The Marshall Community Foundation awarded the Calhoun County ALURT Dive team a grant for $22,000 to replace a damaged outboard motor on the ALURT dive team boat. The grant was awarded in December 2021, and the project was completed on March 15, 2022. Due to this grant, the dive boat is fully operational for the upcoming spring and summer seasons.
Calhoun County Sheriff Steve Hinkley and the ALURT members would like to thank the Marshall Community Foundation for recognizing the need of the ALURT dive team to have these critical resources to serve the Marshall area and the greater Calhoun County area. Their generous donation to the ALURT non-profit organization will be utilized for years to come.
What is the ALURT?
ALURT stands for Area Law Enforcement Underwater Recovery Team.
The ALURT dive team supplements local law enforcement and local fire departments and is the only unit capable of subsurface searches. The team is not a funded unit of the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office, but does act in support of the Law Enforcement Division to recover stolen property, evidence and drowning victims. ALURT also collaborates with Michigan's District 5 homeland security training, which encompasses eight counties in Southwest Michigan. The team also provides mutual aid to those counties if needed. The dive boat provides us a platform from which the team conducts the above-mentioned operations.
The ALURT dive team consists of 24 divers and support personnel. Of those, all are sworn special unit deputies of Calhoun County Sheriff's Office. The team has been in existence in its current form since 1978, when it became a non-profit organization (501c3) and recruited civilians to participate on the team as divers.
All team members are trained scuba divers who receive training not only in water safety and rescue, but also in areas of evidence recovery, scene evaluation, witness control and various techniques of rope search patterns, first aid, and CPR.
In 2021, the ALURT dive team participated in,
- 2 body recoveries
- 3 searches for evidence
- 12 trainings
- 2 District 5 Homeland Security Events
Pictured from left to right are, Andy Erard, ALURT Supervisor; Jennifer London from the Marshall Community Foundation; and Steve Hinkley, Calhoun County Sheriff.
