The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Increasingly, Michigan police agencies are ignoring jurisdictional boundaries and working together to nab sex offenders and other criminals whose violations recognize no borders.
Sheriffs departments in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties already are sharing information on Internet crime suspects and now are considering at least three more cooperative ventures to save money and fight crime.
The plans are the latest effort around the state and nation to bring speed and efficiency to fighting crime without spending more tax dollars.
“The bottom line is our resources are shrinking, and now is the time to become more efficient by sharing resources,” said Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano.
He recently pitched a plan for a regional jail.
“Regionalism doesn’t mean higher taxes,” Ficano told The Detroit News for a story Sunday. “It means delivering better services for less money.”
For Kevin Hultgren, it means three counts of illegal use of the Internet. Wayne County deputies, armed with information from Macomb deputies, arrested the 39-year-old Lincoln Park man, who is now free on bond pending a court date March 26.
Police said he was waiting outside a Detroit bookstore to pick up the 14-year-old girl he thought he met in an Internet chat room.
“If the Internet units were not communicating, we would not have been able to build as strong of a case,” Wayne County sheriffs spokesman John Roach said.
The case led to more cooperation and encouraged Internet investigators from all three counties to talk nearly every day about cases and potential leads, Roach said.
In the next two months, Macomb’s Internet investigators will start working under one roof with a similar team from the FBI, giving all three counties access to cases and leads developed at the federal level.
“We’ve always been territorial,” Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans said. “This is really an evolution that hasn’t occurred before. “But its really just refocusing what you’re doing, and you wind up with better results for the same amount of money.”
Some plans may never leave the drawing board because of costs and complications, but for the first time in recent memory the sheriffs from Wayne, Oakland and Macomb now meet at least once a month to discuss regional strategies.
Successful efforts within counties are encouraging police departments to pool resources more frequently. The Fugitive Apprehension Service Team, or FAST, has teamed Detroit police officers with Wayne County deputies and officers from Livonia and Taylor to arrest 3,200 fugitives in 13 months. The unit catches about four times as many fugitives than previous individual efforts did.
Evans said he wants to link that unit to similar sheriffs teams in Macomb and Oakland. The three teams now work together once a year for three days, serving warrants in all three counties.
Otherwise, police rarely cross county lines to serve warrants, meaning hundreds of felony fugitives are on the loose because they are wanted for crimes somewhere other than their home county.
“Criminals don’t understand boundaries, and they don’t care about crossing jurisdictions,” said Detroit Sgt. Javier Chapa, a FAST team leader. “We should be working together more often.”