News Photo by Julie Riddle Members of the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team Board of Directors discuss ways to increase awareness of the drug problems faced by local communities — and ways to combat them — at a quarterly meeting Monday.

ALPENA — A palpable sense of urgency filled the room as the Board of Directors of the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team held its quarterly meeting Monday in Alpena.

The board, made up of sheriffs, police chiefs, Michigan State Police representatives, and prosecutors from Alpena, Alcona, Montmorency and Presque Isle counties, oversees the work of a team of undercover agents whose mission is to find and eliminate the source of deadly drugs endangering Northeast Michigan.

Inspector Mike Hahn, assistant commander of the MSP 7th District, gave details about an email template that is being developed as a tool to share information about HUNT’s work with community leaders. Elected officials, school administrators, church and business leaders, organization presidents, and similar individuals who are “people that are responsible for other people,” according to Hahn, will receive news about drug-related criminal activities in their communities, including a link to booking photos.

The intent of the emails, Hahn said, is to enable community leaders to be empowered by information.

“People are going to find out what’s really happening,” Hahn said. “And they’re going to be armed with that, and then they can make those good decisions.”

The leaders of HUNT place a high priority on the communities they serve having their eyes opened to the extent of a problem that’s crucial on both a national and a local level.

Drug overdoses killed more than 72,000 Americans in 2017, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a toll that’s higher than all U.S. military casualties in the Vietnam and Iraq wars combined. Some of those killed by drugs, Hahn said, died right here in northern Michigan.

“We’re the frog in the pan, and it’s getting warmer and warmer,” Hahn said. “Let’s not fall asleep and boil. Let’s take action while we can.”

Alpena is becoming a trafficking hub, according to Hahn, with people from the outlying communities coming to the larger city to purchase illegal drugs and returning to their smaller communities to use and sell them.

Everybody, from law enforcement to community leaders to voters, needs to be organized in their commitment to an attack on the opioid epidemic, Hahn said, “or we’re going to lose.

“There is organization in the drug trafficking world, and they have found the market up here,” Hahn said. “People are no longer driving (downstate) to get that stuff. It’s being brought up here like Gordon Food Service. We have people that are setting up shop, right here in our community.”

A membership subcommittee was formed at the January board meeting to address what the board sees as a crucial issue of understaffing on the HUNT team. The current team size, which is not released by HUNT for safety reasons, is inadequate to provide officer safety as the team confronts a growing opioid crisis.

“We’re not prepared to continue on into 2020 with the staff levels the way they are right now,” Hahn said. “We just can’t have this team so understaffed. Not in the face of this epidemic.”

While arrest statistics appear to indicate far fewer drug busts last year than in 2010, HUNT members are doing work that may not show in the stats but requires resources, officials say.

HUNT works best when the counties it serves commit not only funds but also an officer to serve on the team, Hahn said. Officers who have already gotten to know the community are most effective in strategically stopping drug crime before it happens and in connecting uniformed officers with the undercover work of HUNT, increasing the team’s effectiveness exponentially, Hahn said.

Contributing a full-time HUNT team member is under consideration in Presque Isle County, according to Sheriff Joe Brewbaker. The county currently provides a deputy to HUNT one day a week, along with an annual monetary contribution. A passionate spokesperson for the value of HUNT, Brewbaker has spoken regularly at meetings and events, encouraging the county to consider the value that sponsoring a member of the team could have for the community.

The cost of an officer is really not that much, Brewbaker has told county commissioners, compared to the cost of a multi-million dollar lawsuit after an overdose death because steps were not taken to keep drugs out of the county, or compared the the cost of the lives that could be saved by the proactive step of participating on the HUNT team.

Alcona County, which is currently understaffed in its sheriff’s department, does not supply an officer to HUNT. Voters rejected two recent property tax proposals that would have supplied funding to support a full staff at the sheriff’s department, which county Prosecutor Tom Weichel said will keep the county from being able to provide a team member to HUNT.

“There’s a disconnect,” Weichel said. “When you look at that, it doesn’t make sense that the millage would go down supporting HUNT when people pretty clearly don’t want substance abuse going on in the community.”

“We have unprotected communities,” Hahn said of Alcona and Presque Isle counties, who lack full representation on HUNT. With a problem the size of the drug epidemic finding its way into northern Michigan, “the uniformed officers can’t do it alone.”

In other business, the board reviewed HUNT’s activities of the past quarter, including busts of several significant traffickers. Detective Lt. Stuart Sharp reported on a grant he received to promote messages of self-esteem among high school and junior high girls, who are vulnerable to being victimized and driven to chemical dependency.

First Lt. John Grimshaw of the MSP-Alpena Post shared information about an Alpena Post-sponsored initiative called Hidden in Plain Sight that helps train parents to look for warning signs that their children are abusing drugs or alcohol. Board members voted to set the annual contributions from members at $8,000, which has been pared down from $12,500 in 2015. Sharp also shared information from the 2018 HUNT report, which is available online.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com.