News File Photo Detective Lt. Stuart Sharp, commander of the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team, is pictured in October 2021.

ALPENA — Cases involving methamphetamine continue to spike as the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team struggles with manpower, according to HUNT’s latest annual report.

Meth — a powerful, highly addictive stimulant with dangerous side effects — made up 76% of all HUNT drug cases last year, compared to 23% of cases in 2018, according to the drug-fighting agency’s annual reports.

But HUNT in 2022 worked the smallest number of cases in at least five years as staffing shortages at its partner agencies led to fewer hours dedicated to HUNT activities, according to the latest report.

Prior to the onset of COVID-19, HUNT averaged 11,400 officer hours, Detective Lt. Stuart Sharp, the HUNT team commander, said in his introduction to the 2022 HUNT report.

Last year, that number fell to 8,900 hours.

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HUNT 2022 Annual Report by Justin Hinkley on Scribd

As a result, HUNT worked 46 drug cases and made 50 arrests on a total of 81 charges last year, compared to 70 cases and 117 arrests on 221 charges in 2018.

“The reaction to Covid 19 and the subsequent restrictions negatively affected policing, jails and the court system, backing up cases for several years,” Sharp wrote in the report. “Public perception of policing has deteriorated, social media has erupted with fallacies of abuse of power and the treatment of the public by officers. Many things have come together to create an era where interest in the profession has all but ceased. The inability for our partner agencies to fully staff their departments has inhibited the quantity of investigations, as our manpower is at an all-time low.”

Despite the dip in the quantity of investigations, the quality of investigations remained high, Sharp said in his report.

“Team members have adapted technology, ingenuity and downright tenacity while tackling our never-ending endeavor to disrupt the introduction of narcotics to northeast Michigan,” Sharp wrote. “We have followed drug dealers to Bay City, Saginaw, and Flint all to arrest them on their return to our area. We have partnered with other narcotics groups to interdict shipments, all with great success. A team member traveled to Tennessee to testify at the Federal trial of a subject that attempted to establish a nation-wide drug empire.”

In addition to drug cases, HUNT last year worked nine fugitive cases resulting in 12 arrests and worked four additional cases unrelated to drugs, including assisting other local agencies on a barricaded gunman and a runaway juvenile and working cases on guns, obstruction of justice, and impaired driving.

HUNT is a seven-officer team made up of four officers from the Michigan State Police and one each from the Alpena Police Department, Montmorency County Sheriff’s Office, and Presque Isle County Sheriff’s Office.

Alpena and Alpena, Presque Isle, Montmorency, and Alcona counties each also pay $8,000 a year toward the team and Rogers City contributes $5,000.

Thanks to a federal grant, HUNT’s total base revenue in 2022 was more than $191,000, down from a peak of more than $195,000 in 2019.

Drugs, especially meth, are a serious problem across Northeast Michigan. On a per-capita basis, drug-related arrests here vastly outpace the statewide rate, according to a 2021 News investigation (read The News’ entire investigation at tinyurl.com/ACommunityDisease).

According to the 2022 HUNT report, local meth labs have decreased in recent years — the agency shut down two labs last year — but the drug continues to flow from Mexico to big Michigan cities to Northeast Michigan.

Last year, in addition to 35 meth cases, HUNT also worked three cases each involving cocaine, fentanyl, and gabapentin, and one case each involving heroin and suboxone, according to the annual report. The agency took more than $53,000 worth of drugs off the streets last year.

The agency last year seized 12 firearms, nearly $17,000 in vehicles, and nearly $8,000 in cash.

About half of all HUNT cases were in Alpena, and another 20% were in other parts of Alpena County.