Agema: Allegan chief overreacted

ALLEGAN, Mich. (WOOD) - Rep. Dave Agema told 24 Hour News 8 he thinks Allegan's police chief overreacted when he shut down an event the representative and a self-proclaimed former terrorist were both speaking at.

Allegan City Police Chief Rick Hoyer told 24 Hour News 8, he didn't find out there was a bounty on the head of Kamal Saleem, until his speech at Allegan High School was already underway.

Hoyer said he was initially told the group renting space at the high school would be talking about the U.S. Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance.

24 Hour News 8 got cell phone video from Dale Stumpnicki, who attended the event, and in it you can hear the situation unfold.

"I was advised that this was a person that had turned his life over to Christianity and we were going to hear about the Constitution and putting the Pledge of Allegiance back in schools. That's the info we have," Hoyer said. "Now we get info that there's a $25 million hit on this guy and people are bound by their religion to kill him. Well, you know what, it's not going to happen here."

Hoyer said Commissioner Sage actually walked up to one of his officers during the event and told him that Saleem had a $25 million dollar bounty. That officer, a sergeant on the force, checked out the information with Saleem's body guard. When the armed body guard confirmed it, telling police that Islamic terrorists who follow the teaching of the Quran that have been directed to behead Saleem, that's when Hoyer said they took action.

"You have to look at how are we staffed to deal with this," said Hoyer. Hoyer said four officers were at the school. "We had no information up front that this was going to happen, that this was what it's going to be.  This is a game changer.  We weren't staffed to protect everyone at the school. The information we had was not something we took lightly, and we felt we had a duty and an obligation to protect everyone in our building, so those are the things that we used as our guiding principles to go forward and terminate the event."

Saleem, who claims he is a former terrorist and travels around the country speaking at events such as this one paid for by Allegan County Commissioner Bill Sage , had just started his portion of the event.  He was about ten minutes into his speech, when those assembled were told it was over.

Dale Stumpnicki was one of dozens who turned out to Allegan High School to hear Saleem speak. He told 24 Hour News 8 people were upset the event was being shut down "because we all thought it was due to Christianity or something like that."

Even though no one had called in a threat on Saleem that day, Hoyer said he did not feel there was enough police available to protect everyone in the school.

"I simply explained to them, as I explained to you folks, it has absolutely nothing to do with the message or the person," said Hoyer. "It has everything to do with our ability to keep everyone safe."

Agema, spoke minutes before Saleem about a bill called American Law for American Courts -- labeled HB4769, which states that only American constitutional law may be used in American courts -- said he thinks Chief Hoyer overreacted.

"I just think it's a tragedy, and personally, I may be wrong, but I think the chief of police overstepped his bounds on this one," Agema said.

Agema is a Republican from Michigan's 74th District .  He's spoken with Saleem on several different occasions over the years and described him as a "good man."  He told 24 Hour News 8 he would not be surprised if there was legal action over the interruption and cancellation of the event.

"I think there was no credible threat," said Agema.  "There was no call in, to say, 'we are gonna bomb the school,' there's none of that. All it was was, 'hey, I heard there might be a bounty on this guy's head, I'm gonna shut this down."

Allegan Public Schools Superintendent Kevin Harness said it is the responsibility of people renting the space -- in this case, Commissioner Sage -- to provide full disclosure of the event in advance. Harness said neither he nor Chief Hoyer were aware of Saleem's bounty.

They also said that it would be unrealistic if a criminal background check was done on every person who requested to rent space in every school across the state.