Kalamazoo man says Michigan Supreme Court decision affirms the truth

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) — Douglas Prude said he is still putting his life back together after a five-year fight to get a fleeing and eluding conviction thrown out, culminating a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court that could change policing in the state.

“A lot of time lost with family, missing holidays, missing funerals. Lost a whole car that had got towed away. I didn’t have a house when I got out. It really did set me back,” Prude told News 8 Tuesday.

On May 30, 2019, Prude was in the parking lot of Fox Ridge Apartments in Kalamazoo when he was approached by police. Two Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers on patrol asked his name, but he wouldn’t give it and said that he was visiting.

“I was out there actually waiting for my cousin; he lived out there with his girlfriend. And the cops had just approached me. And one of the officers that knew me, but he got there one minute after the officer approached me,” Prude said.

Asked if he thought the officers racially profiled him, he said, “In a way, yes.”

“Just because if I’m from somewhere or I’m a part of a certain type of environment and I’m there and you want to harass me just because I am from where I’m from,” he said.

The officers told him they were detaining him to find out if he was trespassing. He drove away. Asked by News 8 why he took off, he said he was worried for his safety.

“I felt uncomfortable. And anything could have happened,” he said. “You’ve seen what happened with Sonya Massey — she called for help. You never know. I just didn’t feel safe getting surrounded by cops.”

Massey, who was Black, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Illinois after she called police to her home on July 6. The deputy, who is white, has been charged with murder.

After leaving, Prude was arrested, charged with and convicted of fleeing and eluding and resisting arrest. He appealed and appealed, including for nine months while he was behind bars.

“When I was in jail, I wrote a lot of motions and obviously I got the appeal started very quickly,” Prude said.

Eventually, his case made it to the Michigan Supreme Court.

“I basically felt harassed and I knew that they did not have the right to detain me. That’s why we obviously had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get the truth out,” Prude said.

The Michigan Supreme Court ultimately ruled in July that being in a high-crime area is not, by itself, a valid reason to detain a person. It said the KDPS officers did not demonstrate enough factors for reasonable suspicion to detain Prude.

“Without more, there is nothing suspicious about a citizen sitting in a parked car in an apartment-complex parking lot while visiting a resident of that complex,” the court’s ruling reads in part. “Moreover, a citizen’s mere presence in an area of frequent criminal activity does not provide particularized suspicion that they were engaged in any criminal activity, and an officer may not detain a citizen simply because they decline a request to identify themselves.”

“I’m just happy with the outcome, that it happened. Because we shouldn’t have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get the truth about what comes from the Constitution,” Prude said. “I just want to live peacefully without being harassed, or for being in an environment they live in.”

KDPS Chief David Boysen — who was not yet chief when Prude was arrested — previously told News 8 that he supports the officers’ actions, saying he thought they did have reasonable suspicion but admitting they may not have properly articulated the factors.

“It just sounds like they don’t want to even agree with the outcome of the Supreme Court, so I don’t know how the Supreme Court would take the response from him,” Prude said.

Boysen said he is considering options and that KDPS may make changes to its training. The executive director of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards — the state agency that licenses police officers — said training adjustments will be made.

Though Prude won his case and hopes it will improve how KDPS operates, he argued police should be more deeply embedded in their communities.

“They shouldn’t be policing if they can’t really relate or have the experience that people have in the high-profile areas,” he said.

Prude urged people to know their rights and advocate for themselves, saying “knowledge is power.”

“People can lose a lot of their freedom not knowing things. And the cops aren’t going to tell you what your rights are. They are supposed to be there to help you — protect and serve, not harass and lie. And that’s just what I’ve experienced with police over the years,” Prude said.

He also stressed that running from the police is dangerous, a point a civil rights attorney also previously made to News 8.

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