Michigan law enforcement on alert in response to ‘plan to target and kill police’
DETROIT – Michigan law enforcement is on high alert after the FBI revealed an alleged plot by extremist groups to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also involved a “plan to target and kill police.”
“We’re cautious. We’re absolutely more careful,” said First Lt. Mike Shaw of the Michigan State Police. “This is one of the tactics these antigovernment, domestic terrorism groups use. Law enforcement is the face of the government. if you’re mad at the government, you’re mad at the police.”
The alleged plot was unveiled last Thursday when the U.S. Department of Justice charged six men with conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer, which authorities said they wanted to carry out before Election Day. On the same day, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel brought charges against seven other men that included supporting terrorism, gang membership, and possession of a firearm in commission of a felony.
Officials said the suspects were attempting to trigger “civil war” with a detailed plan to abduct the governor and attack other elected officials at the Statehouse. Part of the plot included plans to target police.
FBI Special Agent Richard J. Trask II cited the risk to law enforcement officers in a criminal complaint filed last Tuesday in U.S. District Court:
“The militia group had already been brought to the attention of the FBI by a local police department in March 2020 when members of the militia group were attempting to obtain the addresses of local law enforcement officers,” the filing says. “At the time, the FBI interviewed a member of the militia group who was concerned about the group’s plan to target and kill police officers and that person agreed to become a CHS (confidential human source).”
Shaw and others said the police are on high alert as risk continues to evolve beyond traffic stops and sitting in police cars to getting fake calls for service and targeting police when they’re out of uniform.
State Police are constantly evaluating the credibility of threats against troopers and facilities and taking measures to reduce potential for harm, Shaw said.
Michigan State Police are assigned to protect the governor. Whitmer thanked troopers for their commitment to public service after officials made the arrests in the federal case.
The Free Press interviewed current and former law enforcement officers who said the threat to Michigan police by extremist groups from both ends of the political spectrum are taken seriously and reconnaissance is provided to protect public officials, as well as those guarding them, at home and at work.
Police told the Free Press that family members are rarely informed when individual officers are getting protective detail at home because it would be too unsettling to the family.
Bob Stevenson, a retired police chief in Livonia and now executive director of the Michigan Police Chiefs Association, said: “The threat is always there but this raises it to another level of alarm when you start to target the officers when they’re not in their uniform, not on duty, not working. Now they’re tracking you.”
However, police have been good at identifying the threats in real time and neutralizing them, Stevenson said.
“When I was a police officer and working undercover in narcotics, I got notified by the FBI that there was a contract out on me by people I had arrested.”
But the threat presented by antigovernment groups is very real and a little bit different because of its scope, its impersonal and may involve people trained in weapons use.
“I’ve never seen any training, where it’s a right extremist group, and they’re not going to target law enforcement,” Stevenson said. “In our training, we view all extremist groups as dangerous. A (2010) case involving the Hutaree militia, they planned to kill police and attack officers at the funerals. We’re not under the illusion that because someone’s politics are left or right that they’re not dangerous.”
Living in a free society comes with freedoms and increased opportunity to do harm, he said.
Javed Ali, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Trump administration and now teaching at the University of Michigan in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, said the fact set related to the Whitmer kidnapping case is “brazen.”
“According to the affidavit, they went from being a law-abiding group of gun owners and forming a local militia to beliefs that switched to something more dangerous and sinister,” Ali told the Free Press. “Officer safety is absolutely a consideration. By trying to collect (home) addresses for individual law enforcement, it appears they were trying to prepare ‘targeting packages’ on those officers.’”