Your ELi: Responses to National Events

When national events like the recent police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and the sniper killing of Brent Thompson and four other Dallas police officers occur, they affect our lives in East Lansing. They contribute to how we see and treat each other. I know from working with East Lansing Police Department officers on ELi reports that these kinds of events weigh on their thoughts as they work in our city. And I know from talking with neighbors of color (and from having a brother who is black) that distrust and even fear of justice systems are not unwarranted.

As the people who run your local newspaper, ELi’s Managing Editor Ann Nichols and I find ourselves, on days like today, trying to figure out how to serve your national-as-local news needs. ELi is specifically focused on East Lansing, and the shootings and killings this week didn’t happen here, but East Lansing is not an island.

Ann and I go back, at such times, to talking explicitly about ELi’s mission: to provide news and information for the people of East Lansing and to foster community dialogue and engagement.

In a case like this, that means letting you know if there are any local rallies, vigils, and the like planned. While we don’t normally cover many Lansing events, in cases like this, many in East Lansing want to know about the closest opportunity to participate in a public event, and if that means it’s Lansing, we’ll bring you that information. (Whenever Lansing or another nearby municipality offers something you can’t really get in East Lansing, we consider that news for East Lansing.)

In a case like this, our mission also means helping you get to know our officers, and helping you learn how our own police department manages bias, bias complaints, and mutual fear of violence. This morning we sent questions to ELPD, including questions about how ELPD is supporting its officers today in the wake of Dallas, and how ELPD addresses bias and promotes de-escalation and non-lethal approaches to policing. (We’ll be bringing you answers next week.)

We are talking about ways we can go further to provide you the information you need and the community engagement we all might benefit from on the issues of racial profiling, attacks on police and firefighters, guns and gun control, and related issues. We want your help thinking about ways to do that. We would appreciate if you would contact us with your suggestions.

We would also appreciate if you would let us know when you think we do things well or poorly, especially when we are dealing with very tense issues. Just this week, someone sent us a pretty stinging criticism on our reporting, criticism that led to a lot of productive dialogue about how we do our work. (Fortunately, the sting was softened a bit by another reader writing to praise some other work.)

Criticism and feedback help us do what we are here to do: serve you as your local, dedicated, citizen-run, non-commercial news and information service.

Thank you in advance for your help, and thank you for letting us serve you through East Lansing Info.