On Friday, May 29, a group of protesters stood outside the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office holding signs and chanting “you’re not alone, you’re not alone, you’re not alone.” At the front of the crowd stood Sha’Teina Grady El, wearing a gray head covering and a gray sweatshirt reading, “Imported From Detroit.” She cried as the crowd showed their support for her; in the previous days, protests in the same location had called for her release from jail.
On Tuesday, May 26, Grady El was arrested in the Appleridge community in Ypsilanti, Mich. She and her husband were arrested because they refused to stand behind a police perimeter set up to protect residents from an investigation into a nearby shooting. According to the official media release by the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office, “The individuals were instructed to leave and warned that if they failed to leave, they could be arrested for obstructing the investigation. Unable to secure voluntary compliance the deputies arrested both subjects. An altercation ensued during the arrest.”
In a Facebook live on Friday, May 29, Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton released the body cam footage from the officer involved in the arrest of the Grady El’s. On the night of the incident, the deputies involved in the initial call to investigate the shooting were understaffed due to a call from across Ypsilanti Township. The deputies situated at the Applewood scene set up a perimeter around the house where the suspected shooter was. Grady El and her husband were standing within the perimeter video recording with her cell phone.
After being refused entry into the home of the alleged shooter, the officers decided to arrested Grady El and her husband for disobeying their orders to stand farther back. When her husband stepped between Grady El and the officer, he was tased, and the officer placed Grady El in a bear hug. She then bit the officer who was attempting to restrain her.
Video taken by her neighbor Tovah Taylor shows the police officer’s following use of violent force. The video shows the officer repeatedly beating Grady El, picking her up, punching her in the head and slamming her against a nearby fence. After, she was taken to the Wayne County Jail. According to Sheriff Clayton, there is no protocol that prohibits punching in specific cases. However, in the media statement released by the Sheriff’s Office, the officer involved has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
Trishe Duckworth, one of the organizers of Friday’s protest, said that the immediate community response came together naturally in the day following Grady El’s arrest. However, as the week moved on, Duckworth and other community members organized, sharing social media flyers and garnering hundreds of attendees over days of protests.
Grady El was released Friday, May 29, with the help of William Amadeo and Trovious Starr, her legal team. Within hours, she was at the protest, and the mood shifted to one of celebration.
“When we come together, when we unify, we can get anything done,” Duckworth said. “We see that because she was released, and she’s on her way home today. People say protesting doesn’t work, and that’s not true. You have to do it with the right intention and the right heart.”
However, Grady El’s legal troubles are far from over. According to Amadeo, she remains under GPS monitoring and a bond requiring her to return to court. The team’s next steps are to dismiss the case again in a probable cause conference on June 8. If it isn’t dismissed, they will hold a preliminary examination.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Amadeo said. “We haven’t really slept much. We’ve worked around the clock, we’ve been getting phone calls at ten o’clock at night from the Wayne County Prosecutor. We’ve been in constant touch with the family. We did have some success today, but we have a long way to go. I did ask the charges be dismissed, and they should be dismissed. But if they’re not, we’re ready to go to [preliminary examination]. I’m ready to go to trial.”
At the protest outside of the Sheriff’s department, different community members and friends of Grady El spoke to the crowd. Among those were Areshonda Bullock, Grady El’s best friend. After Bullock moved to Michigan from California, Grady El took her in.
“This is disgusting,” Bullock said. “It’s getting too much for me. It seems like it's too much to me. It seems like it's being accepted now. We see how many people are getting killed on camera. Think of how many we don’t see. This is too much. We’ve been stagnant for too long. We have to have purposeful action, we have to come together, we have to unite, we have to put our petty differences aside.”.
Many of the protestors recognized the need to stand in solidarity with the national movement against police brutality. Following recent outrage over police brutality locally as well as national unrest following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade, the support from the community was especially powerful.
“With the state of the world right now, it’s important that we get together,” said Damon Stallworth, a 40-year-old Washtenaw County resident and member of the Ann Arbor Boogie Down biker group. “As black people, we’re going to be together. We stick together. We can’t do it by ourselves. Where are all the caucasians that are shaking hands with us on a daily basis? We need them to help us too. If not, it’s just us making noise.”
Although she remained emotionally and physically shaken from her arrest, Grady El was thankful that it provided her with the opportunity to speak out and effect change.
“What he did today, I’ll take it,” Grady El said. “As long as it makes the future better for my children. As long as this is being put on the spotlight, I’ll take it. People seeing me get beat––which is embarrassing, it’s very embarrassing. To have that be done and this be the turn out, to possibly make the future for our little ones growing up to be better, I’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
The protest remained peaceful, but early on there was a moment of increased tension. Protesters spotted two Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department employees on the roof of the building wearing tactical gear. There was intense and immediate anger from the protesters, many of whom believed that the department had placed snipers on the roof. Duckworth stormed through the crowd, yelling on a phone call with a representative from Clayton’s office. Ethan Ketner, another organizer of the event, said the officers’ presence on the roof made him feel unsafe.
ABOVE: Officers stationed on the roof of the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office observe the protest below. Photography by Gabe Wood
“Everything has escalated at this point,” Ketner said. “I have put a bullet-proof vest on because I do not feel safe within the area we are at. At this point we are going to remain as peaceful as we possibly can, we do not want the situation to be escalated.”
Clayton said that the officers on the roof were there not as snipers but as observers. He said that the Office’s goal is to help to protect the peaceful protesters from infiltration by those who might look to create violence, but that he ordered the officers to leave their positions above the crowd.
“I didn’t know they had gotten assigned to the roof, and that’s not what I want,” Clayton said. “But they were there just to observe because we had credible information that people were coming in from the outside, that may [have posed] a threat.”
As the protest continued, community leaders and politicians alike took to the microphone. Eli Savit, a current candidate running for Washtenaw County Prosecutor, showed his solidarity with the protestors. His campaign’s platform is based on eliminating racial inequities in the justice system by hiring third-party researchers to identify and eliminate where the inequities occur. He is also seeking to end cash bail.
“Across the country, people are waking up to the fact that we have a real systemic problem with police violence, a real systemic problem with mass incarceration,” Savit said. “We have a big problem with systemic racism. I think what you’re seeing here is a reflection at its best of a movement that is happening across the country.”
Sheriff Clayton declined to pass judgement on Grady El’s case, saying that he will leave it up to investigators as to whether the officer, who has not been named, was justified in his actions. However, Clayton did show support for the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd while in police custody, and said that as a black man, many of the frustrations of those protesters resonate with him as well.
“The George Floyd situation is emblematic of some of the things that have happened to blacks across the country,” Clayton said. “It’s a lynching in a different way. It’s not just what happened in Washtenaw and what recently happened in Minneapolis and what happened in Georgia and Louisville. It’s what's been happening in 400 years. I took this job and I ran for office to help change that. I am devastated by that fact that the work that we’ve done is being discounted because of this incident, but I am the sheriff of this county for that reason, and for that reason only.”
Taylor, the neighbor that recorded the viral video of Grady El’s assault, and Krystle DuPree, a local activist and Vice Chair for the Outreach Committee for the Washtenaw County Democratic Party, also spoke to the crowd of protestors. Among those in attendance was District 6 County Commissioner Ricky Jefferson, who was there to support his community in the fight against this type of incident.
“When I see injustice, I don’t have anything to lose,” Jefferson said. “If I’m not re-elected, I can still fight this fight. When I bargain, I say, ‘okay, what can I get for the people I serve?’ I don’t get anything for me just so I can go to the next level [like most politicians].” Grady El’s arrest has had a greater impact on Jefferson because of his experience as a black man in the community, and has inspired him to create change.
Protesters in front carried a wide banner reading, “Cops Lie People Die,” “No KKKops” and “White Silence is Deadly.” The chanting and cries of the demonstration were coupled with the beating of drums. At one point, a white man approached protesters, yelling at them to stop blocking the street and telling them that they should be protesting black-on-black crime. After a brief confrontation, the protesters disengaged and continued to march back towards the Sheriff’s office.
After the protestors circled Washtenaw Avenue, organizers encouraged participants to drive to Detroit, where the city was leading a Black Lives Matter demonstration in solidarity with the recent victims of police brutality. Although these protests are happening during a pandemic, with social distancing guidelines still in place, many protesters seemed to feel that the risk was worth it.
“There are way more pressing issues,” Ketner said. “People are getting shot; people are getting murdered on the streets, and we have to do something about it. This shit cannot continue.”
After the protestors circled Washtenaw Avenue, organizers encouraged participants to drive to Detroit, where the city was leading a Black Lives Matter demonstration in solidarity with the recent victims of police brutality. Although these protests are happening during a pandemic, with social distancing guidelines still in place, many protesters seemed to feel that the risk was worth it.
“There are way more pressing issues,” Ketner said. “People are getting shot; people are getting murdered on the streets, and we have to do something about it. This shit cannot continue.”