In July 2020 a squadron of Detroit Police Department officers approached a young African American man to make an arrest on a residential street. Hakim Littleton, the arrestee’s companion, apparently drew a pistol and fired a shot in the direction of the officers, who returned fire in a hail of bullets, killing Littleton. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Police Chief James Craig released video footage of the event along with narrative commentary of what occurred. The ACLU of Michigan joined in coalition with other legal and community organizations to question the account given by the police after our review of the video footage revealed factual inconsistencies and contradictions in the police account. Most notably, the video appears to show that Littleton had been fully subdued by officers and was alive on the ground when one officer fired a shot into Littleton’s head at close range. An investigation by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, however, exonerated the officers involved. In 2021 the coalition’s work expanded due to an escalating pattern of violence by Detroit police officers. In May 2022 the coalition submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice a comprehensive memorandum that detailed a long history of abuse, racial discrimination, and corruption in the Detroit Police Department along with a request that the Justice Department open an investigation and intervene in Detroit police operations. The Department of Justice spent 13 years monitoring the police department’s compliance with a consent decree before departing in 2016, but the coalition’s memo requested that they return because of escalating uses of force, hundreds of unresolved citizen complaints, poor leadership, racially targeted prosecutions for carrying concealed weapons, and a repressive police culture. (ACLU Attorney Mark P. Fancher.)
