UPSET TO LOSE FEDERAL GRANT

Will Loss Eliminate Full-Time Drug Enforcement Team?

ESCANABA -- A federal grant which provided funding for drug
enforcement agencies in Michigan such as the Upper Peninsula Substance
Enforcement Team (UPSET), will be pulled, effective this fall. Local
law enforcement officials are concerned a lack of funding will
eliminate full-time drug enforcement and will increase local drug problems.

The Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant is a federal program which
has funded state multi-jurisdictional drug enforcement teams, such as
UPSET, for more than 20 years.

Escanaba Public Safety Director and UPSET Board Chairman James Hansen
explained UPSET exists to discover and eliminate the source of drugs
in the Upper Peninsula. UPSET focuses specifically on exposing drug
deals, trafficking and cases in which mass quantities of drugs are
involved. Hansen said the kind of complex, undercover work involved in
this takes time regular uniform officers do not have.

"Street officers do a certain amount of drug interdiction, but you
need the concept teams to develop conspiracy cases and you can't do
those investigations with uniform personnel," said Hansen. "It
requires full-time investigations and confidential
informants."

Hansen explained for UPSET to exist, law enforcement agencies have to
be willing to deploy one of their officers to the team and would
require funding to replace these officers. Escanaba Public Safety and
the Delta County Sheriff's Department have both deployed officers to
UPSET, and in the past, have been reimbursed 50 percent of the cost to
do so.

Hansen said providing "bodies" to these kinds of teams has become a
struggle in recent years.

"Since Sept. 11, there are roughly 16,000 fewer police officers in the
state of Michigan. Deployment has become a challenge as well as funding."

In recent years, the funds from the Byrne grant have decreased from
the original 50 percent to around 44 percent, as a result of
inflation. This year (since Oct. 2007) funding is at an all time low,
only 67 percent of the original number, said Hansen.

The struggle to get the funds to support drug enforcement agencies
like UPSET has existed for years, but Hansen said, fortunately, there
were at least a few federal legislators who always stood by the need
for the Byrne Grant.

"Byrne has been in jeopardy for the last eight years or so," said
Hansen. "Every year we've had the threat of its reduction or
disappearance but every year it's been saved by various
legislators."

This year, however, the grant could not be saved. Beginning, Oct. 1,
money from the Byrne grant will be virtually non-existent in Michigan,
which means state police and municipal agencies will be on their own
in covering the cost of providing officers to drug enforcement teams.

For rural areas like the Upper Peninsula, lack of personnel and a
smaller tax base will make this near-impossible, local officials believe.

Delta County Sheriff Gary Ballweg believes the Upper Peninsula has a
greater need of funding than Michigan's metropolitan areas.

"My opinion is that we are in greater need because metropolitan areas
have many large police departments to draw from," he said. "Here,
agencies only have one to 20 officers. Village and city and county
agencies cannot afford to send an officer to teams like this."

Hansen's projected outlook on the future of drug enforcement agencies
in the area is bleak.

"We don't know whether UPSET will survive," he said. "I don't know of
anything that can save it. It's a done deal."

Hansen fears the consequences of not having a full-time drug
enforcement agency in the area. "I can't even imagine what would
happen to the area in terms of drug problems without UPSET," he said.

Ballweg said the lack of a drug enforcement team might even worsen the
drug problems that already exist.

"Because we are a rural area, people take opportunity in that...people
might take advantage that there's little or no law enforcement team,"
he said.

Hansen said UPSET has been instrumental in discovering drug sources in
and coming into the area.

According to statistics, in 2007 UPSET was credited with initiating
289 drug complaints and seizing a total of $1,120,286 worth of
purchased controlled substances. The team made 236 arrest which varied
from the manufacturing methamphetamine, to conspiracy to deal cocaine,
to the delivery of heroin.

Hansen said some of the cases put together by UPSET were serious
enough to be dealt with at the federal level, which he believes only
further illustrates the need for a continuing drug enforcement agency
in the area.

"What we're seeing here in the the U.P. is a large increase in heroin,
crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and prescription drugs," said Hansen.

"There's been an increase in federal cases involving multiple players,
large amounts of drugs, and conspiracy."

The problem of prescription drug abuse has become an issue in the
area. Hansen expressed his concerns with the problem, the "massive
quantity of prescription drugs that exists," and what a lack of
funding for drug enforcement would result in.