that as a Metro region?”

In 2006, the city of Eastpointe and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan settled a lawsuit for $160,000 that accused the city of systematic racial profiling a black bicyclist in the mid-to-late 1990s, when Eastpointe was a predominantly white city. There were 22 plaintiffs in the action.

Rideout, the Detroit pastor, and Sam Riddle, political director of the Michigan National Action Network, will meet with McNeilance at 1:30 p.m. Thursday at Eastpointe City Hall.

“The shame of it is we’ve got to designate an American city as unsafe for black Americans because of the brutality of the police department which engages in systemic racism by not only stereotyping but profiling African-Americans,” Riddle said at a news conference reported by The Detroit News. “The ones (black people) that live there are already aware of it.”

Eastpointe Mayor Suzanne Pixley said the pastors and activists are over-reacting. The city has a growing black population, she said, and recently hired a black police officer, the first in several years.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate,” she said of the travel warning. “They (police) are not going to pull an African-American over in preference over a white person. All of our laws apply equally to everybody.”

The FBI, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Michigan’s Eastern District are investigating.

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