By Chad Livengood
The Detroit News
LANSING, Mich. — Gov. Rick Snyder will announce plans today to put seven state parole officers in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac and Saginaw in an effort to help police agencies in Michigan’s most crime-ridden cities fight escalating violence.
The governor will unveil the initiative during a special address this morning on public safety at Flint City Hall, Snyder spokeswoman Geralyn Lasher told The Detroit News.
The “enhanced parole supervision” initiative is among $15 million in public safety programs Snyder will propose, including $4.5 million for Flint to reopen its city jail and relieve the overcrowded Genesee County Jail and improve the state’s forensics lab to speed up criminal investigations, according to the governor’s office.
Embedded parole officers will work with police agencies in the four cities with the goal of reducing recidivism and catching fugitives, Lasher said.
Starting April 1, four parole officers will be embedded in Detroit Police Department units on the city’s east side, where city, state and federal officials have recently launched a crackdown on a rash of violence, said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.
Flint, Saginaw and the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office’s Pontiac substation will each get one parole officer to help identify absconders who are violating the terms of their release from prison, Marlan said.
“If there’s a violent offense or a shooting or a crime, we’re in the mix from the start, researching information we have from our folks,” Marlan said.
Snyder’s office and law enforcement officials hope to bridge the communication gap by teaming parole agents with officers on the street, Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. said.
“The governor just doesn’t want to throw money willy-nilly at the problem and is kind of looking for solutions,” Godbee said.
Detroit, Flint, Pontiac and Saginaw are on the FBI’s top 10 list for violent crime rates for cities with at least 50,000 residents.
“That’s unacceptable,” Snyder said in his February budget presentation. “We need to put a focus on that ... so I believe it’s appropriate to make a significant investment in public safety.”
Snyder earlier had said he’d target more money for law enforcement, criminal justice system reforms and creating jobs and youth programs. His budget also would provide funding to expand mental health courts, the Michigan State Police crime lab and a 16 percent increase for the state police.
The initiative was spurred in part by the Nov. 20 murder of an elderly Royal Oak woman by two homeless parole absconders. Alan Craig Wood, 48, and Tonya Watson, 40, are charged with killing 80-year-old Nancy Dailey in her home, Marlan said.
That case, which prompted the department to suspend two parole agents assigned to supervise Wood and Watson, exposed problems in how the Department of Corrections shares information about known criminals with police agencies, Marlan said.
Corrections officials have said Wood and Watson were allowed to remain free last fall even after they were suspected of committing new crimes.
“The idea kind of materialized from that Royal Oak murder,” Marlan said. “There was not a lot of communications and information sharing going on.”
Under the Snyder proposal, the embedded parole agents won’t be restricted to regular business hours, Godbee said, which often cause delays in information-sharing between state and local police agencies.
“Now we have the ability to directly communicate with that embedded parole officer,” Godbee said. “We have the ability to much more efficiently target those individuals, get those individuals off the street for their violations.”
Statewide, there are about 1,000 parole officers supervising roughly 20,000 parolees, Marlan said. Nearly 46 percent of parolees live in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac and Saginaw, he added.
By the end of the year, Marlan said, eight to 10 parole officers could be working inside Detroit police precincts.
Snyder, who has demanded data-driven results at all levels of government, wants to see crime statistics showing the usefulness of embedded parole agents before committing additional resources, Marlan said.
Some parole officers routinely share information with local police agencies, Marlan said, “but it’s nowhere near where it will be.”
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