Macomb County Sheriff Mark A. Hackel’s latest crime-fighting tool is a huge, 30-foot black command center with gold and white writing and sheriff ’s decals on the sides. It resembles a recreational vehicle with all of the goodies to keep law enforcement comfortable when called to an emergency situation.

At its official unveiling on Friday hours before the start of the downtown Mount Clemens fireworks show Hackel and Capt. David Teske showed off the latest present from the federal government’s Homeland Security Department.

The cost of the vehicle is $100,000. The cost to outfit the vehicle is $50,000 for regular computers, four CAD computers and printer-faxscanner, six-line cell interface phone system and one satellite phone and other electronic media items necessary to fight crime.

Hackel said the vehicle will respond to all emergency situations and can be used by all law enforcement agencies throughout the county. Sheriff ’s Sgt. Mark Oermann said he spent much of Thursday getting the self-contained unit ready for work.

Oermann, the man behind the scenes, filled the 90-gallon gasoline tank, filled the center’s reservoir system with water and checked the heating and cooling unit. He went through the entire electrical system as well as filling the generator with gasoline.

“The generator is the size of a Volkswagen automobile. It is out of the way underneath the unit,” said Oermann. “The generator will run for 75 hours on a single tank of gas.”

Hackel said in the past, the sheriff ’s office used vans for hostage situations and had to get along with what it already had because the Macomb County Board of Commissioners didn’t have the money to purchase an incident mobile command vehicle. He said Homeland Security came up with the money and the fully outfitted vehicle will last 20 to 30 years.

“This thing is like a mobile police office,” said Hackel. “This command vehicle will be able to deal with high nature events such as tornadoes, high winds and flooding.”

Hackel said the vehicle also could be used for natural disasters such as Katrina.

The vehicle has a camera on its roof that can spot items many blocks away and magnify them. The sheriff ’s dispatchers could sent cars to emergency scenes and even do its dispatching to other cars with computers.

“In this center we will be able to communicate with anyone in the state,” said Hackel. “It is a tremendous advantage for us.”

The command center has a microwave oven, refrigerator and bathroom.

Oermann said the command center can be used in hostage/barricaded gunman situations. He said the department has 3 or 4 such situations a month. He said black curtains on all of the windows can be closed for tight security.

Originally published here by By Gordon Wilczynski - Macomb Daily Staff Writer – 07-01-06