On Mackinac Island, the biggest danger you’ll usually face is a low-flying seagull or an aggressive fudge sample. It’s four square miles of postcard perfection: no cars, no gangs, barely any crime to speak of.
Manufactured Crimes on a Manufactured Battlefield
And yet, here we are: the island’s police chief resigning after just a year, citing ongoing “friction” with the City Council over… wait for it… e-bikes.
This is not just an island squabble.
It’s a warning sign of how the criminal justice system works everywhere: when there isn’t enough crime to justify budgets, power structures, political relevance, or it gets in the way of profits, those in charge will manufacture conflict to prove their importance.
Chief Michael Gruits took the job last June, hoping to lead “an exceptional group of men and women” in community policing. But a year later, after repeated clashes with the council, he’s out.
The flashpoint? Enforcement of the city’s e-bike ban.
Think about that. On an island where violent crime is virtually nonexistent, officials have elevated the regulation of battery-powered bicycles into a pitched battle between council, cops, and community. Why? Because manufactured crime equals manufactured revenue. Tickets, fines, court fees, attorney billing, all extracted from tourists and locals alike under the guise of “law and order.”
The Council’s Playbook: Control First, Community Second
Instead of collaboration, the council created conflict. Instead of focusing on actual public safety, they obsessed over optics and control.
Gruits called it out: “My interests do not align with some on the City Council.”
Translation? The city’s priority wasn’t protecting the island’s peace; it was inflating its own power.
This is the same script we see across the country:
- Overcriminalize petty behavior (jaywalking, loitering, e-bikes).
- Extract money from citations and court fees to pad municipal budgets.
- Punish dissenting leadership (like Gruits) who resist turning cops into revenue officers.
It actually reinforces the historical concept of the police, something you see playing out in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids too with who they arrest and what they punish and prosecute: protecting the investments of the wealthy to keep the economy a float.
A Microcosm of the National Problem
What happens on Mackinac is what happens in Detroit, New York, and everywhere in between.
When councils and prosecutors can’t justify their existence with real threats, they inflate the petty into the criminal. This is why we have more people in cages than any country on earth; not because Americans are more dangerous, but because the system thrives on invented infractions.
It’s also not lost on anyone that Mackinac’s economy runs on bike rentals and horse-and-buggy tours — the two industries that define the island’s brand and bring in millions each year. There are a ton of bike shops on the island that would likely lose business to a competitor with newer bikes.
Did I mention the city also makes money on bike licenses?
With nearly 1 million tourists flooding the island annually, the demand for convenient transportation remains insatiable. Add to that the horse-drawn carriage business operating via stables like Jack’s Livery and specialty carriage tours, and you’ve got industries literally sustaining the island’s charm economy. Meanwhile, ferry operators like Shepler’s are hauling in about 350,000 visitors every year.
In short: the council isn’t about to let e-bikes disrupt an ecosystem that thrives on tradition, tourism, and transit.
They’re already sparring with the ferry industry, over power and profit, trying to over-control that aspect as well. So e-bikes? That’s a threat they can’t afford.
When your government starts policing technology not because it’s dangerous, but because it threatens entrenched business interests, you’re not protecting a community; you’re protecting a cash cow.
The council knows this, and they’re not about to let e-bikes disrupt the flow of tourist dollars.
And if Mackinac Island council will gin up a political war on what I consider to be heaven on earth over e-bikes, imagine what they’ll do in places where people’s livelihoods, freedoms, and futures are actually on the line.
Gruits Chose His Exit. The Rest of Us Can’t.
Chief Gruits gets to walk away, pursue teaching, and spend more time with his family. Most people caught up in manufactured “crimes” don’t have that privilege. They’re trapped in court cycles, probation fees, and jail cells; all because a council, a board of commissioners, a prosecutor, and/or a judge needs to keep the machinery humming.
The Bigger Lesson
When paradise starts criminalizing bicycles to keep power players busy, you know the problem isn’t crime.
It’s control. It’s money. It’s a system so addicted to punishment that it can’t survive without inventing new reasons to use it.
Mackinac Island is small. The American justice system is massive. But the rot is the same.
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