Lansing - A sweeping package of legislation designed to thwart terrorism in Michigan easily cleared the state Senate Wednesday, with senators evoking the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to rally broad support.
“September 11th was a wake-up call for everyone,” said Sen. William Van Regenmorter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved the 19 bills. “The issue of terrorism is real. We need to give our police agencies the powerful tools they need to protect us.”
Several senators - all Democrats - balked at a bill to permit state and local police to wiretap individuals.
“The suggestion that this bill will protect Michigan citizens from terrorism is just a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down,” said Sen. Martha Scott, D-Highland Park.
But Van Regenmorter said the bill contained extensive protections to avert abuse.
That and the other bills were approved by lopsided majorities and sent to the House, which is already considering several more minor measures to complete the anti-terrorism package.
The primary bill in the package would make terrorist acts a crime in Michigan and enhance the penalties for those acts. It defines “terrorist acts” as violent felonies that are intended to intimidate, coerce or change the civilian population or the government.
“It’s the worst of the worst,” Van Regenmorter said.
The bills also would allow police to use wiretaps on phones, computers, radios, pagers and other devices during criminal investigations. Michigan is one of only six states without state wiretap laws, Van Regenmorter said.
Several senators argued that wiretapping was too intrusive. The American Civil Liberties Union has made the same argument against the bills.
Other lawmakers pointed out that during hearings on the bills, police said that wiretapping would be used to fight drugs.
“This bill is a wiretap bill for drug enforcement,” said Sen. Burton Leland, D-Detroit. “This bill is not about terrorism. It’s about drugs.”
But Van Regenmorter, a Republican from Ottawa County’s Georgetown Township, said the measure would require review by the courts and the state attorney general before a wiretap was authorized.
A third bill that generated significant debate would allow courts to suppress an affidavit for a search warrant. Scott called the bill “unnecessary and unconstitutional” because it would allow police to search people’s homes without telling them why.
The ACLU has questioned the need for the bills, since violent felonies already are punishable under the law.
But lawyers from Attorney General Jennifer Granholm’s staff have defended the measures, saying they were carefully developed with input from the ACLU, the AFL-CIO, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other concerned groups.
