Jim Lynch / The Detroit News
March 6, 2006


FRASER -- As Joe Hurst tells it, once the pillowcase had been pulled over his head, questions started flashing through his mind quickly and crazily.

"Am I going to get shot? Who are these people? What's happening? What are they going to do?" he remembers thinking, now more than two years after his gambling arrest by Fraser police.

Hurst claims he was the victim of a tactic that police in Metro Detroit adamantly deny using -- the practice of placing bags, pillowcases or jackets over the heads of people being detained. Otherwise known as "hooding," it's an image more associated with the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, not southeast Michigan.

Late last month, the FBI's Detroit office confirmed it was investigating three allegations of Macomb County law enforcement officers using hoods on people in custody.

Local and state officials were quick to cry foul, saying they had not been contacted about the FBI's investigation and that no complaints had ever been filed with them.

Law enforcement professionals say the controversial action is neither taught nor even mentioned in their training, and certainly never practiced.

Now it's the latest complaint with racial undertones in Macomb County, though some of those making allegations -- including Hurst -- are white.

"It's definitely not our policy to do that," said Fraser Police Lt. George Rouhib, who headed the investigation into Hurst's arrest. "We would never condone a policy like that."

But since the FBI confirmed its initial investigation into the allegations, it has received two additional complaints.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court in Detroit alleges hooding was among the "terrorist tactics" used in a 2001 Mount Clemens drug raid.

A drug task force called COMET -- comprising local, county and state police -- is being sued over use of excessive force.

During the raid, officers placed coats over the heads of suspects lying face-down on the ground during a two-hour search, the suit alleges.

COMET officials have declined comment on the suit. [more]