They have guns, wear badges and patrol Michigan’s streets.


They're even in uniform. But they’re not real cops.


Across Michigan, police departments have enlisted civilians to work alongside licensed officers to patrol communities and even assist real cops with arrests. But unlike the regular officers licensed by the state, these armed civilians are unregulated.

Thus begins an investigative report in the Detroit Free Press, sounding eerily familiar to a theme investigated by the Ludington Torch shortly after reserve LPD officer Ryan Cox became mayor and had the distinction in his two public offices of being not only a supervisor of himself, but also in the position to fire the police chief and be fired by the police chief.  The article continues:

There are no state-established training requirements for reserve officers, as they are commonly known; no standards for screening their qualifications, and no process for monitoring their conduct. The state agency responsible for police licensing and training is not regulating reserve officers — despite gaining authority last year to do just that — and has no idea how many such unlicensed volunteers there are statewide.  This lack of oversight continues despite numerous incidents of questionable — even illegal — conduct by reserve officers in recent years.

The Free Press investigation also found:


-- There are about 3,000 unlicensed civilians supplementing the ranks of law enforcement agencies across Michigan, based on information compiled by the newspaper through Freedom of Information Act requests filed last year. Most are considered reserves or auxiliary officers, but the newspaper also identified other unlicensed civilians, such as members of sheriff’s posses and mounted and marine units. It is believed to be the first such accounting of this group of officers.


-- Michigan has fallen behind other states that have already implemented standards for reserve officers. The responsibility to set training requirements in Michigan falls to MCOLES, the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards — but the agency has no immediate plans to take on such a task, despite gaining the authority to do so nearly two years ago.


-- Responsibilities of these civilians, who are mostly unpaid volunteers, vary widely — from serving as the partners of licensed cops on patrol to riding horses in parades in units that are, generally, ceremonial.

The article continues by stressing that many reserve officers are put into situations where they must make a quick decision that they may not be trained for.  They point out several instances nationally when the lack of training by these officers led to bad consequences:

A former reserve deputy in Oklahoma was convicted after a 2015 incident in which he said he confused his handgun for his Taser and fatally shot an unarmed man who was at his feet. Also this year, a California teacher who moonlighted as a reserve officer accidentally fired a gunshot inside of a high school classroom while teaching about public safety and an Indiana reserve officer was booted from the force after initiating a controversial arrest at an apartment complex where he worked as a security guard.

And while MCOLES has abrogated its authority to establish minimal standards for these officers for two years, and has no immediate plans to begin the task, they minimize the outrage of why places like Oakley are allowed to field 100 reserve officers for a community of 300 individuals. 

Perhaps the greatest revelation of the Freep article and research through FOIA is their fairly comprehensive list of the amount of civilian officers are on each department and sheriff's office in Michigan, except for the few who denied the FOIA request for such information (who probably are the worst abusers).  Ludington was found to have 12 civilian officers, not unexpected since this was the number back when the LT investigated the issue in 2014. 

What is unexpected in this list is the disparity between departments and offices in maintaining a roster of reserves.  Well populated Ingham County has only a dozen civilian officers in its sheriff department, while Mason County, with less than a tenth of the population, has 30 unregulated citizen deputies filling the squad cars.

Wasn't that the same sheriff's office campaigning and winning a millage raising over half of a million dollars each year to get additional patrols out in the county?  They never told us that they had a secret militia of 30 civilians ready-- to strap on a badge, a uniform, a gun, and whatever else gives them courage and pseudo-authority-- to drop what they're doing when their police radio goes off.  

Provided they give four of those reservists the full-time jobs provided by the millage, fear not, for the sheriff will still have 26 citizens-on-call to do whatever-the hell-they're-doing, and even if they do not replace those numbers or grow even further than 30 in number, they will still bolster the road patrol units by around 200%.   And outside of their fraternity, nobody seems to know who they all are or any of their qualifications that allows them to perform law enforcement duties.

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Unregulated police reserves.  That's a Scarry Halloween story.

In Mason County we have up to 43 people dressing up as law officers when it's not Halloween (that includes Scottville's one reserve officer).  Happy Halloween, be sure to light your torch on the porch for the ghosts and goblins tonight.

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