Armored Police Vehicles in East Lansing?

Above: ELPD Lieutenant Scott Wriggelsworth

A news story out of WLNS has a number of ELi readers asking about whether and why the East Lansing Police Department (ELPD) would want an armored assault vehicle. According to WLNS’s story, “East Lansing is one of fourteen agencies in the state expressing an interest in getting armored vehicles from the federal government.” To find out more, I put a call into ELPD’s Detective Lieutenant Scott Wriggelsworth.

Asked why the ELPD was interested in getting an armored vehicle, Lieutenant Wriggelsworth explained, “We aren’t anymore.” He said that three years ago, when ELPD had its own tactical response team and the federal government had a system by which police departments could buy or otherwise obtain used armored vehicles from the government, ELPD asked to be put on a list to be notified if one became available. When one did become available, it was not one ELPD was interested in obtaining.

Since that time, ELPD no longer maintains its own special tactical response team, but instead relies on a partnership known as the Ingham Regional Special Response Team. According to the county sheriff office’s website, the group, run out of the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office, “partners with the Michigan State University Police Department, the East Lansing Police Department, and the Meridian Township Police Department to provide a highly trained tactical team to the citizens of Ingham County.”

ELPD Lieutenant Wriggelsworth (son of Ingham County Sheriff Gene L. Wriggelsworth) said he talked to ELPD Chief Jeff Murphy when this story broke, and that Chief Murphy confirmed that ELPD would not accept an armored vehicle even if they were offered one, “because we don’t need one. We have access to one through the Ingham County regional response team.”

Lieutenant Wriggelsworth, who was just back from a Martin Luther King Day event when we spoke today, told me that he understands that people are “concerned about militarization of local police, but these [vehicles] are used specifically for tactical scenarios where we need to transport personnel, or get negotiators to a scene.” He said these bullet-proof vehicles are used for safe transport of SWAT personnel and negotiators in particularly dangerous situations.

Wriggelsworth was clear these vehicles would not be used for such things as post-game rioting. He named a relatively recent example of when such a vehicle was used, namely last year when Ricard Taylor shot and killed pharmacist Michael Addo at the Frandor Rite-Aid and then shot and killed Jordon Rogers not far away, along Coolidge Road.

That day, local officers used an armored vehicle to approach Taylor’s location. Wriggelsworth told me, “In that case, we pulled the armored vehicle right up to the residence. We started negotiating with the suspect when he surrendered and was taken into custody.”

I asked Wriggelsworth if he had any idea why this story had suddenly become news, when ELPD is no longer seeking an armored vehicle. He said he and Chief Murphy are not sure why, but his guess was that the federal government must have some vehicles now available and so someone dug up the old list.

Read our recent stories on the naming of Jeff Murphy as the new ELPD Chief of Police and on ELPD getting body cameras for its officers.