ROGERS CITY — The discovery of a meth lab near Hawks last week, has spurred more talks about the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team’s presence in Presque Isle County.

A member of HUNT, Detective Sgt. Scott Wood, and Undersheriff Joe Brewbaker attended the Presque Isle County Board of Commissioners meeting Friday to discuss the possibility of providing the organization with an officer presence in the county.

“Without getting into the specifics of the case, basically one of our deputies up here was out on an unrelated complaint to this residence and made some observations, passed it on to another deputy who has past narcotics training downstate, who got a hold of us, Wood said. “We worked in conjunction with the sheriff’s department and within a matter of days based on the information the deputies gave us we were able to do our thing up here.”

Thursday evening they executed a search warrant and found the lab, which was about to start to cook meth in addition to previous cooks they’d done in previous months.

Wood said he knows the board has been asked for everything, but it’s extremely important for the team to have someone, an officer on the HUNT team.

“They’re the boots on the ground up here. Sometimes they have the connection with their department,” he said.

They also have connections to the community members, which means they’re more comfortable to talk with someone they know, he said.

“Those guys were cooking inside of his mom’s house. There was a lot of hazardous waste that goes with that,” Wood said. “It is so important to have someone from the community on our team.”

It provides the team with more information and flexibility, he said.

“This problem is not going away,” Wood said.

He said HUNT is leading northern Michigan with the number of meth labs right now.

Board Chairman Carl Altman asked Wood if it’s better to have someone be part-time or full-time.

Wood said they need a full-time person.

“I’ve got a small team,” he said. “I’ve got six man team right now. I’ve got work for 16 guys right now, and it’s just increasing.”

Brewbaker said the county has had two heroin arrests just this past week in Rogers City.

Commissioner Stephen Lang said the finance committee should take a look at and see what it can do.

This year the county pledged $8,000 to HUNT to help fight narcotics issues.

“I’ll say we’ll commit to talking about it and looking at it from a budget standpoint,” Altman said.

Jordan Spence can be reached via email at jspence@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5687.