OFF BEAT: Insurer takes small-town police force to task over training
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A township police force in Michigan recently faced losing its insurance coverage if it didn’t improve training of its three dozen unpaid — but armed — volunteer deputies and restrict them to special events, according to news reports.
According to The Hastings Banner newspaper, the Michigan Township Participating Plan, which insures the Barry Township Police Department, gave the township until November to provide inexperienced volunteers police academy training and subsequent in-house departmental training, in addition to complying with driver-training requirements before they could be authorized to operate township vehicles, among other restrictions.
Of the force’s numerous volunteers, only five had pervious law enforcement training, the newspaper reported.
The threat from the insurer convinced officials to suspend the reserve program. But that hasn’t been enough to keep Barry Township Police Chief Victor Pierce out of Dutch with local residents over his department’s allegedly heavy-handed tactics in the quiet township of 3,900 in central Michigan, according to reports in the Detroit Free Press.
In addition to the township’s modest number of four, full-time officers, Chief Pierce had recruited 36 unpaid deputies on top of procuring two Humvees and two armored personnel carriers from the U.S. Department of Defense, the newspaper reported — perhaps a little too much show of force for a department headquartered in one room in Delton, Michigan, about 150 miles west of the Canadian border.
In the end, Chief Pierce may face a bigger challenge than threats to his department’s insurance coverage: After public outcry and heated debate — both for and against his tactics — the township board has agreed to conduct a review of his performance Thursday evening, according to the Free Press.
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