By Christina Hall and L.L. Brasier
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT — Michigan law enforcement agencies are returning donated surplus military equipment to the federal government this month — including tracked armored vehicles that metro Detroit sheriff’s offices have had for more than a decade— under orders of the White House, and they are not happy about it.
“It really upsets me. We have a great asset. We have not abused it, and in just a blanket order we can no longer have it,” Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham said of the tracked armored vehicle his office has had for its SWAT team since 2004. “Look what’s happening around the country — mass shootings, barricaded gunman. An armored vehicle gives law enforcement the upper hand.”
But Friday, that piece of now-stripped equipment will get picked up and hauled away, supposedly to a Department of Defense military training range to use as a more realistic target for aviators and ground forces. Next week, Wickersham plans to ask Macomb County commissioners whether he can roll over about $350,000 in savings from his office from this fiscal year to next fiscal year to buy a wheeled vehicle as a replacement.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office was to lose its vehicle Wednesday and Wayne County Sheriff’s Office is to return its vehicle Dec. 7. The three offices are among 15 law enforcement agencies in Michigan affected by the recall after an executive order signed by President Barack Obama earlier this year.
Other agencies that must return items are: Barry, Berrien, Calhoun, Muskegon and Washtenaw county sheriff’s offices and East Lansing, Gaines Township, Highland Park, Holland, Lansing, Niles and Saginaw police departments, according to Susan Lowe, public affairs specialist with Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees the federal surplus program.
During his annual State of the County address on Wednesday, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said that after a mass shooting in California killed at least 14 people Wednesday, he heard Obama say on the radio that there are ways to make America safer. Hackel urged Obama that if he wanted to make first responders safer “first thing tomorrow morning rescind that order.”
Since 2006, Michigan authorities have received more than $40 million worth of surplus military equipment, including 17 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles or MRAPs, under the program, which is designed to beef up law enforcement agencies with equipment no longer needed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The equipment ranges from rifles to helicopters to flashlights and first aid kits.
But in an abrupt change in policy, Obama ordered that certain types of vehicles, in particular those armored personnel carriers that move on tracks, be returned, an apparent effort to tamp down criticism in the days following last year’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., that police have become too militarized.
“This administration has done an about-face on supporting law enforcement,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. “As a result,” he said, “America is less prepared for a variety of situations,” like the attacks in Paris.
“We’re actually taking away a proven asset from law enforcement all over the country, destroying on many levels our ability to handle a very big situation, any situation like Paris,” Bouchard said. “Those are going to be handled by the local police and this is the type of equipment needed.”
The images in Ferguson — a police force dressed in full combat gear and riding around in armored vehicles —prompted a nationwide call to end the militarization of police and all or part of the federal surplus program known as the 1033 program.
A report released last summer by the American Civil Liberties Union found that police departments nationwide were increasingly using military tactics and weapons for such routine matters as serving search warrants, sometimes with deadly and tragic results.
Among incidents cited in the report was the 2012 death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7, of Detroit, who was struck by a bullet from an officer’s gun as she slept on a couch during a Detroit police raid. Police in SWAT gear used a flash-bang grenade in that raid, too. They were looking for a murder suspect, who was found in the upper level of the duplex and surrendered without incident.
The ACLU urged the federal government to rein in incentives for police to militarize and wanted the government to track the use of military equipment in police hands, among other recommendations.
But Bouchard said that the equipment is too often portrayed by the media and White House as military assault weapons, when in truth, the tracked vehicles are not equipped with weapons, and are used to enter dangerous conditions as a large “safe box.”
“All of this is being driven by perception, not reality,” Bouchard said.
Oakland County, which tends to be affluent, purchased its own armored tracked vehicle in recent years, using federal grant money. The same kind of vehicle was used in Colorado Springs last week to break down the front doors of a Planned Parenthood clinic, rescue citizens, and force the gunman there to surrender.
Oakland County also is being asked to return 16 bayonets, used by the county for ceremonial purposes, like funerals and honor guards. “Apparently, they thought they were too threatening,” Undersheriff Michael McCabe said.
Congresswoman Candice Miller, a Harrison Township Republican representing the 10th District, called the give-back plan “beyond ridiculous.”
“I have been a longtime supporter of efforts that ensure our first responders have the resources they need to keep our communities safe. For the president and many of his liberal supporters to make a concerted effort to disarm them is beyond ridiculous,” she said in an e-mail to the Free Press. “It hinders our first responders’ ability to do their jobs as effectively as we need them to. I have hosted a seminar for all the first responders in my district to be aware of and to avail themselves of DoD equipment through their surplus equipment program, which is where Macomb County’s MRAP tank came from. This surplus equipment has already been paid for by taxpayers, and they should continue to benefit from it.”
Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties each got a tracked armored vehicle in 2004, Wickersham said, with the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office using its vehicle for its SWAT team and hostage or barricaded gunmen situations. He said the vehicle — now stripped of its decals and added battering ram and hydraulic arm that could reach a second story — was used more than “a dozen or so times.”
Wayne County Undersheriff Daniel Pfannes said the sheriff’s office never had to use its vehicle during his tenure, which started in 2007. He said the vehicles were only to be used in a defensive posture — not an offensive one — to protect officers and evacuate citizens.
Obama’s executive order includes the recall of bayonets, grenade launchers and tracked armored vehicles that were distributed to law enforcement agencies through the federal surplus program.
Lowe said the order also applies to all federal agencies that support law enforcement agencies through grants or excess property transfer. Those agencies include the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury and Interior and the General Services Administration.
The order took effect Oct.1 and agencies have until April 1 to return the items, Lowe said.
She said that there also is a prohibited list of items that agencies cannot use government funds to buy. Equipment on that list includes tracked armored vehicles; weaponized aircraft, vessels and vehicles; .50-caliber firearms and ammunition; bayonets; camouflage uniforms, and grenade launchers.
She said that agencies returning tracked armored vehicles can ask to be put at the top of the list to obtain an MRAP, but it is unknown how long it will take to get such a vehicle.
Wickersham said he can’t wait for an MRAP to become available. He said he tried to get another wheeled vehicle through Homeland Security to replace the tracked one the office is losing but that fell through.
He said there will be no way he can try to pay for a replacement vehicle before the end of this fiscal calendar year, so on Dec. 9 he plans to ask county commissioners if he can use savings from the sheriff’s office 2015 budget to next year buy a wheeled armored vehicle, which is estimated to cost about $330,000.
Pfannes questioned why there was a rush in getting the equipment returned and why authorities couldn’t keep what they have until another vehicle through the surplus becomes available. He said Wayne County hasn’t decided whether it is going to ask for an MRAP, but it can’t afford to buy a replacement vehicle.
“It is a sad state of affairs. The taxpayers already paid for the equipment we had. I think it’s rather sad if we had a new vehicle. Taxpayers pay twice,” he said. “These things are not cheap.”
Copyright 2015 the Detroit Free Press