A Ripple in Ann Arbor: Premiere and Reconciliation Panel

Thu, 01/01/2026 - 9:59am

When: November 9, 2024 at Michigan Theater (603 E Liberty St)

This video is a recording of the truth and reconciliation event and the premiere of A Ripple in Ann Arbor, a short documentary film originated and produced by Ann Arbor City Council Member Cynthia Harrison, directed by filmmaker Aliyah Mitchell, in partnership with the Ann Arbor District Library Archives. A Ripple in Ann Arbor tells the story of the search for a serial rapist in Ann Arbor in the 1990s, the unfocused and invasive tactics used by police to find the perpetrator, and the innocent man who took the city to court to expose these tactics and reclaim his dignity.

Following the showing of the film, a panel discussion of local civic and law enforcement leaders discussed the events and offered formal apologies to those affected.

This video includes the introduction of the film, the film itself, and the apology and panel portion of the event. To view only the documentary, visit https://aadl.org/arippleinannarbor

Transcript

[00:00:18] ELI NEIBURGER: Good afternoon, everybody. If you could please take your seats. Thank you all for coming. I'm Eli Neiburger, I'm Director of the Ann Arbor District Library. We're so thankful to see all of you here today. Before we get started, a couple of housekeeping moments. We want to make sure that everyone has their pocket devices silenced and any sentient robots that might unintentionally be in your devices, please make sure that they aren't listening. As well as the after the film, we will have a brief intermission while we set for the panel. During that time, if you want to have questions for the panel, there are note cards out in the lobby, so you can take a note card, write down your question. After the panelists have each had their opportunity to speak, we'll start taking questions from the audience via those notecards. Also, out in the lobby, we have a backdrop and a photographer. During the intermission or after the show, if you'd like to have your photograph taken, please we encourage you to do that. This is a project that we're always delighted when our archives team is able to work with local community to bring the archives to life. As you know, the Ann Arbor District Library is the holder of the archives of the Ann Arbor News and other publications. About a year ago, Counselor Harrison came to see me and said, she has a story that she knows hasn't been talked about enough in this community and she had an idea for a way that the library could help make that happen. Of course, the library was immediately interested in seeing how we could make that happen. We were very happy to fund the production of this film to connect Cynthia with a local filmmaker, Aliyah Mitchell, who we've produced many projects with as part of the Ann Arbor 200 project and to bring to the community a very important story that isn't widely known in the community anymore, and this is a great opportunity for all of you to get more familiar with it. Now it is my pleasure to introduce the originator and producer of this film, and as a resident of Ward 1, one of my city councilors, please welcome Councilor Cynthia Harrison. [APPLAUSE]
[00:02:28] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Thank you, Eli. Good afternoon, everyone. [BACKGROUND] Thank you for being here. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge the people who made this film possible. First, filmmaker Aliyah Mitchell, whose dedication gave voice to this story with compassion and care. This film represents countless hours of research, interviews, and sensitivity in handling a very difficult chapter of our community's history. Aliyah, could you stand? [APPLAUSE] I also want to thank the Ann Arbor District Library Archives. Their meticulous preservation of historical records made it possible to document what happened 30 years ago. Most importantly, I want to thank those who shared their stories for this film. Without their work, much of the story might have been lost. Their willingness to revisit this difficult time makes this truth and reconciliation possible. Today is about acknowledging harm, hearing from those affected, and beginning the work of healing as a community. Let's watch the film. [APPLAUSE]
[00:04:17] PETER STIPE: [MUSIC] I'm only familiar, really with dragnet from the television show. It's a fishing term, I guess, where you cast a net to catch the greatest number of fish. That's essentially what the Ann Arbor Police Department did in this instance is cast a giant net. If there was 999 other people out there and they took all their blood, they wouldn't have gotten a match because they weren't the guy.
[00:04:56] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: Between 1992-1994, there was a serial rapist in Ann Arbor.
[00:05:04] EDITH LEWIS: There were the police coming, asking Black men in the communities to come forward.
[00:05:09] CARMELITA MULLINS: The coalition formed because we feared a witch hunt.
[00:05:19] MICHAEL HENRY: Somebody had an idea, let's go grab some blood from a bunch of Black men and test it to see if we can find out who the rapist is.
[00:05:35] MARY BEJIAN: I did not ask to have civil liberties of any man, African American, White, whomever, thrown over, supposedly so I could be kept safe.
[00:05:43] PETER STIPE: We went through this ordeal. The African American community went through the ordeal. Ann Arbor went through this ordeal, and a woman was murdered because we didn't do our due diligence in the first place. I was somewhat of a troubled youth, so the fact that the police department considered hire me in the first place was a fluke, but I think I had enough encounters with the police department that they thought I must know something about about law enforcement from the other side. Well, the first assault, I believe, was in September of 1992, a jogger was attacked and brutally beaten. So that was the first assault, and she got a very vague glimpse of him, then she was pounded senseless, pretty much. There wasn't much to go on there. We were on another attack in Allmendinger Park in September of '93, a full year later. There were patrol officers taking reports that thought that there was a pattern there. But for some reason there was a different detective assigned to each one--not to each one, but they weren't comparing notes. One officer in particular was dismissed for her assessment that, "I think this is you've got a serial rapist." The one in September of '93, we called a K-9 tracking dog out, and we tracked the suspect to an address on Carolina, where this Ervin Mitchell was living in the basement there. Another woman was the tenant, but he was staying there. He evidently went in there and passed a polygraph test and and was dismissed. Ervin Mitchell had been convicted of assault in Inkster, Michigan. It was a lesser included offense of a sexual assault. Those charges were dismissed based on a tainted search or something. So because his criminal history showed that he'd just been convicted of assault, there was no other follow up done. The state police had a DNA sample from the initial charge, and they retained that like they did all the other samples in the case. Had they checked that, then the case would have been ended right there. In May of 1994, an officer and I were sent to an address out off of Pauline or Commerce out there near Stadium / Pauline area to pick up pictures of a woman who was reported missing earlier in the day. I went to make contact with the husband, this Mr. Galbraith. His apartment was full of people there. It was a tense, chaotic scene, and he was pacing back and forth, and I said, "Wouldn't you like to be doing something?" He said, "Well, yeah," I said, "Well, let's go look for her." The other officer, he followed us in the car. We walked from their apartment to the what was a CVS pharmacy there at Liberty and Stadium. It was turned into a Gordon Food or something like that. We didn't see anything on that route. Then I asked him, "Is there another way that you would go back, a shortcut?" And he said, "Well, yeah, we cut through Boulevard Plaza." Boulevard Plaza, there was only a couple of businesses open. The parking lot was abandoned, the businesses were all dark. We were walking down this path behind the Stadium post office. I'm shining my flashlight, and I see an umbrella and a backpack on the left side of the path, and he goes, "Oh, my God, that's her stuff." I ran him down the path to the patrol car and put him in the car and turned the radio off and got my partner and called the sergeant that had sent us out there to get the pictures in the first place, and I said, "I think we've got something out here." He came out and we found her shortly after that, and she'd been murdered. That murder, that's when they started the task force.
[00:10:43] JEFFRI CHADIHA: When I started covering police, literally, I would go around different police stations in the morning and look at all the police blotters and find out what crimes had happened and then come back. If there was a major story, you would write that up as a bigger piece, or you would just do a crime blotter with basically a summary of different things that happened around the area in Ann Arbor. I remember it was May of 1994, and it was a different vibe to the entire conversation with the police at that time. There was a point person within the police department who I would talk to about different cases, and he would we go over different things. But with this one, it was very much, "We need to sit down and talk about this. Talk about how you're going to approach us with your bosses because this is a different level of severity." And so, right away, I'm 22, 23 years old at the time. Super young kid, not even a full year on the job. I recognized just within his voice and the way he was approaching this that this was going to be something much different than what I had seen. He explained that there was a murder, but there was also a rape, and there also was a great likelihood that this was a serial rapist, not just one standalone case, but there were multiple victims involved with the same perpetrator. At that point, I'm thinking, this is big. I've got to go back to my bosses and talk to them about what was happening. Obviously, my first question is, "If it's a serial rapist, why am I just hearing about this now? Why are you just bringing this up at this moment?" And the response I got from the police was that they had thought the guy had left town, there had been not much evidence involved. They were seriously concerned about creating a crazy response within the community to it. It was, from that conversation, pretty apparent that they didn't have a lot of information to go on, even at that point. They felt like this was something that was going to be very hard to get their hands around. Certainly the last step was going to the media and trying to let people know this was happening in their community.
[00:13:08] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: There was a lot of fear in the community. There was a task force formed consisting of the Ann Arbor Police Department, Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department, the U-M Department of Public Safety and other police agencies, and they decided based on the pressure they were feeling, to develop a plan to try to obtain as many DNA profiles as they could of Black men. Why Black men? Because some of the survivors of the assaults were able to see the man, and most of them, if not all of them, thought that he was African American.
[00:13:59] JEFFRI CHADIHA: This was the case that if you don't have this experience on a regular basis, I'm sure, in New York City or LA you're dealing with this stuff. When these cases wind up in your lap, it's not as simple as just "go find the bad guy, solve case, save community." What I learned was that this was a police force that was very comfortable in knowing this town in a way that I think the public wanted to know it, which was: it's safe, it's secure, a lot of good people, not a lot of dangerous things happening and that they had control of it. That's the thing that really struck me during this case was that they didn't have hardly any control of this, and here was a guy working in their community doing very ugly things that they could not find.
[00:14:56] MARY BEJIAN: The DNA dragnet was essentially the police trying to find a needle in a haystack. A few people who were involved in housing justice activism at that time—one person who worked for the Ann Arbor Tenants Union where they would receive calls from people around the city about problems that they were having in their housing. They, I think, had been hearing from people in the community that the Ann Arbor Police were going door to door in low income neighborhoods, in Black neighborhoods, and asking Black men to account for their whereabouts, and in many cases, were asking them to give blood for DNA testing because the city was trying to find a serial rapist. The way that they talked about it to these men was to say, "It's a way to rule yourself out." They made it sound like this is a good idea for you to do this. Never letting on what they were actually planning on doing.
[00:15:59] EDITH LEWIS: Normal for us to ask you.
[00:16:01] MARY BEJIAN: Normal for us to ask you. The concept of innocent before proven guilty did not exist if you were a Black man in Ann Arbor during that time.
[00:16:10] EDITH LEWIS: I noticed that because, as you can see, my hair is short. And at that time, it was short and black. I would drive down the street and the police would follow me. There was one day I'm driving down Washtenaw Avenue, and my daughter's in the car next to me and I said to her, "The police are coming in the opposite direction. Camila, watch. They're going to turn around and follow us." She said, "That can't possibly be." I said, "Watch." What happens? The car sees me, slows down, turns around, crosses several lanes of traffic, comes back and follows us for about a mile. And I said, "That's what it means, Camila, to be African American in this town."
[00:16:48] DAVID MALCOLM: Growing up, I think I was blind to racism for the most part. I experienced very little here and there, you would experience little racist tropes from people, the N-word or saying stupid stuff, or when you go on the store people following you around and stuff like that. But growing up in Ann Arbor was fun. It was diverse. We had friends from all different backgrounds. We had places to go. You go downtown. You go to Pinball Pete's. We would go to Harry's Army Surplus and buy throwing stars and get our Levis and silk shirts and all of that kind of stuff. But then there's those little subtle racist things that come out that make you understand that, yeah, we are in a liberal town, but sometimes it's the most liberal people that cause the most harm in our community. You know what I mean? Back in 1994, I was a newly married young man. I had a young son and a daughter on the way. This case came about. For me, it was weird because I'm used to being looked at as a Black male, but it seemed like the awareness of who I was and my hue started to permeate throughout the community, and people were looking at me in a different kind of way. Because looking at the description, I told myself, I was like, "That sounds like me." It was nerve-racking and scary. My grandmother, having five men that she raised, didn't want any of us to go anywhere. She was always worried about us stepping out, and I started to walk around my own community looking at people different. Who is it? I just remember feeling like they're talking about me. Just looking around in the community, it was hard because we didn't know who was doing this. You didn't want that tag on you, you know what I mean? You don't know who's wondering if it is you and you feel like you're being watched. That's the way I felt back then.
[00:19:30] MICHAEL HENRY: When I came to Ann Arbor for school, it was a little bit of a culture shock for me. But I had the benefit of the bubble of the University of Michigan's protections. During the time of the DNA dragnet, I was recently finishing up at the University of Michigan. My first full-time job was at the Ross School of Business. I was always trying impress my boss. When she would give me an assignment for the week, I wanted to get it done by Monday or Tuesday. I would oftentimes stay at work late. I would leave the University of Michigan, and I was living at a complex called Glencoe Hills off of Washtenaw. As I would drive down Washtenaw, I always got pulled over. Over a 10-week time period, I probably got pulled over 12 times. After about the fifth or sixth time, I was I was really getting frustrated. Not as nice when they would pull me over. I was short and irritated because I would get all these weird excuses as to why. I would always ask why, and some of the excuses were, "I noticed that your license plate was secured with one bolt and not two, and that's against the code for driving or driving laws." There were times when patrol officers would say, "It looked like you may have veered across the white dotted line a little bit so I wanted to make sure you were alright or weren't drunk or weren't sleepy. During that time period, too, it was before the police had announced that they were looking for the Ann Arbor rapist, and none of us knew that this whole investigation was going on. None of us knew that there was a dragnet. If we had known, a lot of us probably would have wanted to help because nobody wants women in their community being terrorized with the threat of rape, with the threat of violence. I think I was fortunate because I've always been a little scrawny, skinny guy. Once they actually got up to the car and realized I was a buck and a few pounds, they were like, "It's probably not him, but let's still go through the motions, follow through with this stop, so we can justify it." But fortunately, I never got my DNA taken. I just got harassed by the police, got terrorized by patrol officers pulling me over an obscene amount of times coming from work, trying to get home.
[00:22:27] CARMELITA MULLINS: The coalition formed because we feared a witch hunt. Even before the police department and other law enforcement agencies became very aggressive, we had this concern, and that's why we immediately formed this coalition.
[00:22:42] MARY BEJIAN: The Coalition for Community Unity was formed by a group of local activists from the civil rights community, from the housing justice community, from the community of people who were involved in fighting sexual violence, and brought together very specifically, number one, because there was a serial rapist in Ann Arbor, and everybody wanted that person found. Number two, because the tactics that police were using—primarily a DNA dragnet informed, emboldened by a profile that, in and of itself, was racially discriminatory--was causing immense harm, immense division in the community, immense fear, and was not helping to find the serial rapist. I did not ask to have the civil liberties of any man, African American, White, whomever, thrown over supposedly so I could be kept safe. That makes me really, really angry. The idea was to bring many different communities together to push the city, to push the police department to change tacks and pursue an investigation that was actually going to help.
[00:24:06] EDITH LEWIS: The Coalition for Community Unity was useful in that it provided Black men in town with a card. Those cards were so important to me. The card that said, "Here are your rights, here is what you have to do, here's what you don't have to do." Folks talked about how important it was to have those cards.
[00:24:34] MARY BEJIAN: This was something that we did. We did that early on.
[00:24:38] EDITH LEWIS: Yes.
[00:24:38] MARY BEJIAN: It was a way to say, people in this community from so many different backgrounds are not okay with what's happening.
[00:24:47] EDITH LEWIS: Including groups that are still fighting that fight, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, for example.
[00:24:55] MARY BEJIAN: Right. Then here it was. Here was the profile, and we could just see right here how problematic it was.
[00:25:04] EDITH LEWIS: Right.
[00:25:04] MARY BEJIAN: Age, 25 to 35-years-old. Race, Black.
[00:25:07] EDITH LEWIS: But they were picking up 14-year-olds.
[00:25:10] MARY BEJIAN: Right. The profile was incredibly broad. A Black man between 25 and 35 or 45 years old. The height range was a huge height range. The weight range was a huge range. They never talked about skin tone, skin complexion. They never talked about whether or not he had facial hair. Because it was a profile. It wasn't a description of a suspect.
[00:25:45] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: The problem with the profile that the police came up with is that it was so vague that it basically brought in most Black men in the city. To me, the most offensive part of the profile was the part that said it was a Black man with hostility to White women because it was a lie. It was a Black man who also sexually assaulted an Asian woman. It seemed to me that they relied on this stereotype, this very harmful stereotype that had been used throughout history, to get more people to send in more tips so they could come to people's workplace or home or stop them on the street and say, you must give blood for the serial rapist investigation if you want to clear yourself. [MUSIC]
[00:27:03] MARY BEJIAN: I think what we used to say was, based on the Black population in Ann Arbor at that time, it was something like 25% of the Black population in Ann Arbor. The profile was also so disturbing because the police had absolutely no evidence to claim that this was someone who was intentionally attacking only White women.
[00:27:27] EDITH LEWIS: Exactly.
[00:27:28] CARMELITA MULLINS: Not only were we concerned about Black males being victimized by this investigation and this process, but we were also concerned about women who we did not feel were being served appropriately by this investigation.
[00:27:45] MARY BEJIAN: We'll never know who else might have been attacked and assaulted by him because we already know that sexual assault is an incredibly underreported crime. Historically, women are doubted, women are blamed, and it's even worse if you're a woman of color.
[00:28:05] EDITH LEWIS: [OVERLAPPING] Woman of color.
[00:28:06] JEFFRI CHADIHA: Ann Arbor, it's a great place in many ways, and it's a very liberal place. But my experience in covering that case, it really helped me understand how much the Black community was not as empowered as I thought, was more on the fringes of things that were happening to them. I think this case made them feel more like, I don't want to say second-class citizens or secondary to the major concern, which was stopping this guy. The sense I got was that the relationship was not as strong as I thought it might have been. The way Ann Arbor is set up, there's a lot of Black communities and different pockets of it, but the majority of the Black communities are really on the outside: Ypsilanti, and Belleville, and Ypsilanti Township. The representation within the city where this was largely happening was not that strong. I felt like a lot of people felt like they didn't have voices, and they were being taken advantage of in a certain way. They were a means to an end, which was to make people feel like, "Hey, we don't have this guy, but we're exhausting every last resource to find him." That means actually going through these people to get it.
[00:29:30] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: This was a racist and blatantly unconstitutional practice. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits illegal searches and seizures. They were coercing men to give blood when there was no probable cause to believe that they were the rapist. These tips were often very vague. All they pointed to often was that the person was a Black man that lived in Ann Arbor, and yet the police would tell individuals if they didn't give blood, they'd get a search warrant, which was a lie. They were also being stalked all over the city without reasonable suspicion. The mere fact that somebody was a Black man did not mean there was cause to stop them, and that was unconstitutional. Also, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution prohibits the disparate treatment of people based on race.
[00:30:47] WILLIAM HAMPTON: People think that everything that they do is constrained to right now, right then. That's not the case. We have no control of how we're born. I'm still paying the price of what happened to my grandparents, for what happened to my uncle, for what happened to my aunts, and I wasn't even born yet. It makes me think of back when I was a kid and I threw a rock in the lake, and the rock is right here, but it created a ripple effect all the way around. I thought Ann Arbor was absolute utopia when I came here. We had an African American city administrator, we had an African American mayor. I just thought, "Jeez, I've made it." I didn't realize when I came here that the percentage of people who looked like me was as low as it was. It was substantially less than 10%. In fact, at the time it was around 6 or 7%. In 1994, it was a hard time for people who looked like me. It was only five years earlier that we had the Central Park Five. It was only two years earlier that we had the famous Clarence Thomas situation.
[00:32:08] JOE BIDEN: Professor, do you swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God.
[00:32:12] ANITA HILL: I do.
[00:32:13] JOE BIDEN: Thank you.
[00:32:17] WILLIAM HAMPTON: After that, they had the Rodney King situation. That was a critical time in America, anyway. In 1994, I lived on the West Side. I used to like to take walks in the early evening, early to mid evening. I stopped doing it because I knew that I ran the risk of getting pulled over, stopped, frisked, could have been beat up. That was happening in Ann Arbor, too. A lot of people who live in Ann Arbor who look like me was not treated fairly. But because of the fact that we as African Americans have been socialized differently, we have a little bit different opinion about law enforcement than we would if we didn't look like this—a lot of us felt as if, if they told us they needed our DNA, they felt obligated to do it. Unfortunately, that wasn't true. There's nothing written that says police personnel always has to be true to you. When they told me they wanted my blood in order to clear myself, my first question was, "Clear myself from what?" I don't know whether this is true or not, but I was told that a White woman anonymously had said that I hated White women. I don't hate anybody. I don't like certain people's ways but I don't hate anybody. I'm not sure that was an accurate statement, but that was the rationale that was given for asking me for my blood, and I said no.
[00:33:54] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: Blair Shelton was one person who was a victim of this investigation. Not only was he stopped approximately eight times by the police, and not only was he coerced into giving blood, but he also lost one of his jobs through the investigation. The police officer went to his place of employment. It was Blair's day off. The officer spoke to Blair's manager and indicated that Blair was a suspect in the investigation. A few days later, he lost his job mysteriously. We filed a lawsuit on behalf of Blair Shelton, and we're seeking damages, and we're also seeking injunctive relief by the return of his blood samples.
[00:34:44] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: At the time of the investigation, I was the president of the National Lawyers Guild, which is a civil rights lawyers group. It was formed as an alternative to the American Bar Association. One member of the Lawyers Guild was a man named Kurt Berggren. Kurt already knew Blair. When Blair was first asked to give blood and started to be stopped repeatedly by the police on the street, he came to Kurt Berggren and Kurt came to me and said, "This is an important case. Maybe it should be a National Lawyers Guild case." I brought it to our steering committee, and everybody unanimously thought we should get involved. First and foremost, we were trying to show that this DNA dragnet was unconstitutional, and we wanted the world to know it was unconstitutional. There is no way that the police would have targeted White men if the serial rapist was thought to be White. In fact, during this time, there was a White serial rapist out there. All the descriptions were the same. He had a grayish brown beard. He had bluish gray eyes. He was between 5'8 and 5'10. They did not engage in the same practice as they did for Black men.
[00:36:41] LARRY HUNTER: None of those examples of collecting blood helped them solve this crime whatsoever. A crime got solved by a victim who had been victimized by a rape, who was able to describe the assailant, and they put out an all-point bulletin with a taxicab driver. The taxicab driver managed to observe the person shortly after the crime was committed. Then they were able to match his DNA. It was just good, old-fashioned routine police work and nothing to do with this huge, wide-scale, some people call it witch hunt. I call it a hunt for Black men.
[00:37:21] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: We brought the case after Ervin Mitchell was convicted. At trial, it came out that he was conclusively the rapist because of the DNA evidence. Despite that fact, they would not return either the blood or the DNA profiles of the other men, and we thought that was wrong, and we wanted to get it back, not just for Blair, but for everybody. Lastly, we wanted the world to know that even in a so-called liberal community like Ann Arbor, White people can turn against people of color when they're afraid. If we didn't bring this case to light, we were concerned that it could happen again, and we wanted to make sure that it wouldn't happen again.
[00:38:18] SHOW HOST: We got our dancers all lined up in our dance line, [APPLAUSE] and we're going to start you off with Mr. Blair of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Let's go now. [MUSIC]
[00:38:48] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: Blair is a great person. He's very hard working. He had two jobs when we met him. He was a model. He played the guitar. He was very passionate about justice. He had other hobbies. Lots of people throughout town knew him.
[00:39:09] BLAIR SHELTON: My name is Blair Shelton, and I'm a victim of the Ann Arbor serial rape investigation dragnet.
[00:39:17] PHIL DONAHUE: Presumably, the DNA test on you is for the purpose of matching with the body fluids found on the victims.
[00:39:25] BLAIR SHELTON: He said, "You have to give a blood sample," and I started to cry. He said, "You have to do this." He said, "If you don't, we'll go upstairs and get a court order from the judge." At that point, I thought that I didn't have any other choice by the language in which he was using that I'd have to comply. It took the life out of me. I had just bought a home, and they've got a surveillance van outside of my house. The isolation—it was different. It's something I never experienced before. This is going to affect me for a long time. As I get older, I'm getting more angry about it. It was an obsession. It's like this blood somehow has a cure that can solve all the problems in the world if we have these blood samples. It's my ancestors, many of whom were slaves, and you want to keep that? No, I'm not rolling over for this.
[00:40:51] PHIL DONAHUE: You successfully sued the Ann Arbor Police Department, and show them this tape here. Here is Blair Shelton. No criminal record, we should say. He's getting his blood back, and had to sue to get the blood back.
[00:41:08] BLAIR SHELTON: Michael had picked up my blood, and he gave me that at his house. It was like winning an Oscar. Here we go. Here's the DNA. As it rests on the American flag. I think any family that has a family member that's embroiled in some controversial issue, there's always the danger of alienating yourself because you feel you're embarrassing your family's name. I can't remember what it was like to put my name in a computer and not have anything come up. Now, everything comes up: pictures; different law schools studying the case; crime investigators, psychologists, all weighing in on why does it keep the blood? They were so hell-bent on putting me in prison, incarcerating me, when one out of three Americans has a police record, but nobody in my family does. It took me to a place where I'm thinking, "What do I do if they send me to prison? What would be my method of departure from this world?" I came up with the idea of swallowing my own tongue. Now, that seems extreme, but I was having thoughts of how would I do it? When they say life in prison, I would instantly figure out how to swallow my own tongue. I only went there for a few seconds, and then I picked up my guitar and I just realized myself when I looked in the mirror and I said, "No, I'm here for the long haul." [MUSIC] These are just some pictures that I had. This is my first girlfriend. We were actually in the hospital nursery. This is a modeling picture I did. This is a fashion show, actually. Who am I supposed to be? Musician. Make music for people that will last long past me.
[00:44:11] DAPHNE WATKINS: People really underestimate the power of trauma. I can only imagine about some of the men who may have been in that cohort who were targeted and from whom DNA was drawn, probably had degrees, education, prestigious careers. But all of a sudden, now they're back to just being someone who does not have that, who did not have those accomplishments. There are sources out there that say that Black men tend to have really high rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. If you think about it, if that is the baseline, when incidents like this happen, we can only imagine how things just skyrocket in terms of challenges and additional problems. When I talk about these topics, I like to talk about it from a place of we have no idea what these men experienced before this incident happened. We don't know what their childhoods were like, we don't know what their family dynamics were like, but everyone came to this place, and it almost evened everyone on the same playing field. Regardless of where these men came from, because they were all treated the same way, they were all criminalized. They were all pathologized. That trauma is something that ripples through each of their households. I can guarantee you it affected their spouses, their children, their friends, their church families. I talk with a lot of Black men. Actually, I've done hundreds of interviews with Black men who have said, "Society has told me that if I get a degree, if I stay out of trouble, if I get a good job and pay my bills, that I will be treated better, that I will excel and be respected as a contributor to society, I have done all of that, and I'm still getting targeted. I'm still getting profiled." So what is a person to do? That stuff can carry throughout the rest of their lives. Oftentimes we have things happen to us and we brush it under the rug or we remind ourselves of how strong we are and how we've overcome, not realizing how the ripple effect of what happened to us is seeping out: the way we talk to people, the way we react, the way our bodies tense up when we see the police behind us when we're driving. Whatever the trauma is that you've experienced, you have to do the work within yourself. Until that work gets done, it's going to be very difficult to proceed in a healthy way and to be able to preserve your mental health moving forward.
[00:46:54] EDITH LEWIS: This is really difficult to talk about because of who we are in 2025. One of the things that Mary and I think about is, I think, 30 years has passed, but it's the same as yesterday. Thirty years.
[00:47:14] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: I used to think, especially during the Black Lives Matter movement, that it could never, ever happen again in Ann Arbor. I always ask that question to people when they come speak to my class about the DNA dragnet. Most White people say, "No." Most Black people say, "You never know." I don't think it would happen under our current police chief, current prosecutor, our current Ann Arbor City Council. But in the past few years, things have swung so much against civil rights that I would like to think that it couldn't happen again. But when people are afraid, you never know.
[00:48:10] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Policy is so important because it helps people from falling through systemic cracks that exist, and it helps to repair when harm has been done. I've worked on a lot of policy, but I want to talk about the driving equality ordinance. The driving equality ordinance came from the idea of limiting harm and limiting disparities in traffic stops. People likely have their first encounter with police either in school because of a school resource officer or as the result of a traffic stop. When you have individuals that are disproportionately impacted by these types of ticky-tacky stops, otherwise known as pretext stops, there is a disproportionate impact because of the result of racial profiling. Thirty years ago, during this DNA dragnet, racial profiling was at the heart of stopping Black men living their daily lives to coerce them to give blood to prove their innocence. What people need to understand is there was an immense amount of harm that occurred right here in this beautiful town in the city that we love. What people need to understand is there are Black men right now that do not want to travel through the city of Ann Arbor. What people need to understand is there are Black men and whole families that left the city of Ann Arbor. Women were not made safer because of this DNA dragnet. It is so important that precious lives are not negatively impacted the way they were 30 years ago. If we don't have the proper policies in place, independent police oversight, de-escalation training, cultural competency training, somebody with lived experience having a seat at the table, their voice heard--in this day and age, we could see history repeating itself. It is so important that the work that we do today, and I'll speak for myself, the work I do today, that it carries on into the future long after I'm gone. [MUSIC]
[00:51:15] BLAIR SHELTON: What brings me peace? After all I've been through, all I can say is I'm going to stay optimistic and continue to accept life challenges and deal with them as they come.
[00:51:28] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: People need to know about this case, and we need to know about our history to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes going forward.
[00:51:40] EDITH LEWIS: Those organizations that have been able to pull together coalitions like this have changed the lives of the people who are part of them.
[00:51:54] WILLIAM HAMPTON: I hope people learn that America is not a melting pot. America's more like a stew. We have a lot of different people coming together to make everything taste better. If we all fight for that, this world will be a better place for us all. [MUSIC] [APPLAUSE]
[00:52:57] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Thank you. I know what we just witnessed wasn't easy to watch. It wasn't meant to be. As the 30-year commemoration of the civil rights violation approached, I began to ask people if they remember this extreme act of racial profiling that happened right here in the city of Ann Arbor. I was struck by how completely it had been erased from our city's public narrative. It was treated as a closed chapter. Something this painful, this unjust, had been buried in silence while people who lived through it carried it every day. For Black men and their families, this film will reopen wounds that never fully healed. For others, it may be the first time truly seeing what happened. Either way, it's okay to feel unsettled. We should feel unsettled. Thirty-one years ago, hundreds of Black men in the city were treated as suspects simply for existing, for being who they were. This collective targeting violated their civil rights and their dignity. That harm didn't end when the dragnet did. It changed lives. It changed how Black people saw this city, and how we saw ourselves within it. Some left and never came back, others stayed but carried an understanding that they were outsiders in their own city. Looked upon with suspicion, never fully welcomed, never fully trusted. As a lifelong resident of Ann Arbor, as a Black woman, and as someone now serving in city leadership, I want to say this clearly and personally. I am sorry. [APPLAUSE] I am deeply sorry for what happened here, for what our institutions did, and for what our city allowed to happen. We can't undo what was done, but we inherit the responsibility to repair it. We can refuse to repeat it, and we can start by acknowledging that this is not ancient history. It is our shared responsibility because the ripple continues. When I saw the final cut of this film, what came to mind were these words: truth, repair, and responsibility. Tonight is not the end of that process. It's the beginning. Thank you to Blair Shelton for his courage. [APPLAUSE] Thank you to the men who were willing to revisit this pain to help tell this story. [APPLAUSE] Thank you to everyone who stood against this injustice then, and thank you to those willing to face this truth now, because that's how we begin to heal together. [APPLAUSE] To continue with the apologies, I would like to welcome, first, the Mayor of the City of Ann Arbor, Christopher Taylor, to the stage. [APPLAUSE]
[00:57:37] CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR: Thank you. Before starting, I'd like to express gratitude to Council member Harrison. I know that we all feel it, but it ought to be recognized and stated. Today's an important day for Ann Arbor here for now, for the future. Through the library and the filmmaker, with Council member Harrison's vision, they together have created a monument and a memory for our community that's truly deep and important, so Council member, wherever you are, thank you. [APPLAUSE] Today is a day of truth and a day that we intend to be reconciliation. I recognize and indeed, we all must, that the authorities of that day were operating under incredible pressure. Between February '92 and December '94, a series of women were raped and assaulted, one murdered, and the terror that our community experienced was real, and the urgency to protect was profound. But under that pressure, your government's efforts to protect community, your government failed the community. The truth is that over 600 Black men in Ann Arbor--neighbors, colleagues, dads, sons, many on the basis of something as ephemeral as an anonymous tip--were questioned on buses, interrupted in the workplace, pulled aside on the streets. Black families lived in fear, watching men leave home each day, wondering would they be next to be stopped, questioned, humiliated. More than 160 had their blood drawn for DNA testing, with only a handful of search warrants. Many reported feeling harassed, coerced. These men experienced stress, embarrassment, and the lasting trauma of being treated as potential murderers and rapists. These were not targeted DNA collections based on investigative connections. This was racial profiling. Under the pressure of the community's fear of the assailant, the government accepted that its response would create fear. Under the pressure of the community's trauma, the government accepted that it would create trauma. But pressure does not justify abandoning constitutional principles. It does not justify compounding harm. Fear and bias cannot, must never drive law enforcement. The leaders who should have spoken out as the DNA dragnet continued month after month, silent. The municipal organization, the White community as a whole, in the presence of fear, we allowed the sustained harassment of Black residents. I apologize on behalf of the city of Ann Arbor. The DNA dragnet of Black men in Ann Arbor between 1992 and 1994 was racial profiling, and it was wrong. [APPLAUSE] These wrongs are all the more stark in light of the fact that there was, as you have seen, another serial sex offender operating at the same time in Ann Arbor, multiple attacks, kidnapping, home invasion. That suspect was described to the public as between 5'8" and 6'1", grayish-brown beard, 30-40 years of age, pointed nose, gray eyes, White, no DNA dragnet. Eventually, as you've seen, the rapist, the murderer was caught through ordinary means, specific information distributed to the public, an observant cab driver, an arrest, and ultimately a conviction. But as we know and as we have seen, the harm to dragnet targets did not end there. The wounds continued through decades of silence, through our community's failure to acknowledge or validate the trauma of those 600 men and their families. That is why today matters, because truth-telling is a core component of reparations. It restores an accurate public memory and ensures that the lessons of the past are neither minimized nor recast as an isolated mistake. But memory and apology are only first steps. We must commit to education, helping our community understand constitutional protections and how government power has created and maintained racial hierarchy. We must create ongoing forums to facilitate community engagement with law enforcement to combat bias in government. We must commit, and your city leadership does commit, to speak out against racial discrimination and harassment. We commit to transparent governance that protects all residents equally. To the survivors and the women of Ann Arbor who suffered, you deserved a sound and constitutional investigation, an investigation that facilitated a coming together to support you, not one that damaged trust between law enforcement and broke our community. To Blair Shelton, who fought back and won his court order to reclaim his blood and to demand the recognition of his dignity, thank you for refusing to let us forget. [APPLAUSE] To the men, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion, who were stopped, questioned, tested, you deserved far better from your city and your community. We failed you, and I am deeply sorry. [APPLAUSE] Today, we take a step forward together. In honest remembrance, we cannot undo the harm, but we can name it. We can acknowledge it, and we can commit that silence will not again be a response to injustice. Thank you all for being here, for bearing witness, and for helping ensure that our community lives up to its aspirations to be in Ann Arbor that is indeed for everyone. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
[01:04:35] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Next, I welcome to the stage Washtenaw County prosecutor Eli Savit. [APPLAUSE]
[01:05:09] ELI SAVIT: I want to start by thanking Council member Harrison, thanking the filmmakers, thanking all those who participated in this retelling of what I know is a horrifically traumatic period in our city and in our county. I want to start by noting that I actually as a child, because I was a child when this was occurring in the City of Ann Arbor and I knew Blair Shelton. Blair was the custodian at my elementary school. You saw the pictures, you saw his light and his joy, and that is how I remember Blair Shelton. He was the custodian, but he was always the one that would have a smile for a child that was having a bad day. He always came with jokes. He was playful. He was part of the community that I remembered in my elementary school. He was a light. I remember hearing at some point between 1992 and 1994, because of the racist and unconstitutional tactics that we saw in the film that Blair Shelton, the custodian who was always there for kids, who always had a smile on his face, was perhaps the serial rapist that we had heard about. That that was able to trickle down to 9 and 10 and 11-year-olds and besmirch the reputation of a good man, a mentor, somebody who is always there, is a tremendous harm. It is a harm that is multiplied by, however, the number: 160 DNA samples taken through unconstitutional means, and all those that weren't taken, but people who are engaged who were victims of racial profiling simply because of the color of their skin. The office that I now head, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office, failed in its duties to the people of this county when it failed to stand up to question and to push back against these unconstitutional tactics. [APPLAUSE] The prosecutor's office quite literally is supposed to represent the people of the state of Michigan, the people of this community. That is what we stand up every day and say, when we go into court, we say "We represent the people." We do not represent the police. We do not represent victims. We represent the entirety of the people of the state of Michigan, and yet nobody from the prosecutor's office that I'm aware of pushed back against these racist and unconstitutional searches, coercion, and profiling. We also take an oath as lawyers and as prosecutors to protect and defend the Constitution and make no mistake about this, we failed as an office in living up to that oath from 1992-1994, because not only was the DNA dragnet an unconstitutional search and seizure, but it also violated the core equal protection principles in our Constitution, which are supposed to provide and ensure that nobody is treated differently because of their race. We saw in the film and the mayor mentioned this, it was as plain as day that those core anti-discrimination and equal protection principles were being violated in the city of Ann Arbor when Black men were stopped, when Black men were coerced into giving DNA samples, but when there was a White serial rapist out there and not a single White person was stopped, was forced to give DNA samples, the disparate treatment was apparent on its face. We should have pushed back. We must push back in the future. I want to say this clearly, I apologize on behalf of the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office for perpetuating this harm. [APPLAUSE] Moving forward we must commit and recommit to ensuring that violations like those that happened from 1992-1994 do not happen again. The legal system is all too frequently incapable of criticizing itself, of reflecting, and of pushing back when harm is done, but silence cannot be an option. We must name racial profiling. We must name unconstitutional practices where they occur. We must push back. Whenever investigatory tactics run afoul of our Constitution and our constitutional values, we must continue to have dialogue in the community, make sure that people know their rights, know their rights to be free from racial profiling, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and I commit to continuing that work in partnership as prosecutor. I also commit moving forward to ensuring that working with law enforcement partners, we are going to be making decisions based on evidence, not based on racial suspicions, that when we build cases, it must be based on tactics that minimize harm, not exacerbating it. Because at the end of the day what happened from 1992-1994 caused incalculable harm that remains to this day. It did nothing to promote public safety. It did nothing to promote healing in our community. In fact, it did just the opposite. We must make sure that something like this never happens again. We must make sure that our constitutional values are being lived, and I commit to continuing to do that as prosecutor. Again, for all those that were harmed by these unconstitutional actions, I am sorry. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
[01:12:26] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Please welcome to the stage, Washtenaw County Sheriff, Alyshia Dyer. [APPLAUSE]
[01:12:50] ALYSHIA DYER: You guys got to bear with me. I didn't know where the stage entrance was. I had something prepared. I had an apology in a written statement, but after watching that film, I just want to speak from the heart. I want to say that it was extremely hard to watch that as a sheriff of this county, but also someone that grew up in this county and was a police officer for many years in this county. Someone that knew folks that were in the film that are here today. I want to thank you for your vulnerability, for the truth-telling. I'm also going to make sure that everyone in my office watches this film because [APPLAUSE] I think every police officer in this county needs to watch this and remember it because history can repeat itself. We see that today. It's really important that law enforcement leaders down to the rank and file officers understand the harm that was caused to Black men in our community when this happened and the harm that is still caused to Black people in our community because of our legal system. [APPLAUSE] I want to say to everyone in the audience the commitments that I'm making as sheriff of this county is that 100% I would speak out if anything like this were ever to happen again. I know that our Ann Arbor Police Chief, as well, shares that sentiment as well as our leadership that are here today. I also want to say that at the sheriff's office, we partnered with the Ann Arbor Police Department in adopting a traffic stop policy, the traffic stop equality ordinance that was originated from Council member Cynthia Harrison's work exactly because of situations like this. Stopping bad police tactics, stopping bad investigative tactics and reducing unnecessary traffic stops by the police can help reduce so much trauma in our community. Talking with people I know that have been impacted, they have said things that one of the statements really always sticks with me, says, "Growing up being Black in Ann Arbor and in Washington County is like death by 1,000 nicks." Even if nothing outwardly explicit happens on a traffic stop, it is a repeated surveillance being watched, the criminalization, and this film highlighted that, I think, for everyone here today. I think it is really important for all of us in our communities to speak out when people want increased police tactics because they're worried about something. Questioning those tactics, questioning what that looks like. If one person back in the day when this happened in '92-'94 would have boldly spoke out in law enforcement leadership, it might not have happened. It is extremely important that we all speak out and we question what we are doing as law enforcement in this county. I also want to wrap up by saying, I am unequivocally sorry that this happened. I am sorry that the sheriff that was around at that time did not stop this. On behalf of our Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office, I apologize for the harm that was perpetuated on Black men in our community. As sheriff, I will do everything in my power to work alongside Black men in our community to make sure that we are reducing harm in our legal system wherever possible. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
[01:16:56] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Last but not least, I would like to welcome to the stage, City of Ann Arbor Chief of Police, Andre Anderson. [APPLAUSE]
[01:17:16] ANDRE ANDERSON: We were all these great leaders that did not look like me when I grew up in Philadelphia? I want to thank Council member Harrison for having the courage and our filmmaker for bringing to fruition the reality of what we see that I know has been taking place for a long time. In fact, that's why I'm a police officer. I want to thank the leaders here. I want to thank the leaders for their courage. I happen to work for an outstanding organization with great council members, our mayor and probably one of the best city administrators in the country, who I believe is here, and certainly we would not allow for anything like this to take place. In police fashion, I'm going to go over a few things, so bear with me because you had an opportunity to see what transpired. But as we know, from 1992 through 1994, there is no doubt that our community was terrorized, quite frankly, and victimized by a serial rapist. This serial rapist was also a murderer from whom the Ann Arbor Police Department was not able to identify. Only a vague description of the person responsible for the crimes were provided. As most victims, we know that they never saw the attacker. They never got a good look at him. The description, as vague as it was, led to more than 600 Black men being questioned, over 160 of the men being brought in to voluntarily provide their blood for DNA purposes. What a power dynamic it is to have the police officer at police department ask you to come in and provide your blood. As a young Black man, I would have done that because I would have not known any better. That is the challenge we need to overcome. Yet, in hindsight, we can see that the tips, many of them to follow up, hundreds of them pressured in many ways the police officer to try to draw blood, bring individuals in to eliminate the culprit or the individuals from being the subject of this vague description. That was the first harm with respect to what the police department did. Ervin Mitchell attacked his victims from behind. Violently. He beat them before he sexually assaulted them. He sexually assaulted unconscious bodies as a result of what he did. None of the more than 600 Black men questioned or the blood ascertained for DNA purposes—none of the men committed a crime, not one of them. If I may, I want you to walk with me through a journey. I want you to put yourself in another man's shoes with a historical lens. I want you to think about this historical lens where authority highlights the trauma and mistrust that stem from past injustices to Black people. Just think about that. Just walk with me. Walk with me as you can envision being a Black man, innocent of an alleged crime, contacted and sometimes stopped by the police, accused of possibly raping a woman, White, and being transported to a police facility. Walk with me with how someone might see that. When you get to the police station, you are asked to provide or directed to provide your blood to prove your innocence, your involvement for something you had nothing to do with. Ervin Mitchell was identified and arrested, tried and convicted because of one brave woman who fought him back. Now, all the women were brave, but this one fought him back. She got a good look at him. She was able to provide a more detailed description. That description included distinctive articles of clothing that he was wearing. Following the release of that information of a more detailed specific description, he was spotted and observed by a taxicab driver who reported him to the police. The police arrested him. They arrested Ervin Mitchell and used his DNA as confirmation to match to the other victims he sexually assaulted, including his DNA to match to the murder he committed. The process of being specific and utilizing DNA in the proper context is what helped to get a conviction. However, when done in the way it was coordinated, created a chasm. It created a poor relationship because of the practices and injustice of historical concerns with respect to people of color. See, being specific and direct in policing, based on descriptions, allow for us to do what is right. Being broad and casting a net in order to address people of color is always the wrong answer, and that is what happened. Speaking to leaders in my agency that do not look like me, they have all said in unison, they would never take part or lead a roundup of this magnitude based on a vague description. Yet, I leave you with this. On behalf of the Ann Arbor Police Department, and as your chief, I am sorry. I am truly sorry. I say this without reservation. I say this without qualification. I say this without excuse. The practice employed at that time was not right. It had a detrimental impact on people of color, as well as our community, mainly Black men. And so today's documentary is about the Ann Arbor dragnet. We are mindful that the victims, women, experienced an unimaginable trauma. We extend our deepest and most heartfelt compassion to them as well, as they will never be forgotten. We cannot, in our agency, undo the mistakes of the past. We can't. We are obligated to learn from what took place, to change minds, to change hearts, and most importantly never ever repeat what transpired. Policing in Ann Arbor is evolving. In many ways, we are still growing. We are working steadfast to become an agency that embraces community policing. We are striving to be an exceptional police department. We are imperfect people striving for perfection. We have lots to tell you about our progress. But today, it is not about Ann Arbor's progress. It is about being honest about our failure. It is being honest that we need to create ways to strive and reconcile and heal. That's why today's apology is so important. What I can tell you is throughout my career, I have worked to create change in culture, in policy, and practice. I am working with our county sheriff and our leadership to make sure that we usher in ways to create harmony, parity with respect to how we treat people. We are creating an organization where courage is important. But more importantly we need to make sure and continue to embrace not just all races, but to reconcile, as I indicated, the harm created to Black people. Throughout my career, I will indicate this. I have seen these things before. I have experienced these things before. I am your police chief, but I'm a Black man. I have seen it. I despise this type of treatment by police officers. That is why I indicated I am a police officer. I am committed to continuing the work that we have in order to make sure that this never ever happens again in the Ann Arbor Police Department. You have my word as your police chief. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
[01:28:04] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Thank you all. Next, I would like to welcome to the stage the Honorable Kerene Moore, the 15th District Court for the city of Ann Arbor. [APPLAUSE]
[01:28:25] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. Good afternoon. So it is my job to expedite the remaining panel members because we are short on time. So the rest of the reconciliation panel will include Mike Steinberg, who you saw on the film. Mike Steinberg is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School where he teaches civil rights litigation, directs the civil rights clinic and mentors the next generation of civil rights lawyers. Early in his career, he was part of the legal team that represented Blair Shelton in the civil rights case that successfully challenged the DNA dragnet of Black men during the Ann Arbor serial rapist investigation. Before coming to Michigan Law, Mike was the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan for 22 years. Mike and his students helped found justice, indeed the organization that has mapped racially restrictive covenants throughout Washtenaw County and is working to rebuild them. He also serves on the Washtenaw County Advisory Council on Reparations. The last time Mike was in the Michigan Theater, he was onstage as a storyteller at a sold out Moth Mainstage show. [APPLAUSE] Mary Bejian. Mary Bejian has lived in Ann Arbor for nearly 40 years. She was a recently graduated college student at the time of the serial rapist investigation. Her experiences as a member of the Coalition for Community Unity and other campus and community groups focused on racial and economic justice were formative and set the trajectory for her career, which has included nine years with the Fair Housing Center of Washtenaw County and 20 years with the ACLU of Michigan in various roles. Mary Bejian. [APPLAUSE] Edith A. Lewis. Edith is the Emerita Associate Professor. There she is. Edith is the Emerita Associate Professor of Social Work and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She has been an Ann Arbor resident for 40 years and raised two children here, one a son during the DNA dragnet. She is grateful for her work with colleagues in the Coalition for Community Unity. These are our panelists. [APPLAUSE]
[01:31:22] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Hello. Thank you all very much for being here. My question is for our panelists, the three that just joined us on the stage. The question I have for each of you is what remains with you regarding this case after 30 years? Whoever wants to go first.
[01:31:50] EDITH LEWIS: I'll start, but I may not be able to stop. I'm grateful to have heard the apologies today, and I keep hearing us talk about Black men who were penalized during this period. But I want to add to that that there were Black children penalized during this period. I was the mother of one of them. I say to you what has struck me, particularly in the last six years, because my son is now 46. He was 13 through 15 during this period. Any of you who know me know that we did not have the easiest time raising that child. But he said to me at 40, I decided to become what they thought I was at 40. Here's an example. The only place in this town I said I'd never live in was Burns Park. Even though I have friends, very close ones who live there, my experiences in Burns Park were never positive. On one particular day, I believe my son was at that time 14. A couple who had two children, one of whom was my son's age and they were friends invited us over and we had often gone to their house and they had come to ours. That particular day my son was being 14 and decided that he was not going to get out of the car when I got out of the car, so I still left him parked on Granger, got out of the car, and started walking to my friend's house, about half a block away. Since I knew how to get into the house, we've been there often before. I knew how to get in without having to have anybody come to the door. I went in, and as I entered the door that I was going in, I heard the son of our friend calling from the upstairs window. "The police have--" and named my son. Now, how fast did that happen? I immediately came back out the door and went to the front and said, "Excuse me. What is the problem here?" The police officers who had my son under each arm, two very large men said to me, "Do you live here?" "Well, no, I don't live here." Luckily, my two friends came downstairs and out the door. They were very prominent in the neighborhood at the time. They said, "We live here, and these are our guests. What is the problem?" "There was a robbery. It was a Black man. We are trying to make sure that everybody in the neighborhood is safe." That trauma stays with one. That trauma stays with one's family. My daughter, I told a story about my daughter in the film and I do believe that that incident contributed to the fact that she became a lawyer and decided to work for disenfranchised people. She has since moved on, but she just kept saying "That can't possibly happen, Mama. They will not turn around and follow us." And they did. That trauma stays with people for life. As we move to this period, and my gratitude for having been a part of the Coalition for Community Unity and being able to see Larry Hunter and Carmelita Mullins who are no longer with us in this film today. I want to say that I'm still concerned because now we are handing out these cards because we have to. [APPLAUSE] If you don't have a copy of this card, go find one. I've asked friends today to bring some so that we can make sure that these are distributed to African American men throughout our community because it is not yet safe. I apologize for being hard-headed about this. But you don't want our children to become what you think what you've hated for the rest of their lives. [APPLAUSE]
[01:37:15] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. Before you entered, you had the opportunity to an index card. If you have a question for our panelists, Ann Arbor District Library representatives are able to take that card from you and hopefully get it up here to us so that you can also join in questions for the panelists. Then we'll continue with the other two.
[01:37:50] MARY BEJIAN: I want to first of all, thank Council member Harrison for her vision and incredible amount of work in the last 10 months to make this happen. The film maker, Aliyah Mitchell, Aliyah, you just you made an incredible film. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] I also want to, as Edie did, she also acknowledged two very important members of the Coalition for Community Unity, Carmelita Mullins, who was very involved with the Huron Valley Association of Black Social Workers, the Ypsilanti / Willow Run branch of the NAACP, and was just the most wonderful woman. She was really the backbone of the coalition, and Larry Hunter, former city council person. Heartbreakingly, we've lost both of them in the past few years. When the coalition was formed, my entrance to it was through the anti-rape movement. The people who really put the coalition together who had the idea that this needed to happen were people who were longtime social justice advocates who recognized that there was going to be incredible harm if the community and the police were frankly allowed to pit White women against Black men. That's why they brought all of us together. As someone who had really been politicized through the anti-rape movement at that time, that's where I learned about historical racism and structural inequality. It's where I learned about the myth of the Black rapist. It was morally imperative to do this work and to speak out about what was happening to Black men. But what I really began to absorb, particularly after we learned that Ervin Mitchell had been questioned by police after an assault where the police had tracking dogs that took them to him and then he was let go, because he passed a polygraph, which I don't know why anybody gets a polygraph. All polygraphs do is detect guilt. I'm not a law enforcement officer, but I will never understand why the police in that particular case did not get a subpoena for his blood. What I really began to internalize and the thing that is most important to me as a White person who lived through that time in particular as a White woman is that, it was not in the interests of any woman in this community that police proceeded in this way. Had they not proceeded in this way, had they used the same investigative tactics that eventually led them to Ervin Mitchell, not once but twice, how many other women would not have been assaulted for that? In the film, you see an image of Carmelita Mullins carrying a placard that says, "An injury to one is an injury to all." I believe that, and have always believed that, and I feel like this investigation was a living breathing example of why that statement is so important, and that will stay with me for the rest of my life. [APPLAUSE]
[01:41:04] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: Just two quick points before we go to the questions. I mean, this whole experience was life changing for me in many ways. I was obviously a baby lawyer at the time, but there were many lawyers involved in this case, and it was a team effort. But since then, I've been with the ACLU. I was there for 22 years, and we had eight cases go to the US Supreme Court, and we achieved quite a bit. But there is no case in my career that's more meaningful to me than this case. What happened was just so horrific. I mean, the film was great, thank you, Aliyah. But we had, in my neighborhood on the West side, where there were very few people of color, we had two detectives come to our door, talk to our babysitter and ask if she had seen any Black people in the neighborhood. Then they gave her this profile, and the profiles that you saw in the movie, it said, well, was it 5'11 to 6'1. But at some times, the suspect was as short as 5'7, and at other times it was as tall as 6'2, and it was a police state for African American men. I love Ann Arbor. I still love Ann Arbor, but it is a shameful period of our history and one that we should never forget. It was just so meaningful to hear police and city leaders apologize. I'm involved in the Washtenaw Advisory Council on Reparations, and I just want to point out, as Council woman Harrison said, this is just the first step. Acknowledgment and apology are just the first step, but we have a long way to go in this community to address a history of systemic racism that has, as the movie says, ripple effects today. [APPLAUSE]
[01:43:44] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Thank you.
[01:43:49] S. KERENE MOORE: We have lots of questions, actually. Thankfully, some of them in the same vein. Hopefully most if not all of them will get addressed. One quick question. I don't think, historically, anyone here was in leadership at the time this occurred. That's accurate. For those of you asking about what happened at the time and division at the time, we won't have exact answers for that. But maybe we do have an answer of this, what became of the remaining blood and DNA samples? Were they returned or destroyed or does the police department still have them? Do we know?
[01:44:32] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: We made a motion for the return of the blood samples or destruction of the blood samples. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office at the time opposed it. The state police intervened in the motion. Judge Kurtis Wilder was the Washtenaw Circuit Court judge at the time, very conservative judge, Black judge. He ruled in our favor. The state police appealed they wanted to keep the blood samples for 99 years in case there was another investigation. We kept winning. We eventually won at the Michigan Supreme Court, and then we worked out a deal where people could come or have, through a power of attorney, come and pick up their blood samples, and if they were in DNA profiles, and if they weren't picked up, they were to be destroyed. I understand that the ones that weren't picked up were destroyed.
[01:45:42] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE] That was a question that quite a few people had. I know the image of the blood resting on the American flag was something.
[01:45:50] ANDRE ANDERSON: Can I add to that real quickly?
[01:45:52] S. KERENE MOORE: You may.
[01:45:53] ANDRE ANDERSON: Obviously, the blood was retained by the police department, and working with our attorneys from the civil rights area, we vetted the information, we confirmed all of the blood has been returned or destroyed. We have none of the blood in the Ann Arbor Police Department. [APPLAUSE]
[01:46:18] S. KERENE MOORE: We heard a little bit in the film about some of the changes that have been made legislatively. Not only do we want to reiterate those, but how do the police force and city officials plan to address the systemic racism in practices going forward? We could talk a little bit more about that, and you want to go first on that or Cynthia, do you want to talk about legislatively policies that have-- [BACKGROUND] Policies that have been enacted and the mayor can speak on this as well by the city of Ann Arbor or other localities to address the systemic racism that has occurred?
[01:47:00] CYNTHIA HARRISON: I believe, I would say, the biggest example would be the passing of the driving equality ordinance. Here within the City of Ann Arbor, that happened two years ago. Actually, the driving equality ordinance is policy that basically directs the Ann Arbor Police Department not to make non-public-safety-related equipment violation stops. For example, a cracked windshield, loud exhaust, an object hanging from the rear-view mirror, there are 10 of them. At the time, it was the most progressive police reform that had occurred within the United States at that time. We actually passed it on the seven-year anniversary of the killing of Philando Castile, who was killed within seconds on a traffic stop. I think, he had one tail light out, and he was stopped by police, and within seconds, that man was killed in front of his partner and his baby who was in the back seat. That's what we did at the City of Ann Arbor. Did you want to?
[01:48:24] CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR: I guess, I'd just say layering over that, that's a very specific policy which I'm so grateful for Council member Harrison bringing forward, and glad that the city has adopted and are moving forward with. But more broadly, I think it's important for the municipal organization, and indeed, we do to recognize that government in the United States over the course of the centuries has been built on White supremacy, and that we are not free from it, even with respect to policies that are of general application, which do not have, within them, specific reference to racial context. What we do is, we work ourselves to understand that, and we use that as a prism through which we analyze what we're doing and what we need to do next. For example, you're probably familiar, very broadly in the city with our conversation over housing, conversation over zoning, we know that we have series of racial covenants in the community, which, of course, are no longer enforceable, which are there. We know that zoning has a history which has a racial context to it, and we know that it is our obligation to recognize that and interrogate what we are doing and whether it properly affects a reform.
[01:49:59] ALYSHIA DYER: I'll speak, at the sheriff's office we adopted the traffic stop policy, and so I think that was really important because now not only Ann Arbor, but also all the sheriff's office contract jurisdictions are also not pulling people over for non-safety related traffic stops. The other thing is taking a strong stance against surveillance or technology or policies that you know will ultimately cause harm. We are holding strong on not adopting license plate reader technology in some of our communities as there's been some local governments that have pushed for that before. Especially in this climate, I think we've seen how some of this technology can be problematic. The other thing is we have policy teams that we created, and Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice are leading our Sheriff's Office Accountability and Transparency team, because we're taking a deep look at our data. It's one thing to put out a policy to reduce traffic stops. What we've learned is you have to watch it, you have to monitor the data, you have to create accountability mechanisms to make sure that officers are following it. But then also, we need to look at the stops and why they're happening, who's harmed? One really telling thing that we've seen because we're looking at the data is, there are people that have been stopped four or five or six times in the course of a year. To what the film spoke about, looking at making sure that's not happening unless they have a reckless speeding problem constantly. What we saw in those situations where the stops were for these low-level reasons. Just making sure that we tackle that. Then naming that our system is founded on racism, I feel like, I think it was Chief Anderson that said, we have a hard time admitting and saying things are wrong. It's also really hard to change. The legal system was built not to change and it was built on racism and White supremacy. We are, I think, naming that and also focused on truth and reconciliation, and the work is going to be ongoing.
[01:52:03] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. Chief.
[01:52:06] ANDRE ANDERSON: Well, since we enacted our driving equality ordinance, obviously, it was on July 6th, 2023, from the council. May 28th of this year, we created a policy to actually double down with respect to what was taking place. My entire leadership team supported the direction we were going, and then we moved in that direction in June with a heavy emphasis on accountability. Since June and we moved into July, there has been zero stops for equipment violations unless it's a safety related issue. We went from 30% down to zero. [APPLAUSE] The other things really quickly that we're doing is we created a curriculum that we have that is a mandatory curriculum for all police officers on racial profiling. Every police officer is trained on racial profiling. We've also adopted fair and impartial policing, which we have trainers throughout the department that are training. All the police officers are fair and impartial policing. This month in a couple of weeks, I'm taking one of the deputy chiefs with me to Atlanta. There are 25 police chiefs across the country that are part of a program called REPAIR. We will be bringing it back. It is the training program that allows for police officers to learn something they never learned in the academy, and it's about human rights. We learn a lot about constitutional rights, but we don't learn about human rights. In addition to that training, that training is going to allow for us to learn about constitutional policing. It's going to learn about racial profiling and a number of things that have been impacting the historical challenges that we've had with injustices. That information is going to come back. We're going to put that curriculum together. We're going to develop that curriculum as part of our promotional process. Police officers that are going to be promoted, they're going to have to learn how to have cultural competency. That cultural competency is going to be built into performance plans. We have a long term process in terms of how we're changing culture, and that's what we're doing in Ann Arbor.
[01:54:20] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] For the panelists who actually experienced and were involved in responding to the dragnet, was there a particular strategy or tactic that you felt was most egregious or responsible for harming or fracturing the community as a whole?
[01:54:49] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: This wasn't in the movie as that much. But the Ann Arbor police and the Ann Arbor News and everybody else was encouraging this tip system that turned people against each other. There was ways at first, it was a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the serial rapist. It went all the way up eventually to $100,000. You could submit tips anonymously under this program. You just had to make up a five digit number that you put on the tip and then keep that number. If you hit the lottery, you got $100,000. They come to people's doors and encourage you to do that. I think there were I just read the complaint. It said there were over 1,000 tips, identifying about 700 Black men. As you saw in the movie, some of them were as much as that one you saw about I have no other reason to believe he's the serial rapist. That was on Blair Shelton. Based on that, the detectives went there to TJ Maxx, one of his jobs, and they said, "Is Blair here?" "No, it's his day off." "Here's my detective card. Tell him to come to contact me because he is a suspect in the serial rapist investigation." He gets there the next day it was his day off. They gave him the card, and they say, "By the way, you're fired." But it was this tip system that was insidious and then, that combined with this so called psychological profile of him of a Black man with hostility to White women. It was trying to divide the community and did a pretty good job doing it.
[01:57:15] EDITH LEWIS: I think I want to add to that. One of the things that struck me is while this was happening and Black men were being targeted, Black women were being told that we didn't have to worry about anything because he wasn't attacking us. Now, I happened to be at that time, volunteering with SAPAC the sexual assault program at the University of Michigan. As we went forward to try to talk with police officers while they were doing community training or community I'm losing the word--
[01:57:54] S. KERENE MOORE: Policing?
[01:57:55] EDITH LEWIS: Well, it wasn't policing. They were giving community members information about what was happening during the time. Inviting White women to come. If we showed up, they said, "This is not for you." If you're raping women, you're raping women.
[01:58:18] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Absolutely. We had a few questions about what resources are available to the individuals and families impacted by this. Were there resources at the time related to trauma to support them? Are there any available now? Is there any discussion of reparations? Quite a few questions in that vein.
[01:58:49] CYNTHIA HARRISON: I'll start to answer the question about reparations. A little over about close to a year and a half ago, the city of Ann Arbor did pass the first step of municipal reparations. And what that entails is we directed our city administrator to do a harms report. It passed unanimously. I do believe the funding is there. We're just working out some details. But yes, this project, for me, was a follow up to that. You mentioned reparations and people, Ann Arbor liberal progressive. There are people that wonder why reparations for the city of Ann Arbor. I thought it was really important that we start having these conversations. That's why we're having this panel discussion with the audience. It is on some level, really conditioning the community and educating the community on why we would think about municipal reparations here for the city of Ann Arbor.
[02:00:10] S. KERENE MOORE: Absolutely, it's very helpful. This is sort of step one, educating acknowledging learning about our history and understand why that might be appropriate.
[02:00:19] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Just the beginning, yes.
[02:00:21] S. KERENE MOORE: Anyone else have any input on that question, trauma resources?
[02:00:29] ANDRE ANDERSON: There's been a lot of trauma resources changing with respect to training that the county attorney has put out to the police departments in terms of how we investigate these types of crimes, resources that we provide to the victims that allow for them to contact the county and other individuals in order to assist them with assistance in the Ann Arbor Police Department, I have increased the number of sexual assault detectives with the intent to work with the county. Both the sheriff and I have talked about possibly bringing both our detectives together so that we can have one central location where we have trained individuals that can help and investigate victims of sexual assault. There's a lot of training and resources that we've been providing, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
[02:01:18] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. Yes.
[02:01:22] ALYSHIA DYER: I was just going to add I know the state's also doing a lot of work on victims' rights funds. Then there's the victims, in this horrible situation with the sexual assaults, but there's also the victims that were traumatized over and over again in the film it talked about getting stopped 50 times and all these different problems. I think we need to do more on addressing the trauma that the system can cause and the trauma of police violence and some of those aspects. What I will say is what I know I'm committed to do as well as Chief Anderson and many of our local law enforcement leaders is really taking a hard look at our tactics to make sure we're not adding to trauma and harm. Reducing that trauma, reducing harm, and those traffic stop reductions is one, I think, really important way to do that.
[02:02:15] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you.
[02:02:16] MICHAEL J. STEINBERG: Just very briefly, I think this group might want to know about the progress in Washtenaw County. Another municipal reparations program is being looked into. We've been up and running. There's an Advisory Council which will eventually make recommendations to the board of County Commissioners, and we are in the process of doing a harms report going back to the beginning of the formation of the county and looking at not just police but also housing public help, looking into all the areas where the county has made policy. There's a lot of people, especially in Ann Arbor, who haven't lived here their whole lives. They come in for school and they just don't have a sense of the history. That's what we're working on now and eventually, based on that, there'll be recommendations.
[02:03:25] S. KERENE MOORE: Excellent. Thank you so much.
[02:03:26] CYNTHIA HARRISON: Can I jump in?
[02:03:27] S. KERENE MOORE: Absolutely.
[02:03:29] CYNTHIA HARRISON: I just want to also mention something, I want to repeat something that was mentioned in the film. I do think that it's really important. These harms that occurred 30 years ago have impacted Black men and impacted their families. It's really important. Those harms and the traumas live within you. She suggested working on the trauma. I think it's important. Our mental health is important. Yesterday, the sheriff and I were at the NAMI inaugural walk, and there are a lot of resources there. When you have gone through something like that, it's really important, try not to ignore it and look at what are the resources in the area that you may be able to get some, work and work on yourself. One of the things that we did pass at the City of Ann Arbor was we passed trauma-informed wraparound services for individuals who have been impacted by the carceral system. But it's trauma-informed wraparound services. Just think about it. Think about reaching out, even just talking to your friends or your family. There's a lot of therapists out there. There's more telehealth now, post-pandemic. It might not be somebody in your area. You could be talking with somebody across the country, but I encourage you to really, work on, look at getting some help.
[02:05:10] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you so much. Again, another question for the people who lived through it and were responding to it at the time. The film did not deal with what was happening within the police department. Were you aware of any division within the department about how the investigation was being implemented, or did you feel like it was a unified front? I don't know that you know, so I'm not talking to you, Chief. Do you know?
[02:05:42] ANDRE ANDERSON: I'm aware. I've had an opportunity to talk to the detectives. Primarily the detective that interviewed Ervin Mitchell. There was a lot of tension. Let me be very honest with you. One, I appreciate you telling me about the young, 14 year olds and others. That's the first time I heard that. It pisses me off, to be honest. I'm going to have to look into that, that bothers me. But there was tension. Here's the tension that the police department had, and this is not an excuse. When Ervin Mitchell was found, the detectives and the officers were cheering because they wanted him to be arrested. Now, the tactics that were used, quite frankly, were not the right tactics. The tension was this tip—the tip line that we had. Just think about this. It went all the way up to $100,000. If you're trying to look for someone, you're more likely to get that tip than the lottery. You have thousands of people providing tips to the Ann Arbor Police Department. The Ann Arbor Police Department right now has allocated 122 sworn. They had 19 detectives. At that time, there's no way those detectives could handle those thousands of calls. Hence, you started to put together a task force. You put together a task force, and you get these thousands of tips. Here's the tension. You don't follow up on the tips, you're wrong. You do follow up on the tips, you're wrong. The way they went about it was wrong. The tension to solve this was incredible with respect to the detectives. Being able to manage that vague description is where they failed. But there was a lot of tension with respect to pressure in order to solve this. There should be pressure to solve these types of crimes. But yes, there was tension, but the detectives and police officers must do their job. They have to do it in an equitable fashion. There is no excuse. Yes, there's tension, but there's always tension with the police department, and we just didn't manage it the way that I think we should have.
[02:08:08] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. Does anyone have any other insight into that question that had to be asked? Just a quick follow up to that. This is probably for Eli Savit more than anyone else. How does the city attorney and county prosecutor, how did they play into these investigations? Are you aware of whether there was any pressure from political leaders, you know, as far as how this ended up being resolved, but also just outline how the attorneys play a role in the investigation process at that level.
[02:08:43] ELI SAVIT: Yeah, and, of course, I wasn't there at the time, because I was 10. I don't know exactly how the prosecutor was or was not involved in the investigations, but I can generally speaking. One of the things that will always, as a matter of course, come to the prosecutor's office is a search warrant. We review search warrants, draft search warrants from law enforcement to make sure that it's all proper, that there's not going to be any constitutional issues before it goes to a judge. Now, there were search warrants that were obviously issued in this case. There was a threat of search warrants, which is how they coerced people into giving their blood. But more importantly, look, I can tell you that there's some investigations that frankly the county prosecutor is just not involved. It doesn't involve search warrants, law enforcement is doing on their own. Let's be honest about this. I knew about this case as a 10-year-old, right? The county prosecutor of course knew what was going on. I don't know what the actual discussions were in terms of the warrants the search warrants that were issued, the tactics that were used. I just don't know that. But in a case of this magnitude, where you've got a serial rapist, where you've got a DNA dragnet where it's on the front page of the Ann Arbor News, there is no question that I think the county prosecutors, the county prosecutor's office could have said, "Look, this is running afoul, if not of the text of the Constitution, certainly of constitutional values." That is what I think it was imperative for somebody to do.
[02:10:27] S. KERENE MOORE: But just also wanted to make sure people understood that there was a threat of search warrants, but ultimately, the police did not get assistance from the city attorney or prosecutor to have those drafted up, which would go to the judge. I review search warrants, right? Who decides whether to have those issued. There was a lot of decisions. That's how it works. It is.
[02:10:53] ELI SAVIT: I'm not sure if there was any--
[02:10:56] S. KERENE MOORE: You were 10, you were a kid.
[02:10:58] ELI SAVIT: Right.
[02:10:59] S. KERENE MOORE: We're really not allowed to say exactly what they were doing, but that is generally speaking, how it works. This is a question for everyone. Who do you think bears the greatest responsibility for what happened here, the city as a whole, our culture as a whole, the police? Like, where does the weight go for you in your opinions?
[02:11:25] ALYSHIA DYER: I'll say, from my world view, the police chief at the time, the sheriff at the time, the prosecutor at the time, the mayor at the time, which, I think now we all together are uniformed in not letting something like this happen, but if any one of those actors would have took a strong stance, the police chief and the sheriff could have stopped the task force. There's so many things that could have happened. That's what comes to mind for me.
[02:11:56] AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: That's real. How many of them are alive now and could be here today?
[02:12:05] ALYSHIA DYER: I know two are alive. I don't know about the mayor, the police chief, but I believe the sheriff and the prosecutor are still around.
[02:12:15] ANDRE ANDERSON: [BACKGROUND] You know--
[02:12:21] AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Let Mayor Taylor talk. He hasn't said anything.
[02:12:26] S. KERENE MOORE: He has said some things. And he's long-winded.
[02:12:30] CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR: It's important that individuals take responsibility for their actions. We're all individuals. We have control over what we say, we have control over what we do. In terms of where the weight bears, this is an example of—this is historic racism made flesh. This is a culture of racism made flesh. This is a particular example of White supremacy that has infused its way into American culture, into White culture, and it remains. Where does it lie? I think the individuals, of course, had immediate agency, but here, I was 30 plus or minus, I wasn't on the line. I wasn't standing in front of City Hall. I was blithely going to law school, doing my thing. I was in graduate school doing my thing. Like the community as a whole, I think, bears an important measure of responsibility. It's not just a set of individuals. It's a bit of us all.
[02:13:47] AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Does the mayor bear the responsibility of what happened? Do you think so?
[02:13:51] CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR: All elected officials who were there had the ability to recognize what was going on, had the responsibility to reflect as to what was going on, and they did not.
[02:14:03] AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Today is a day for truth and reconciliation. You're going to tell them the truth. I'm going to tell them the truth. I've met with you many times over the years about this very same topic. You want to tell them about that? [OVERLAPPING].
[02:14:20] ANDRE ANDERSON: If I may--
[02:14:21] S. KERENE MOORE: They have actually graced us with a little bit more time, but we're already cutting very deeply into it.
[02:14:28] AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Excuse me. I recognize that you are observing from this point on, and you expressed your feelings moving forward as all of you today, and I appreciate that. I appreciate you representing who just so happens to be my brother, Blair Shelton.
[02:14:50] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you so much.
[02:14:52] AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Most of you who may not recognize as to why I said standing ovation because that was a very difficult time in his life. Being his sister, I know that because it was also difficult for me. You being the chief, a Black chief in Ann Arbor, I understand that. He's got a lot to deal with me being as piqued as I am, recognize as a Black woman. I know the struggle because not everybody knows what it is that I am by just looking at me. What we're working with here is cultural differences and understanding. You, thank you for being there today and speaking on my brother's behalf because he is a beautiful person, and children love him. He's always worked with kids around kids as some of my family members had, which I'm not going to elaborate. But we've got to move forward.
[02:16:11] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you. Absolutely. [APPLAUSE] We're absolutely here to acknowledge, to remember to respect. [BACKGROUND] Thank you. Thank you for the family for coming out, and I hope we were able to honor that and to give voice to your brother.
[02:16:32] AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: I know your struggle.
[02:16:32] AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: You're not a Black man. Don't tell me what my struggle is.
[02:16:32] S. KERENE MOORE: As the judge, we're going to call it a day on that.
[02:16:41] AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: We're not here to be violent, we're not here to be loud.
[02:16:45] S. KERENE MOORE: You guys can take it in the hallway.
[02:16:48] AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: We are here to stand up for what has been accomplished. We are here to stand up for what we can.
[02:16:57] S. KERENE MOORE: Don't take it personally. This was obviously a very emotional time for her, as well.
[02:17:03] AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: What we can put behind us and how we can grow.
[02:17:07] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you so much. I will say that we are a community that is in the process of healing. We are a community that is imperfect. We have not resolved all of the problems. We know that there continue to be problems today, that people continue to be racially profiled today. I am no stranger to it. I get pulled over quite frequently by the Ann Arbor Police Department. But it is what it is. Before I was elected and after I got elected. We know that is ongoing, and that is probably what some of you are speaking to today. But we have several questions about how we can deal with this. We also know that it is happening federally in our community to the Latinx and Hispanic population. Not only does it continue to happen to Black community members, and we've obviously done what we can there, and we'll continue. We are a work in progress there. We'll continue to train officers. But what can the community do—we have about six questions on that--to help protect the community members from these types of tactics where they're coming down from federal ICE agents?
[02:18:29] ANDRE ANDERSON: I think there's a young man here that was—are you still here? I can't see from the lights. I just want to make a real point. Who is responsible? The mayor and the city administrators hire police chiefs and the council, and they expect them to perform at a role that is required to stop these things. I know the question was directly at the mayor, but it is squarely on the police chief. The police chief, the police are the ones that create the leadership. They're the ones that have to stop this from occurring. It was not stopped by the police department and their leadership, and that's where the responsibility lands.
[02:19:19] AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: I appreciate you saying that.
[02:19:23] EDITH LEWIS: I do think that all of us have a responsibility, frankly, and I retired 12 years ago from the university, but it's still my job to pay attention to what's going on. It's still my job to say to people, when I see wrong being done, this wrong is being done. I started smirking a little earlier today because I said I remember 30 years ago, I stood up in front of the city council and the then mayor. I said, "I have an opportunity to speak at conferences and give presentations around the world until the DNA is returned. Every time I give a speech, I will honor the people whose blood has been taken." That's the stuff we do. There are coalitions all over this area that are trying to help protect those who are being unjustly accused, who are being stalked. I have a lot of Latinx friends the children cannot go outside have children who won't turn the lights out at night because they are afraid of somebody coming in to take their parents. Has that changed? Thirty years ago, Ahmed Rahman, who lived in the neighborhood that I lived in and where the murder occurred. Bam, bam, bam on his door at three o'clock in the morning. There's a serial rapist. He wakes up. His children wake up. His children are toddlers. Every time I see the light on in this child's room near me and recognize that he can't turn his own lights out in his room because he's afraid that somebody's going to come and take his family away, even though his family is legal. We have a responsibility, all of us, to try to be a part of coalitions. The wonderful thing about the Coalition for Community Unity was that it was multiracial. It was multicultural. We decided we were going to work together. We didn't really know each other as we began. But these are two people that I have the most incredible amount of respect for. If they ask me to do something, I do it. That's how I ended up doing this film because they asked me. [APPLAUSE] Look to your colleagues. Find the people who are doing the work. There are coalitions everywhere. Find the one that you belong in and work with it. [APPLAUSE]
[02:22:11] S. KERENE MOORE: We're going to close it out now. I think I've consolidated many of the questions. I think we're ready to close it out.
[02:22:27] JULIA BAYHA: Can I make a comment, please, as a person in these images?
[02:22:27] S. KERENE MOORE: Yes.
[02:22:29] JULIA BAYHA: My name is Julia Bayha. I didn't know something about me would flash during the movie. I would have been here regardless. I don't care. Everybody who knows me knows I'm a lifelong multi-causal activist. I really, really was advanced in my life commitment to all these things when I learned about the term intersectionality and how racism, sexism and classes intersect in everyone's daily lives. I wanted to say with respect to the Mayor, White male supremacy. Not just White supremacy. When you're talking about rape, you have to. I want to say thank you Edith for saying the stuff about White women and Black women and the different experiences. Because I guarantee you that not enough women's stories have been heard no matter what race they are. But especially, we do know how racism has impacted even the treatment of victims of sex offense. I just want to say thank you and I want to say thank you to the police chief for actually saying something about how this would have impacted the victims even more so. Because as a lifelong member of this community, during that time, my experience of an attempted rape was mishandled by the police. It was very scary and very threatening and intimidating. I called on a few people and a few like Safehouse and whoever and the detectives to talk to me, and it was unequivocally dismissed as what I said didn't happen. I learned that if their letterhead is on a piece of paper addressed to you, you may be told that your story never happened. The thing is, it's also true, and I thank you, Aliyah, for making this movie and Cynthia Harrison for your work and Alyshia Dyer, and everybody here it has in some way impacted. I even know Blair Shelton. I just feel like it is very important because it is happening and that there's even more to be discussed. I hope I can help with that. [APPLAUSE]
[02:24:44] S. KERENE MOORE: Thank you so much. Before I close, is there anything else that any of the panelists would like to share? We are all set from the panelists. In closing, thank you to everyone for coming together in community to acknowledge and learn about our history. Without remembering, acknowledging and learning from our past, we cannot move forward in wisdom and in progress. This is about inspecting our roots and taking measures to secure what is just and what is fair in our law enforcement practices. It may seem small, but our past colors who we are. Our wounds are passed onto our children. When we do that in silence, without teaching the story behind it, we prevent ourselves from healing and truly coming together. This reconciliation is part of an important, larger movement. Thank you again for joining us today, and thank you for carrying this story forward with an eye toward, clarity, truth, and progress. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]