Tyler Tice, 28, was stopped by Center Line Public Safety officers in Center Line, Michigan, on July 9 and ended up on the ground, tased and charged with resisting. More than three months later, his criminal case still turns on a question the bodycam video cannot answer by itself: whether officers had a lawful reason to pull him over. On Oct. 14, City Manager Dennis Champine confirmed the city had received a complaint from Tice and his mother, Erika Morgan, and opened an internal affairs investigation.
C&G Newspapers reported that the stop began over an alleged red light at Stephens Road and Van Dyke Avenue, with Tice alone in the car. The Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office charged him with resisting. His attorney, Derek Miller, disputes that Tice ran the light and says officers lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him. Miller and Morgan told Fox 2 Detroit that Tice has no criminal record, and Miller says he had a valid license and registration, no warrants and nothing illegal in the car. Miller calls the stop “predatory.”
What the bodycam video shows, according to Fox 2
Fox 2, which received the bodycam video from Miller, reported that an officer repeatedly tells Tice to put his hands on the steering wheel and later to step out of the car. An officer grabs a lanyard around his neck as the struggle grows physical, and Tice, standing with officers holding his arms, yells for help before he is taken to the ground and tased. Fox 2 reported that a gun was drawn during the stop. Miller says the sergeant had his weapon out the whole time. Miller says Tice has ADHD and needed extra time to process commands, and Morgan described her son to Fox 2 as neurodivergent.
Back at the Center Line Police Department, Fox 2 reported, the video appears to show officers removing the Taser probes and discussing keeping one as a souvenir. About five minutes after that exchange, according to the station, officers learned that Tice’s license and insurance were valid and that he had no warrants. Morgan told Fox 2 she wants the sergeant charged criminally, not only sued civilly.
Center Line’s police chief twice declined Fox 2’s request for an interview and referred the station to the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office, which declined to comment. In the coverage I reviewed, the department has not given a public account of the stop, and neither report names the officers.
A resisting charge depends on a lawful stop
Michigan’s resisting statute, MCL 750.81d, makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison and a $2,000 fine to resist, obstruct or oppose a person the individual knows or has reason to know is performing his or her duties. The statute defines “obstruct” to include “a knowing failure to comply with a lawful command.” The defense lives in two of those words, knowing and lawful.
On lawful, the Michigan Supreme Court held in People v. Moreno (2012) that the statute did not erase the common-law right to resist unlawful police conduct, and that prosecutors must establish the officers’ actions were lawful. Moreno involved a warrantless police entry, so how it applies to a traffic stop is for the judge in Tice’s case to decide.
The only reason reported for this stop is a red light, which under MCL 257.612 is a civil infraction. Under Whren v. United States (1996), probable cause of a traffic violation is enough to justify a stop whatever the officer’s motive, so if a judge finds the light was red, the stop stands. It also would carry the order to step out of the car: Pennsylvania v. Mimms (1977) lets officers order a driver out once a vehicle has been lawfully stopped for a traffic violation. If the stop fails, the order fails with it. If it holds, the fight shifts to what Tice knew and did in the seconds that followed, which is what the video is for. Michigan’s statutes also make short jumps from civil infraction to felony elsewhere, as in an earlier Auto Wire report on a Grand Blanc Township missing-plate stop that turned into a chase to Flint.
The defense motion aimed at the police report
Miller has filed a motion for a Franks hearing, C&G reported, to challenge statements in the police report, which he says wrongly describes Tice as driving erratically. Under Franks v. Delaware (1978), a defendant gets a hearing by making a substantial preliminary showing that the affiant included a false statement knowingly, intentionally or with reckless disregard for the truth, and that the statement was necessary to the finding of probable cause. A bare denial is not enough. The defense has to point to the specific passages and offer proof. Franks itself involved a search-warrant affidavit, and C&G does not say how the Center Line court will treat a motion aimed at a police report.
Miller told C&G he hopes to get the charge dismissed before a preliminary exam and has asked for more video, including another officer’s bodycam footage and dashcam footage covering the time before the stop. That footage is the kind of evidence that would show how Tice was driving. Fox 2 reported a preliminary hearing in August without giving its outcome, and C&G reported a probable cause conference at the 37th District Court’s Center Line location without giving a date. The case is open.
The city investigates itself
Champine said Morgan’s complaint alleges Center Line Public Safety officers violated Tice’s Fourth Amendment rights. Miller welcomed the investigation but asked the city to hand it to the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office or Michigan State Police, because, he said, the whole department seemed to be at the scene. He also said the city should have acted sooner, since it knew what happened in July. No findings or timeline for the review have been reported.
What to watch next is the court’s ruling on the Franks motion and whatever the investigation concludes. If the judge finds the stop unlawful, the resisting charge loses its footing, and the video of what came after becomes the center of the complaint.
A red light is a civil infraction. What would have to be true about a driver before you’d accept an officer drawing a gun?