Officials grill Lansing’s city attorney, police chief about sex-sting operation

LANSING — In a tense two-hour meeting earlier on Wednesday, members of the Lansing City Council’s Public Safety Committee grilled Lansing Police Chief Mark Alley and Lansing City Attorney Brigham Smith about a host of issues raised by a controversial May 22 sex-sting operation.

Grumbling over the matter has grown in volume since Tuesday when Smith reversed a decision on a Freedom of Information Act request by Michigan Messenger, City Pulse newspaper, the Lansing Association for Human Rights and the Detroit-based Triangle Foundation seeking documents related to the sting operation. Smith and the city had contended the documents could not be released because the city attorney’s office was attempting to decide whether prosecution of the two men arrested was warranted. Tuesday afternoon, Smith learned the Ingham County Prosecutor’s office had already successfully prosecuted the two men.

Council members argued that Smith should have known the prosecutor’s office was pursuing the cases, and what their disposition was. They asked Smith to develop a new policy to check the status of cases before deciding how to rule on information request from the public.

Also at issue was why the sting operation occurred in the first place. Advocates from Lansing Association for Human Rights and Michigan Equality were on hand to ask those questions, and city council member Eric Hewitt who represents Lansing’s First Ward also raised the issue.

Lansing Police Chief Mark Alley told the committee that no more sting operations would be performed, and that in the future any such undercover operation would have to be reviewed and approved by Capt. Ray Hall who leads the city’s North Precinct.

Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT project, issued a statement to Michigan Messenger where he questions the operation:

… [A]n undercover sting operation targeting gay men raises issues of entrapment and possible equal protection concerns (particularly if a review of complaints and or incident reports demonstrate that the problem of sex in the park included heterosexuals having sex to the same degree or more than men)

It’s very clear that there are other methods to deal with this problem — the Chief of Police stated in [a Between the Lines] article that when they had uniformed cops patrolling the area they didn’t see anything (and that means that the uniform patrols were working). The postings on the Squirt site also indicated that people were aware that cops were there and that people should either stay out of the park or modify their behavior. Posting of signs in the park that uniformed cops are on patrol and that illegal activity is prohibited could also have been effective. It was clear from at least first police report that the undercover officer was encouraging the arrestee to engage in indecent exposure. In both incident reports the undercover officer played very active roles in trying to engage the arrestee to do something illegal. Wouldn’t it have been a better use of time just to be on patrol in the woods?

As a result of the meeting, representatives from LAHR, the Lansing police, Triangle Foundation and Friends of Fenner Nature Center, a nonprofit that oversees the operations of the park, will meet to develop strategies and plans to address the ongoing concerns about sexual activity, which Alley said had never been substantiated until the May 22 sting operation, in the nature center.