New sheriff plans to utilize social media
Shepherd Police Chief Michael Main will be Isabella County’s new sheriff, replacing Leo Mioduszewski, who left in December to become chief of police at Saginaw Valley State University.
Main will begin his new position on Feb. 29. He has been employed in law enforcement for about 18 years. Starting as a reserve police officer in mid-Michigan, Main was sent to the police academy by the Saginaw-Chippewa Indian Tribe, where he spent 11 years.
He has been the Shepherd chief since 2009.
What changes do you plan to bring to the Isabella County Sheriff’s Department?
MAIN: I really would like to sit down with the supervisors and the team there and look at using statistical data to see where our workloads are falling and on what days, what hours, what times.
I think we can do some more strategic patrolling, being able to put deputies in the right spots before problems start, where we’re seeing some bad accidents. I think it’s positive to have them closer during those times.
We have the whole county to cover, obviously, but we certainly can use some data to help our response times, help make things a little quicker and easier. Maybe even get some things from being right there, maybe deter some things before they happen.
(For) the department, it’d be nice to see if we can put some people in those key positions without hurting the entire department. They’re getting up to full staff now for the first time in a long time. When you start pulling people from shifts, that creates more workload for the deputies working the roads. We’ll have to monitor what we can and can’t do there, but some of those specialty teams are very important they do play a key role in our community to help keep these dangerous things out of our area.
How do you feel the Sheriff’s Department’s relationship is with CMU students? Where you see it going under your leadership?
I get the opportunity a couple times a year to help the Sheriff’s Department in this role, as the police chief in Shepherd.
I think (police) have a good relationship with (students). Can it be better? Anything can be better, obviously. They interact well with the students.
As far as the things I think that I want to enhance on, I think we need to work toward some social media, things that we can pass along to the students through social media that these are the events happening, or these are the issues that we’re seeing. This is typically the times we have problems or concerns, and these are the concerns, to help preempt them — to say OK, we know there’s an issue on these weekends or these nights. It can control things a little better for us.
What have you done to prepare for your new job?
I’ve been looking at this for a few years now, putting myself on committees and groups. I’ve been involved in one of the programs called Ten Sixteen Drug Recovery to help (improve the) capabilities of people who are afflicted by drugs and alcohol, giving them some treatment options.
I’ve also attended (city) commission meetings just to get the layout of how the government works and what’s important to them.
We put together a lot of things like School Safety Alliance for K-12 grades. I represent a position on that panel as well, to make sure safety and positive things are happening in the schools and having that liaison between the law enforcement and the schools.
I’ve been a board member of SEPLA, which is a school and educator conference that gets put on here every year. We’ve done that for the last three or four years, bringing in good speakers and training police officers how to interact and liaison with students.
I’ve heard you’re pretty tech-savvy. How do you plan to use technology to improve law enforcement?
I do believe technology, when it benefits law enforcement or anything, is a positive. We’ve had the opportunity here in Shepherd to have, for example, the body camera mics for the last few years. We’ve found them to be a great tool and asset in recording for evidence.
There’s always that component where, yes, we have that ability to see what that officer said and did, but a lot of the statistics show after one year of camera use is 44 percent reduction in false police reports or use of false police reports.
The officers are finding that by having this equipment, this technology, it’s helping them not only gain evidence, but it’s keeping false reports down and it’s keeping everybody honest as well, it absolutely is. Things like that are huge to me.
The Sheriff’s Department has come great strides in the last few years on technology. They’ve got some great stuff going on there, but I think we can certainly enhance on that at all times. (The county has) such a wide variety, all the way from student life, to farm and the bigger city atmosphere. We’ve got quite a distance to travel as far as demographics, but I think we have some options to do that with.
