They look like cops but lack the oversight
Michigan police enlist, arm and empower civilians to help officers, but who are they?
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. Unlike the regular officers licensed by the state, these armed civilians are unregulated.
A Detroit Free Press investigation found 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 does not regulate reserve officers – despite gaining authority last year to do so – and doesn’t know how many unlicensed volunteers there are statewide.
The lack of oversight continues despite incidents of questionable – even illegal – conduct by reserve officers in recent years.
The Free Press found, among other problems, a convicted felon who could not legally carry a gun patrolled as an armed reserve police officer; the former leader of a hate group volunteered as a reserve officer with western Michigan police
agencies; and a Flint reserve officer was convicted after running a vigilante force that once illegally detained teens, holding them at gunpoint.
There are about 3,000 unlicensed civilians supplementing the ranks of law enforcement agencies across Michigan, based on information compiled by the Free Press through Freedom of Information Act requests filed last year.
Michigan has fallen behind other states that implemented standards for reserve officers. The responsibility to set training requirements in Michigan falls to the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards – but the agency has no immediate plans to take on such a task.
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 ceremonial units.
Badge and authority
Many reserve officers serve the public well, helping out with traffic control and crowd security and even go on patrol with real cops. It is common for police departments in Michigan to require reserve officers to go through some kind of training, but typically, it is not up to the level of a licensed officer.
“You have a person carrying a gun who can take someone’s life in the right circumstances, someone who has a badge and authority, who can take away their personal freedoms against the Constitution,” said David Harvey, former executive director of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, who successfully lobbied the Legislature before his retirement to grant the commission the authority to set standards for reserves. “That’s a lot of power, just as much as a doctor has when they have a scalpel leaning over you. You wouldn’t have an untrained person opening up your gut.”
The law granting authority to regulate reserve cops went into effect Jan. 2, 2017. Commission officials have been deluged by other responsibilities, including analyzing the work licensed cops across Michigan perform, Executive Director Tim Bourgeois said.
“I think there’s a feeling that the way reserves are being used is not necessarily uniform across the state,” Bourgeois said.
Many other states, including Nevada and California, have rules that govern how much authority reserve officers have and how many hours of training they are required to go through before they can patrol communities.
Some agencies use reserves primarily for tasks such as directing traffic and working security at events. Others partner reserve officers with licensed cops to do patrols, go on raids, assist on investigations and help make arrests.
Reserves do not have law enforcement authority unless they are paired with a licensed officer who does.
Twice, Barry Township, a rural community about 20 miles northwest of Battle Creek, gave John Raterink a badge and made him a reserve officer. He was a special deputy with the Barry County Sheriff ’s posse for a while, too.
This despite Raterink’s history as the former leader of an organization deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
For a few years, the Free Press found, Raterink led the Michigan chapter of the national Council of Conservative Citizens, which, according to its statement of principles, opposes the “mixture of the races,” “presence of homosexuals and women in the military services” and “massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States.”
Raterink did not respond to a telephone message last month.
Records show Raterink was a member of the Barry Township reserve police officer force in 2014 when it was disbanded after residents questioned the training standards, the need for up to 35 reserve officers in a town of 850 people and the aggressive arrest of a bar owner – an arrest Raterink helped make.
‘Living in an armed camp’
In 2014, Jack Nadwornik faced a twoyear felony for resisting arrest outside Tujax Tavern, a bar he owned for three decades.
Nadwornik was celebrating his birthday with friends and urinated in a corner of his parking lot about 3 a.m.
Police broke Nadwornik’s hand, kneed him and bloodied his knees. Two of the three officers who arrested him were unpaid reserves. One of them was Raterink.
After public outrage over the bar owner’s treatment, Nadwornik pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. The police chief resigned, and the reserve force was eliminated.
Nadwornik sued and won a settlement, which he would not disclose in an interview. He said the reserve police force was out of control.
“You basically had people that were effectively untrained, driving vehicles, carrying weapons, doing what they wanted,” he said. “A lot of us had the feeling of living in an armed camp.”
According to Barry Township board meeting minutes, Raterink and other reserve officer candidates went through background checks and interviews and all “met the criteria to become Barry Twp. Reserve Police officers.”
As the conduct of reserve officers made headlines around Michigan, the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards pushed for legislation that would give it the authority to set standards for reserve officers.
“I think it’s really important that we have a minimum level of standards when you put somebody out there representing law enforcement,” said state Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, R-Lawton, who sponsored the legislation.
Nevada requires that people who want to be reserve officers pass a background check, a fitness test and complete 120 hours of training in subjects including constitutional law, probable cause, juvenile law, arrest powers, search and seizure, domestic violence, child abuse, ethics and firearms. There are annual requirements to meet after the original certification.
The standards are important, said Tim Bunting, deputy director of the Nevada Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, because a reserve officer can look just like a regular cop.
“He’s still wearing a uniform representing that agency,” he said. “In a lot of people’s eyes, they see a reserve, they see a peace officer. They don’t differentiate.”
“That’s a lot of power, just as much as a doctor has when they have a scalpel leaning over you. You wouldn’t have an untrained person opening up your gut.”
David Harvey Former executive director of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards