Macomb County leaders win Department of Justice award

MACOMB COUNTY — Two Macomb County leaders have been recognized by the federal government for their community policing efforts.

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel and Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham were honored by the Department of Justice on March 12 as the recipients of the 2023 L. Anthony Sutin Award. Given by the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, the award recognizes efforts by both officials to further the COPS Office’s goals of community-focused law enforcement.

“The Sutin Award is given to a team each year whose innovative civic interactions have transformed public safety in their community,” said Robert Chapman, deputy director of the COPS Office. “Nominees are individuals who have actively engaged with the community in a way that has been sustained over time, and certainly this might be the best example we’ve had of in the history of the Sutin Award of ‘sustained.’ It can’t be a one-and-done approach and the partnerships have to have resulted in positive, observable public safety improvements.”

Wickersham and Hackel were recognized for their work expanding partnerships between the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office and various communities in the county by contracting policing services in municipalities. Their work supporting community groups and law enforcement agencies during COVID-19 was also recognized.

“They forged partnerships with nonprofit organizations, businesses, educational institutions, community leaders and health care providers to successfully meet what were the unprecedented challenges and needs that came to us all,” Chapman said. “They made sure that they had access to all funds that were available and maintained services to make sure nobody went without food, went without housing and they received other services.”

The COPS Office also recognized the potential of the ongoing jail central intake and assessment center project, which will increase jail capacity while improving the ability to address the mental health needs of inmates.

Wickersham stressed the importance of collaboration in his acceptance comments.

“Partnerships are really the key to success in the criminal justice system,” Wickersham said. “Whether it’s law enforcement, corrections or courts, we can’t do it alone. We have to partner up with our community members. We have to collaborate with our other criminal justice stakeholders. Prosecutor, public defender’s office, the courts, probation, parole, you name it. Health care, community mental health; all have a part in the criminal justice system.”

The sheriff also spoke about the work he and Hackel have put into making the jail project happen over the past 20 years.

“We started the fight back in 2005 and I carried it on into 2012 when I became sheriff, and we have worked hard to get things changed,” Wickersham said. “We did studies that were conducted back in 2005 and 2016 as it relates to the criminal justice system here in Macomb County on what we could do to be better. This project will produce better outcomes for individuals that are remanded to the county jail and also provide a safer environment for the men and women of the Sheriff’s Office that work in the correctional facility every day.”

Hackel stressed the importance of the work he and Wickersham have done toward community policing, tying their focus back to Peelian principles taught during law enforcement education. Hackel was particularly drawn to the seventh principle, which states “the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”

“It’s not just about going out there and arresting a bad guy,” Hackel said. “It’s understanding constitutional rights and how you protect those rights, and understanding that we’re here because the public allows us to be here.”

The Sutin Award is named after Tony Sutin, who was the founder and deputy director of the COPS Office from 1994 to 1996. Sutin then became the principal deputy to the associate attorney general of the United States and later the acting assistant attorney general for legislative affairs before becoming a faculty member of the Appalachian School of Law in 1999. Sutin died on Jan. 16, 2002.