Read the letter.

The ACLU is hailing a recent decision by the Grand Rapids Police Department to end a policy that permitted police officers to arrest innocent people for trespassing at local businesses during operating hours—even when business owners didn’t ask them to leave.

DETROIT—Concerned about the increased potential for violent confrontations and racial profiling, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan in a letter today urged the Michigan State Police to eliminate a policy requiring troopers to make a designated number of traffic stops to meet performance standards.

Recent tragic police-related shootings have demonstrated yet again that sudden, violent deaths at the hands of police can capture headlines and public attention. But out of sight and forgotten are thousands of victims of illegal racially discriminatory encounters with police who survived, but who nevertheless ended up in prison cells.

DETROIT — The American Civil Liberties Union announced a settlement in its lawsuit filed on behalf of Shoshana Hebshi, a mother of two who was pulled off an airplane at gunpoint, arrested, strip-searched, and detained. The case was brought against Frontier Airlines and several government defendants.

Kirk McConer was arrested and jailed while talking to a friend outside a convenience store, where he had just purchased a soda. Tyrone Hightower was arrested and jailed after sitting in his car in the parking lot of a nightclub, as he waited to make sure his friends were admitted to the club. And Jacob Manyong was stopped and placed under arrest after the back tire of his car barely crossed the property of a private business, as he drove out of an adjacent public lot.

The charges against McConer, Hightower, and Manyong? Trespassing.

After receiving multiple complaints from African American motorists who felt that they had been the targets of racial profiling by police officers conducting traffic stops in Ferndale, the ACLU of Michigan requested traffic stop data from the Ferndale Police Department pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

DETROIT -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan in a letter today urged the Ferndale Police Department to hire an independent firm to investigate why black motorists are being issued traffic citations at a rate grossly disproportionate to their presence in the local population. After receiving multiple complaints from the public regarding possible racial profiling in Ferndale, the ACLU of Michigan obtained public records from the Ferndale Police Department that indicate that black drivers are far more likely to be ticketed in Ferndale than white drivers.