White Cop in Lyoya Incident Has Exemplary Record during Seven-Year Career

By Grand Rapids Anonymous
Sunday, May 1, 2022 at 1:14:00 A.M. EDT

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The personnel file for Officer Chris Schurr, who shot and killed Patrick Lyoya, outlines some of his work with the Grand Rapids Police Department.

news 8 filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the file. It was released Friday.

Schurr has been a police officer for about seven years. The file includes 11 letters of recognition for his policing since 2016. He also received a complaint for a crash in which he was deemed to be at fault. There was also one complaint for an improper search but Schurr was cleared.

Former Detroit Chief of Police Ike Mckinnon [black, of course] says officer Schurr’s file is exactly what he would expect of an officer in a mid-sized city such as Grand Rapids.

“What I noticed is that he does a lot of stops,” said McKinnon. “There’s a lot of commendations that are made and given to him by his supervisors (because) of the stops and what he recovers whether there’s guns or narcotics.”

McKinnon says his file indicates his department believed the officer had good instincts when making stops.

“If you look at this on its face, it appears that the officer is doing a great job with stopping people, with recovering guns, with recovering narcotics off of the street. So he’s doing a good job according to what he’s being doing and the commendations he’s received,” said McKinnon. “There was nothing in his file that I saw in his file that said he was doing anything that was egregious or that he was doing any stops that were unwarranted.”

[GRA: Schurr gets the black seal of approval? Whoop-de-doo. N.S.: Hey; it could have been much worse. The reporter could have sought out a black supremacist to give Officer Schurr the coupe de grace.]

Schurr shot and killed Lyoya, 26, on April 4. Video previously released by GRPD shows Lyoya ran away from Schurr during a traffic stop and there was a struggle that included Lyoya grabbing Schurr’s Taser. Schurr, who was on top of Lyoya trying to hold him down, ultimately shot Lyoya in the back of the head.

[GRA:That's the least provocative description of the incident I've read anywhere. Kudos.]

Michigan State Police are investigating the shooting. MSP said it sent its case to Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker on Thursday, but it is still waiting on forensic reports from the manufacturer of the officer’s body camera and Taser. Becker said he will not decide whether the shooting was justified or whether charges are warranted without that information.

--GRA