WHITEHALL — It's not unheard of for the Whitehall Police Department to receive a small donation from a citizen, police chief Brandon Mahoney said. Often, such gifts are used to defray costs for things like school programs. Gifts like the one from Fruitland Township resident and philanthropist Rick McCombs are far less common.
McCombs recently provided a donation of $29,155 to the department, which enabled it to purchase rifle-rated ballistic shields. Ideally, the shields will never be used; however, if the department was ever to face an active shooter situation, the shields would protect officers and aid in their response to such an incident. They are equipped with a small viewport that is also rifle-rated, as well as a high-intensity LED light that allows officers using one to be able to light their path in a dark hallway.
"We felt like that was a missing piece of equipment," Mahoney said. "If, God forbid, the situation arises that we are dealing with an active assailant or active shooter, without those shields, we are very pigeonholed in our response. Not only does it help us, but we talked with (Montague Police) Chief (Richard) Johnson, and we've cross-trained at the range with them. We're going to make sure that we have our training shield out there at our next range, and we're going to cross-train with Montague."
Mahoney said the donation was the largest the department has gotten in many years. The only similar one he could recall was early in his career, when he was working for then-chief Jim Bartholomew and a citizen aided in securing the department's first speed radar trailer.
It's not the first time, though, that McCombs has been part of a donation like this. He and his wife Katrina live in their downtown Chicago home about half the year, and he said he's part of a group that has helped purchase bulletproof vests for the Chicago department in the past. When he originally decided to make a donation here as well, the plan was to again provide vests, but after learning from friend Frank Lundell, who helped McCombs work with local departments to determine their needs, that the department had recently gotten new vests, he asked what he could help with.
"He knows this community inside and out," McCombs said of Lundell. "While I'm here about 50% of the time now, both winter and summer, I don't know everybody...You need to know where the needs are, and I didn't know where the needs were."
"The thing that we really needed, that we typically can't afford in our budget, is rifle-rated ballistic shields," Mahoney said. "We gave him a ballpark (cost estimate)...He knew what Sergeant (Brandon) Parsons and I were looking for, because we had recently gone to a winter conference and talked to several different shield manufacturers, and there was some work that the county had already done because we thought there might be a federal grant to get shields that fell through. Fortunately, Rick('s help) did not fall through."
McCombs' interest in helping the police department is an offshoot of his long-held interest in aiding veterans, and particularly ones pursuing higher education. A veteran himself, McCombs, who grew up in Flint, later graduated from Birmingham Groves High School and played football at Yale, was drafted into the Vietnam War following college. After serving for over a year, he left the Army in 1970 and graduated from Boston University's law school three years later.
As fate would have it, he said, the year of his arrival saw BU welcome its largest ever cohort of veterans into the law school. Over time, the group found each other and served as a makeshift support system for one another. McCombs referred back to that experience when he recently endowed a fund at Yale for first-year students who have previously served.
When he retired, McCombs was a partner at Mayer Brown, a Chicago-based international firm that works largely with banks and corporations.
McCombs sees a connection between the difficulties faced in Vietnam, where he felt he and fellow service members were inadequately equipped for what they faced, and those faced by first responders, and he wanted to fill in those gaps. He said the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 21 people were killed inspired his desire to help local police have the necessary tools to respond to such an incident.
"Uvalde and things like that have been on my mind, because if you're going to go against somebody who's got an assault weapon, you'd damn well better have some protection, and that's what these give the officers," McCombs said. "I hope to God they're never used, but you just don't know."
Mahoney said the shields, one of which will be in each of Whitehall's marked patrol cars, gives officers some peace of mind knowing they will be equipped if they're needed. Police go through active shooter training sessions regularly, and they serve in part as reminders that even their protection has limitations; as a for instance, he noted that the engine block is the only part of a police car that is bulletproof.
In addition to the shields McCombs donated, Mahoney added that the department received a similar smaller shield due to a recent donation from the U.S. Deputy Sheriff's Association, which often makes similar gifts to smaller police departments around the country. The added protection gives local police some peace of mind that if an incident arises, the shields are there to aid in the response.
"We're very excited and blessed to have a gentleman like Mr. McCombs around town and willing to give back to the community," Mahoney said. "I know he's a Fruitland Township resident, but I think, like many of us do, that the greater White Lake area, we're all one. It's not a dividing line between Fruitland or Whitehall, or Montague and Whitehall. Chief Johnson is the same way. We want to work together to keep the greater White Lake community safe."
