Economic Crimes Unit - Det. Robert Kellogg

Dan Buron introduced our speaker – Detective Bob Kellogg from the Economic Crimes Unit in Lenawee County. Bob was a member of the Charlotte, MI police force for 28 years, and a two-time recipient of the Police Officer of the Year Award. Bob is now head of the Economics Crime Unit for the Lenawee County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

 

Bob came to this community last April with his wife and he admitted that were very impressed with what they saw.  Bob worked at GM many years ago and would meet with his brother on breaks. His brother was a police officer and admired what he was doing.  So, he quit GM and joined the Charlotte police department himself. After several months in the department he became a detective.

 

During that time he had a very close working relationship with Charlotte’s prosecuting Attorney.  He talked to Bob about a special program called “Diversion” that would target certain minor criminals, first time offenders.  By giving them “diversion”, their crimes would not be prosecuted nor would they result in a criminal record but they would have to go through certain corrective programs.

 

Among Bob’s job’s was to get concessions out of these individuals so was often referred to as “Father Bob”!  The diversion program gave many young criminals a break, an opportunity to change direction so they would not be headed for a life of crime. The program involved bad check writers at first. It grew to address retail, welfare, and rental property fraud as well. Soon the department went from business to business to promote the program. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been returned to victims since this program was implemented.

 

Bob headed the program in Charlotte for 11 years and was getting ready to retire when someone dropped his name to Burk Castleberry while they were at a convention for prosecuting attorneys and told him the success Bob was having with the Diversion program. Burke called Bob to see if he’d like to forego retirement to implement the same program in Lenawee County which he agreed to. Bob now has a staff of 6 Cooley Lay School interns as well as two legal assistants.

 

Bob and his wife have a permanent home up north.  He has a home locally but returns to his permanent residence every two weeks.