GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A five-year court battle over Grand Rapids police taking photos and fingerprints of teens not carrying identification finally appears to be done.

A sate Court of Appeals panel ruled this week that the Fourth Amendment rights of the teens was not violated when they were detained and officers, in separate incidents, took photos and fingerprints of the youth.

The cases have been in the courts since 2014, but the police encounters happened in August 2011 and May 2012.

They involved the 2011 stop of Denishio Johnson, then 15, after witnesses reported seeing him looking into vehicle windows as if he intended to steal items. Police found Johnson sitting under a tree and he told officers he was waiting for a friend to arrive on a bus.

He was detained in handcuffs for five or 10 minutes and then released.

The other incident happened in 2012 with the stop of teen Keyon Harrison near Lake Drive SE and East Fulton Street.

Grand Rapids police Capt. Curt VanderKooi saw the teen hand another boy what appeared to be a large model train engine. VanderKooi thought it was suspicious and detained the teen. Harrison told him he was simply returning the train following a school project.

In this weeks court ruling, the state Supreme Court asked the Court of Appeals to determine whether taking photos and fingerprints violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the teens, who were never charged with any crime.

The court panel noted that past case law allows for fingerprinting as there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in ones fingerprints.

The judges also said that attorneys for the teens had conceded that their clients were validly detained, a crucial point.

Because we conclude that the P&Ps (photos and prints) did not infringe on plaintiffs Fourth Amendment protections (given that, as plaintiffs concede, they were validly detained) we further conclude that plaintiffs have failed to satisfy their burden of demonstrating that the custom or policy at issue here, i.e., the photographing and printing of individuals during an investigatory stop based on reasonable suspicion but without probable cause, was unconstitutional, according to Thursdays opinion.

Grand Rapids police in 2017, prior to then-Chief David Rahinskys retirement, said they were no longer doing photos and prints as a routine matter and would only be used if someone showed highly suspicious" behavior.

Police said they wanted to improve and better align our services with community expectations with the change.

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Rights not violated when police took photos and fingerprints of detained teens: court - MLive.com