The family of a Black girl who at age 11 was held at gunpoint, handcuffed, and placed in a patrol car by Grand Rapids, Michigan, police who were pursuing a white adult suspect has settled a federal civil lawsuit with the city for $285,000.
Honestie Hodges died five years ago, at age 14, from complications linked to COVID-19. In December 2017, when she was 11, she, her mother, and another relative were confronted by police with guns drawn as they walked out the back of their house, headed to a store.
Officers told the terrified girl to put her hands on her head and walk backwards, then frisked her, placed her in handcuffs for two minutes, and held her in a police cruiser for 10 minutes, police said, reported Grand Rapids news station WOODTV.
In a police bodycam video that went viral, Hodges could be heard crying and pleading, “No, no, no,” while her mother asked why the officers were detaining a young girl.
It turned out that police were on the hunt for Hodge’s aunt, a 40-year-old white woman who was wanted for allegedly stabbing her sister at a home a few blocks away. The aunt was later found at another home and arrested.
Honestie’s parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Grand Rapids, its former police chief, David Rahinsky, and three police officers in November 2023, three years after she died. Allegations in the lawsuit included unreasonable search and seizure, excessive force, assault and battery, false imprisonment, and failure to train and supervise officers.
“Honestie had a legitimate fear that she would be shot and killed” during the incident, the lawsuit claimed, and suffered serious mental anguish, anxiety, emotional distress, a sense of outrage, loss of social pleasure and enjoyment prior to her death in 2020.
Shortly after the incident, in an interview with WOOD-TV, Honestie said that when the police placed her in the back of a car, “It made feel scared and it made me feel like I did something wrong.” She added that she was now afraid to go near her back door.
At a press conference covered by MLive, Honestie asked, “If this happened to a white child, if her mother were screaming, ‘She’s 11!’ would you have handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police car?”
The incident sparked outrage among residents in Grand Rapids, where the police were already under criticism for a similar encounter in March 2017 when officers held five innocent teenagers at gunpoint, the New York Times reported.
“They were looking for a 40-year-old, white European woman,” said Cle Jackson, president of the Grand Rapids NAACP, at a press conference. “Make that make sense.”
The police department later said an internal investigation of the incident found that the officers didn’t violate department policy and that no discipline would be issued.
But Police Chief Rahinsky acknowledged that the girl had not been treated appropriately and should not have been handcuffed.
“Listening to the 11-year-old’s response makes my stomach turn,” Rahinsky said at a news conference. “It makes me physically nauseous.”
“We need to look at everything, from our hiring to our training to our supervision,” he said. “We do have a problem.”
In March of 2018, the department adopted what it called “the Honestie Policy,” which calls for training patrol officers in cultural competency and de-escalation techniques, and in using the least restrictive option when dealing with children and youth.
The lawsuit filed by the Hodges family alleged that Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) not only mistreated Honestie but demonstrated a pattern of using excessive force against African American children, reported WZZM13. The lawsuit cited three other incidents where GRPD officers had drawn guns on African-American children between March 2017 and August 2018.
Attorneys for the city moved to have the case dismissed, arguing, “This case presents a rapidly unfolding set of circumstances involving a search for an armed, attempted murder suspect, a dark and unsecured setting, and the truly unfortunate and unexpected introduction of a young girl into the midst of it all. No one doubts that Honestie Hodges was frightened by the situation she suddenly found herself in, or that her mother, Whitney Hodges, was frightened for her daughter and confused by what was happening.”
Still, the motion asserted the suit should be dropped due to several factors, including qualified immunity, insufficient facts, and precedent set from previous rulings of similar cases.
After the settlement was announced on Thursday, the City of Grand Rapids shared this statement:
“We are pleased that the parties have been able to resolve this matter without further court proceedings and have brought this long journey, which has been difficult for all involved, to a close. The settlement is not an admission of liability. Rather, it is a mutual resolution of a disputed claim. We hope that all parties can now move forward.”
Attorneys for the Hodges family wrote in a statement:
“While no monetary settlement can undo or repair the fear, trauma, and lasting impact experienced by the child involved, this resolution represents an important measure of justice and acknowledgment of harm. It also underscores the principle that children are entitled to protections under the law, particularly during police interactions that carry an inherent risk of trauma.”
According to federal court documents, the Grand Rapids City Commission approved the provisional settlement on Tuesday. It still must be approved by a federal judge.
