Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently tried to rebuke Michigan Enjoyer’s James Dickson for an X post stating that she “wanted her own Derek Chauvin” in relation to the trial of Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr in the shooting of Patrick Lyoya. The trial ended in a mistrial Thursday, after jurors couldn’t reach a verdict.
Nessel claimed in her response on X that she had nothing to do with Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker’s indictment of Schurr, citing Becker’s Republican Party affiliation and chastising Dickson to “try reading even a single news article about the case.”
Well, I read the news, and Dickson is correct. Nessel badly wanted to prosecute Schurr and told anyone willing to listen.
On April 20, 2022, two weeks after the shooting, and after local and national media descended on Grand Rapids in the hopes of inflaming a second Summer of Floyd, Nessel held a press conference begging for the case.
Nessel used her press conference to inject doubt into the minds of Kent County residents as to whether Becker could handle the case, stating that: “We would take it if he referred it to us.”
In the same presser, Nessel also claimed she personally extended an offer to Becker to take the case, though later that day Becker claimed no offer from the AG’s office was ever made.
“This is not our first (police officer shooting incident); the AG has never offered to do any other one, not sure why things would change now,” Becker wrote in an email.
Ultimately, Becker decided his office would handle the investigation.
In the Lyoya case, Nessel offered the Republican county prosecutor a back-handed compliment: “It’s not that I don’t trust Prosecutor Becker, you know,” but she then extolled her own office’s ability to more credibly and judiciously investigate the shooting.
Her pleas for the case got more desperate as she sent up signal flares to the left-wing activists when she—the state’s highest law enforcement officer—separated herself from the police: “We don’t have those types of relationships where we have to work one-on-one with local police.”
Furthermore, she referred to the optics of Becker’s handling of the case as “not good” and gave a nebulous but ominous, “I assume he will do the right thing.”
This unnecessary presser was meant to accomplish two things: to make her the face of the progressive social-justice movement in Michigan and to put the screws on Becker.
Becker was one of a handful of elected Republicans in Kent County at the time of the shooting, with the political landscape shifting more toward the Democrats in every subsequent election.
The prosecutor found himself on a political tightrope: a Republican in an increasingly blue county, in the aftermath of a white police officer shooting and killing a black man, and in a city overrun with left-wing agitators, national media, and race hustlers inflaming the trauma.
The police video showed Lyoya resisted, fought with, and was attempting to wrestle Schurr’s taser away from him. With no other options available, Shurr was forced to shoot Lyoya to end the fight. Schurr’s life was clearly in grave danger.
Fast forward three years, and Schurr’s first trial has ended. Becker won re-election, and Kent County has drifted even further Democrat, with Kamala Harris winning it by five points over Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Think about that for a moment. Had Becker not charged Schurr, would he retain his elected seat as the county’s top law enforcement officer?
We’ll never know, but we do know this: The political landscape has shifted under Nessel’s feet and she seems poised to distance herself from any involvement in the case, so much so that Dickson’s mention of her name alongside Patrick Lyoya’s garners a response.
Our incompetent lame-duck attorney general keeps distancing herself from controversy. Just this past week, she also dropped charges on the Free Palestine wack jobs at the University of Michigan who were camping and wouldn’t leave during a police raid.
Metro Detroit police officers in various cities have been watching this case like hawks and are deeply concerned.
A veteran detective with the Metro Detroit police department said of Becker: “It’s unfortunate he was pressured by Democrats and their activist class into trying this case, and it will only stain and burden the relationship between the county prosecutor’s office and the various police departments in Kent County. Michigan’s high-heeled liberals heavily influenced Christopher Becker’s actions in this case.”
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
