The SMVM is one of 200 armed militias in the US, a number that has quadrupled since 2008, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights watchdog, which says they may have 6,000 members and many other adherents.
By James B. Kelleher and Ed Stoddard
Reuters
Three times a week, Mike Lackomar climbs into his truck and drives the same delivery route through the suburbs of Detroit.
Lackomar is an independent contractor for a private parcel company. If you live northwest of this battered city and you recently purchased something from a home shopping network, there’s a good chance the 36-year-old handled your package.
But there is one small item that never leaves his truck: a green nylon satchel Lackomar jokingly calls “the football,” a reference to the briefcase with codes for a nuclear strike kept close to the U.S. president. Inside, along with a pocket knife and a small first aid kit, is a sealed envelope containing codes, rallying points and detailed plans that Lackomar would use to mobilize his squad of armed citizen-soldiers in an emergency.
Lackomar is a team leader in the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia (SMVM), the largest and most visible of this state’s many small private armies. He is a husband, a father and a musician. But his favorite picture on his Facebook page shows him standing in front of a snowmobile trailer packed with rifles, clips and ammunition boxes, a picture he laughingly admits looks “like an evidence photo from the 6 O’clock News.”
The SMVM is one of 200 armed militias in the United States, a number that has quadrupled since 2008, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights watchdog, which says they may have 6,000 members and many other adherents.
MILITIAS: HARMLESS UNTIL THEY ARE NOT
The United States is one of the few Western democratic countries that permit independent militias.
Their rapid growth coincides with a sharp rise in partisan rhetoric as the November U.S. congressional elections draw nearer. Depending on your perspective, they are either patriots or paranoid. Experts in law enforcement and academia are divided as to how big an actual threat they may pose. But they all agree on one thing: the groups are very well armed.
“Most (militia groups) are merely in the rhetorical and defensive stage,” said Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice at California State University and an expert on militias and domestic terrorism. “But we don’t know which groups are going to be benign and which are going to be small incubators for radicalism.”
His point was underscored by the arrest in late March of nine members of anti-government extremist group called the Hutaree, whose website says its name means “Christian Warrior.” They were charged with planning a cop-killing spree intended to spark a broad insurrection.
And in February, a computer engineer angry with the government crashed a small aircraft into an office building in Austin, Texas, housing the federal Internal Revenue Service. In a rambling six-page statement, the man said he hoped his act would help make “American zombies wake up and revolt.”
Until their arrest, the Hutaree were considered brothers-in-arms by other Michigan militia groups, including the SMVM. At least two of the men indicted by the government in the case briefly trained with Lackomar’s group.
Before the group hatched its plot, the only rap against it in militia circles was that its training practices — like run-and-gun target shooting — were not the safest.
“I knew a couple of the guys that are sitting in jail right now. They were nice people,” said Lackomar.
That is not to say he condoned the group’s plan. One Hutaree member who evaded the police dragnet asked a member of Lackomar’s group for help retrieving weapons and other supplies he had hidden at the group’s safe house.
Instead, he got some unexpected advice: Turn yourself in. The suspect ignored the SMVM member, who went to the police.
Far from joining a rebellion, Lackomar’s group and other militia members denounced the alleged plot and applauded the way the FBI and state police handled the raids.
“Nobody got hurt,” Lackomar said. “There weren’t any shots fired. They got everyone needed. They stopped the plan.”
For that stance, Lackomar and other group members took some heat from what he calls “ultra-right ideologues” who consider the Hutaree victims of political persecution.
