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House burned, police vehicles vandalized during Benton Harbor riot
By TED HARTZELL / H-P Metro Editor and LYNN STEVENS / H-P Staff Writer
BENTON HARBOR -- Hundreds of people rioted late Monday night and early this morning along a four-block stretch of Empire Avenue in apparent anger over a police chase early Monday in which a Benton Harbor motorcyclist died.
Rioters burned a vacant house, damaged three Benton Harbor police vehicles and hit several police officers with bricks and bottles, police said.
Police said some people also fired off shots, but police said they themselves did not shoot.
Apparently no one was hurt by the rocks or bottles or gunshots.
The clusters of people dispersed peacefully around 2 a.m. after police using a loudspeaker urged people to go home or face being charged with felonies. Approximately 60 police had converged on the scene, with state police coming from as far away as the Battle Creek and White Pigeon posts.
The violence happened in the same area where Terrance Shurn, 28, was killed around 2 a.m. Monday when his motorcycle crashed into an abandoned house at Empire and Pavone Street. The quiet, impromptu vigils that had been kept at the site in Shurn's honor were replaced late at night by violence. The house that was torched, and which was reduced to only a charred skeleton, was across the street from the accident site.
Around 6:30 this morning, several hours after the riot ended, a fire engulfed an abandoned house at 765 Lavette St., the Benton Township Fire Department said. That fire is just blocks from Monday's fire at the abandoned house.
It was not immediately known if the later fire was tied in with the earlier violence.
The street violence, which began about 11 p.m., followed violent words earlier in the evening by some of about three dozen people who showed up at Benton Harbor City Hall for a City Commission meeting. Angry at Shurn's death, they protested high-speed police chases in general. Some made threatening remarks about Benton Harbor police.
When the rioting broke out, the Benton Harbor police were first on the scene. But Chief Samuel Harris pointed out that he typically has only three officers on patrol at any one time. Anticipating trouble, he had held back his three day-shift patrol officers until late at night, but when no trouble developed, he let them go home.
But a short time later trouble did brew on the streets.
"They called me a little after 11" p.m., Harris said around 2 this morning as he stood at the police command center of Empire and Broadway amid a small army of police and their vehicles.
Harris said rioters were "throwing bottle and bricks and what-not at the police cars. Later they set a house on fire."
"They bricked us so bad" that firefighters and police couldn't get to the burning house, he said. The sheriff's department said several nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution because the fire department wasn't able to immediately get to the burning house.
Harris said officers did not have shields and other protective equipment at first, but they went and got them and returned.
"We charged in and cleared the street," said Harris, who as Benton Harbor police chief was in charge of all police on the scene.
In the aftermath, Empire Avenue was littered with broken glass and bricks.
Police turned out in force from surrounding departments to bolster the small Benton Harbor department. A SWAT team, a police dog and an armored vehicle - the Berrien County Sheriff's Department's Peacekeeper - were among the defenses police had as they massed at the intersection of Empire and Broadway, a block from the burning house and motorcycle accident site. Police departments that sent officers included St. Joseph Township, the city of St. Joseph and several posts of the state police. The sheriff's department sent a large force.
Many police cars were positioned in the intersection and in the parking lot of a party store.
A reporter arriving around 1:30 saw clusters of people gathered east of the intersection along Empire Avenue.
A few women expressed anger at what they said was a pattern of harassment by Benton Township police. It was a policeman from that department who pursued Shurn into Benton Harbor after a sheriff's deputy had earlier stopped pursuing him, state police said.
"They harass us, they pull us over for nothing," Evette Taylor said of Benton Township police. "We fed up. When do you say 'Enough!' "
Taylor, who lives on Columbus Avenue, said she and other people had been putting flowers and other items at the motorcycle crash site and trying to grieve Shurn's death when police asked them to move.
"He was a sweet person, and he don't deserve to die this way," she said.
Anger in City Hall
More than three dozen angry people crowded the regular Monday night audience at the City Commission meeting and spilled into the hall. They came to protest all high-speed police chases in the wake of Shurn's death.
Ordinary Benton Harbor protocol requires people addressing the commission to state their names and addresses before speaking. Only a few of the protesters bothered. They said they wanted to spend every second of their allotted time threatening Benton Harbor police - who were not involved in the chase - and demanding some kind of action from the commissioners.
A man who identified himself as Micah from Union Street embraced most of the crowd's complaints in his comments. He said, "All of you here heard and knew the chase was called off."
He said state police (actually the sheriff's deputies) called off the chase, but a Benton Township officer saw the motorcycle speed by and pursued Shurn into the city.
"How can somebody come into our city and chase somebody? What's going to be done?" he asked.
Mayor Charles Yarbrough called for order in the commission chambers so police Chief Harris could answer. But the crowd derided Harris and interrupted his explanations.
Harris said because the police chase was multi-jurisdictional, he turned it over to the state police to investigate. He told the crowd that Benton Harbor does not use the same radio frequency as do Benton Township, the sheriff's department, St. Joseph and surrounding departments, so the only way those departments can communicate with Benton Harbor is through police dispatch, and that takes a phone call instead of instant radio contact.
He tried to explain further, but the crowd shouted him down.
"The chief ain't from here," one man yelled. "He don't know nothin.'"
"We don't need no chief," another said. "We can chief ourselves."
Harris spoke a little louder. "We can't respond if you don't allow me to respond." The yelling and rumblings continued for a minute, then the crowd quieted.
"I understand the emotion here, but as chief of police there are laws I have to follow," Harris said.
He explained that state and federal laws allow police to cross into other jurisdictions if they are in hot pursuit of a suspect. He said he was called about 2:30 a.m. Monday, about a half hour after the cycle crashed, and only learned of the incident then. Harris said that because he had not heard the chase itself, he did not know any more than they did why Shurn was pursued. But he explained, "In this county, you can go anywhere in Berrien County and make an arrest."
"Because we do not have an accident reconstructionist, I asked the state police to investigate," Harris continued. The noise level in the commission chamber rose, and a woman near the door yelled repeatedly, "What was his (Shurn's) crime?"
Mayor Yarbrough told the crowd the problem could not be settled Monday night, and he asked if Commissioner Leroy Harvey would call a special meeting of the Public Safety Committee for Thursday afternoon. The crowd did not want a meeting.
Finally, Commissioner Ralph Crenshaw, the dead man's uncle, spoke to the crowd.
"What I'm going to say is coming from the heart because I'm still grieving," he said. "We did what we thought was right at the time - we passed a resolution saying no high-speed chases in Benton Harbor. We didn't go far enough. We should prohibit all high-speed chases."
The crowd applauded, then continued to rant against police and city government.
Commissioners quickly approved the 2003-2004 budget and routine maintenance items in a single vote.
After the week's business was concluded, Harris commented further on the early morning chase. He said he had requested state police investigators who were not acquainted with any of the people involved. He said the county prosecutor was consulted before any action was taken.
"As far as the citizens are concerned," Harris said, "they need to give us the opportunity to look into this. We will be fair and impartial and let the chips fall where they may."
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