Former Allegan County Resident Speaks Out Against Alleged Sheriff’s Office Abuse

Note: Sheriff Frank Baker and Prosecutor Myrene Koch did not return any requests for comment.

It Started with a Knock at the Door

As the 2024 election cycle pressed on, Allegan County residents were raising documented concerns about Sheriff Frank Baker’s August primary win. With no Democratic opponent in November, Baker remained the county’s only ballot option. Allegations of misconduct, retaliation, and abuse of power had been circulating publicly before the primary. One former resident decided, for the first time, to speak on the record.

The deputies at that second visit were led by Deputy Chris Haverdink. According to the resident’s account, Haverdink had two additional officers behind him when the door was answered.

Eventually, he helped his brother turn himself in voluntarily at the Sheriff’s Department, accompanied by a bondsman. His brother was in and out in fifteen to twenty minutes. The resident believed the matter was resolved.

Six weeks later, at approximately 11 PM on April 7, 2022, his father woke him to tell him law enforcement was at the door. They were there for him.

An Arrest Without a Warrant

His father placed a body camera on him before he was handcuffed and transported, a drive of nearly one hour. That footage captured the arrest up to the point when his belongings, including the camera, were confiscated.

At the jail, deputies looked at a computer and told him it appeared someone had simply wanted to talk to him and that he would be released on his own recognizance. He had his photograph taken, his fingerprints taken, and a cheek swab collected. It was 3 AM before he was able to go home.

The Prosecution: Charges, Silence, and a Dropped Case

The charge, when he was finally able to determine it, was harboring a felon. It carried a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Because he worked as a preschool educator, he could not return to work until the matter was resolved. He had no way to pay for a lawyer.

He rejected the plea. He requested his day in court. A probable cause hearing was scheduled. Shortly before that hearing, he received word that the charges were being dropped. The public defender told him there was not enough probable cause to even hold the probable cause hearing.

The charges were dropped without prejudice.

The Aftermath: Income, Education, and Enforced Silence

He was out of work for approximately one month. He fell behind on bills. He was forced to withdraw from his master’s degree program at Western Michigan University. His employer at the preschool instructed him not to discuss the arrest with anyone, including parents of students. He was told to tell people he had been on vacation or dealing with a family emergency.

He also noted, for the first time, that the police report documenting Haverdink’s initial visit stated that the deputy knew who he was because he had been monitoring his Facebook account prior to the encounter.

The Pattern and the Election

Baker ran unopposed in November 2024. Koch was voted out of office by voters who, in the resident’s own words, were tired of the way things were. Baker and Koch’s documented professional proximity, in his account, made them functionally interchangeable as institutional actors.

Brandt further described the repeated questioning during the arrest, asking whether the resident really did not know why he was being arrested, as a deliberate tactic: a way to break down the individual, to keep them off balance, to extract a response that could later be used against them. The responsibility, he noted, runs in the other direction. It is law enforcement’s obligation to tell a citizen why they are being detained, not the citizen’s obligation to figure it out.

When asked what he would do differently if he could return to that February evening in 2022, his answer was immediate.

“I wouldn’t answer the door.”