The shooting deaths of Philando Castile, Daunte Wright and most recently Patrick Lyoya at the hands of police all started the same way. And those deaths have opened the door to a major police reform trend in some parts of the country.  Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and several other cities are banning minor traffic stops by police arguing they overwhelmingly impact Black motorists, aren't especially helpful in stopping crime and can have fatal consequences.  One of the first cities to give this a try was Lansing, Michigan. In July 2020 the Lansing PD implemented new guidelines for its officers to not pull drivers over for so-called 'secondary violations' that means cracked windshield, broken taillights and tinted windows.  But two years in, no one really knows if the policy change is working because the Lansing PD isn't following it. Councilman Brian T. Jackson, who was born and raised in Lansing, worked on this initiative with the former police chief and current mayor. "The problem with the policy that Lansing has of not pulling people over, unless it's for a safety related reason, is that it's just a policy and the police can and apparently still do it," he said. As a public defender, Jackson says he knows the community impact of these pretextual stops.   "The stops, they break down the relationship with the community and the police. Because if a certain portion of the community is stopped, even if they're not sighted, that still leaves a bad taste in people's mouth," he continued.According to the Lansing State Journal, since 2020 local police have made more than 300 stops for equipment violations and about 1,000 stops for registration issues two categories of stops that were supposed to end under the new policy.  Robert Stevenson is the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police."It's short sighted. And it's ill-advised and it does not serve their community members," he said. Stevenson says these supposedly minor stops are not meaningless.   "The federal government spent millions of dollars to figure out, we need a third light in the middle of a car. Why? Because it avoids crashes. And it avoids injuries, and it saves lives.   And you're much more likely to be the victim of a traffic crash and injury, then you are the victim of a violent crime and such."In Lansing, and across the country, Black motorists are disproportionately pulled over and searched compared to White drivers. And according to the New York Times, between 2016 and 2021 police have killed more than 400 motorists who were "not wielding a gun or a knife, or under pursuit for a violent crime a rate of more than one a week."Mike Lynn, a civil rights activist in Lansing, says his close friend was killed by the Lansing police Department when they were both teenagers.  "At the time, it wasn't really Lansing Police Department focus," he said. "I really felt like it was like, a reckoning kind of that police kill people."While Lynn disputes the circumstances of his death, police say he was killed after a foot chase and exchanging gun fire with officers.  "The more of those interactions that happen, the more people are going to be killed. So, we have to slow down those interactions that aren't necessary," Lynn continued.Stevenson says it's not the officers' actions that lead to these on-duty fatal shootings.  "They aren't killed because the person had a headlight out," Stevenson said. "They're killed because they're bad people. Where they ended up dead is fighting with the police, non-compliance and things escalated from there."Lansing's new police chief says he is re-working the policy to make it clearer, but Councilman Jackson is hoping for something more concrete.  "A guarantee that police officers won't seek charges stemming from a non-safety related stop," he said. "No matter where it is, there's going to be critics, and there's going to be proponents I don't know how well it's gonna go other places but I'm hoping that it goes well in Lansing, and that we can be a model."

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The Michigan police officer who killed Patrick Lyoya, a Black man who was on the ground when he was shot in the back of the head, was charged Thursday with second-degree murder.

Prosecutor Chris Becker announced charges Thursday against Grand Rapids Officer Christopher Schurr, weeks after Lyoya was killed following a chaotic traffic stop on April 4.

The 26-year-old Lyoya was on the ground when he was killed. The shooting was recorded on video by a bystander.

"The death was not justified or excused ... by self defense," Becker said, referring to an element of second-degree murder.

Schurr, who is white, told Lyoya that he stopped his car because the license plate didn't match the vehicle. Roughly a minute into the stop, Lyoya began to run after he was asked to produce a driver's license.

Schurr caught him quickly, and the two struggled across a front lawn. The officer demanded that Lyoya "let go" of Schurr's Taser before he fired the fatal shot.

Becker said he consulted experts from outside Michigan about the use of force in the case.

Attorney Ven Johnson in Detroit with at least one member of Lyoya's family present said the prosecutor called Johnson and the family about two minutes before making the announcement that the officer is being charged.

"You will not see any celebration on behalf of the Lyoya family," Johnson said.

The Grand Rapids police chief released video from four different sources on April 13. Attorneys for Lyoya's family have called the death an "execution."

Grand Rapids, population about 200,000, is 160 miles (260 kilometers) west of Detroit.

Schurr has been a police officer since 2015. His personnel file shows no complaints of excessive force but much praise for traffic stops and foot chases that led to arrests and the seizure of guns and drugs.

The shooting turned into an immediate crisis for police Chief Eric Winstrom, who was a commander in Chicago before taking charge in Grand Rapids early in March.

At a community forum in April, Winstrom said he wanted to put more emphasis on officers knowing how to turn down the heat during tense situations.

"I guarantee that we can do more," he said. "Actually, that's one of the things I've already reached out to my colleagues to say, 'Hey, I need some curriculum, because we are going to beef it up.'"

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White reported from Detroit, and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.

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Find the AP's full coverage of the fatal police shooting of Patrick Lyoya: https://apnews.com/hub/patrick-lyoya

From the travel mask mandate turnaround to details on Patrick Lyoya's death, here's top news from the past week

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Florida voided the national mask mandate covering airplanes and other public transportation. Also, the autopsy came back in the death of Patrick Lyoya, and more than 900 civilian bodies were found in Kyiv.

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