Police union is in bed with telemarketer

Police union is in bed with telemarketer

January 28, 2020

Over the last 5 years, I've posted 3 stories about how the Police Officers Association of Michigan (POAM) and the Command Officers Association of Michigan (COAM) use a telemarketer to solicit contributions to their political action committees (PACs) and that over 80% of contributions collected go to the telemarketer:

	1/24/2018		Police union rips off senior citizens
	5/1/2016		Police unions prey on public
	11/30/2014		80% of contributions to police union PAC goes to telemarketer

The telemarketer is Midwest Publishing Inc, headquartered in Phoenix, AZ. In my most recent story, I wondered if maybe the main purpose of the PAC was to generate profits for the telemarketer. Was it possible that POAM leaders were getting kick-backs from MPI?

It turns out there is indeed a close connection between POAM and MPI. Ed Jaques, a POAM staff member, was at one time a vice president at MPI. In a 2009 piece on the POAM website directed to POAM member groups, he says:

I left MPI to work with POAM in 2003 with the understanding that I would continue to oversee all facets of the telemarketing campaigns. Early in 2004, I renegotiated all of our contracts with “Midwest” and secured a substantial increase in the net proceeds to POAM local units. MPI has continued to do an outstanding job and has the ability to service more clients . . .

If there is a genuine interest in your group becoming involved in a fundraising project, don’t hesitate to call me at the POAM office and I’ll be glad to walk you through every step and forward the appropriate information to your board, which

will include a complete list of references. The work that POAM and MPI have done over the last 15 years has made this an attractive benefit available exclusively to POAM local units.

Here are the campaign contribution and expenditure figures for 2018-2019 (compiled from the Secretary of State's website):

	POAM	COAM
Contributions received	$155,049.40	$85,566.00
Number of contributions	6,304	4,189
Average contribution amount	$24.60	$20.43
Payments to MPI	$129,351.90	$72,462.32
% of contribs paid to MPI	83.4%	84.7%
Political contributions	$86,515.00	$6,000.00
Bank fees	$1,337.00	$425.50
Ending balance	$5,481.83	$64,457.37

Details of those political contributions are here.

The thing that stinks about this whole deal is that POAM and COAM are not charities. They are political action committees. The money collected for them by MPI is used to buy influence with politicians. As it says in this letter to a prospective contributor,

The public is already footing the bill for police salaries and benefits. POAM/COAM expects us to also pay to persuade politicians to maintain those salaries and benefits at a high level.

The police unions and the telemarketer are the only parties who benefit from this money collected from (mostly) senior citizens. As that letter says, POAM has over 10,000 members. They could have raised the $86,515 contributed to politicians in 2018-2019 with a yearly member contribution of a little over $4. Your average cop could certainly afford to pay $4 a year. That is why this whole setup appears to be for the benefit of MPI.

I can't take credit for discovering the cozy connection between POAM/COAM and MPI. I received an anonymous tip from a former MPI employee. He (she?) says of MPI:

They work predominantly in small towns that won’t catch much attention. The have offices in Big Rapids and Adrian, as well as: St Paul, MN; Parma Heights, OH; and their HQ is in Phoenix, AZ. All the offices run off of one dialer system so you could be speaking to a representative in OH and then get transferred to a “verifier” (double checks information or obtains new) in MI. Big Rapids and Parma are their ‘Taps’ (Fresh Donators that they harass with other organizations), ‘Loads’ (Frequent Donators they call “twice a year”), and lastly ‘OB’ (Old Business aka people who pledged and didn’t pay). The other 3 offices are ‘Cold’ callers who use keyboards to “speak” with prerecorded dialogue. People in these offices even manage to do 2 calls simultaneously. . .

I forgot to mention, they get their information [names and phone numbers] from “Nationwide Marketing” conveniently located in Phoenix AZ.

Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.

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