$7 Billion dollars in DHS grants include wasteful police costs.

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released an oversight report, “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities.” The report is based on a year-long investigation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant programs and the Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI). 

A decade long, $7-billion federal program to help local police and fire departments prepare for a terrorist attack has allowed communities to buy millions of dollars worth of equipment that goes unused or is unrelated to terrorism, according to a new report. 

Since 2003, a Department of Homeland Security grant program called the Urban Areas Security Initiative has ballooned from 12 major metropolitan areas to 31 jurisdictions. The study found that some cities and towns had created implausible attack scenarios to win federal grants, and had scrambled at the end of each fiscal year to buy extra, unnecessary gadgets to spend excess cash.

Columbus, Ohio, for example, used $98,000 to buy an underwater robot for local rivers. 

Police in Oxnard spent $75,000 to outfit a cultural center with surveillance equipment and alarms. Officials in Clovis, Calif., used the police department's $200,000 armored personnel carrier to patrol an annual Easter egg hunt.

In San Diego in September, police officers and rescue workers were allowed to use Homeland Security grant money to cover the cost of a five-day counter-terrorism conference held at Paradise Point Resort & Spa. The $1,000 conference fee included admission to a "zombieapocalypse"demonstration, in which first responders zapped 40 actors dressed as the undead.
Keene, New Hampshire, with a population just over 23,000 and a police force of 40, set aside UASI funds to buy a BearCat armored vehicle. Despite reporting only a single homicide in the prior two years, the City of Keene told DHS the vehicle was needed to patrol events like its annual pumpkin festival. Tulsa, Oklahoma used UASI funding to harden a county jail and purchase a color printer.
 
In 2009, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania purchased for $88,000 several “long-range acoustic device,” or LRAD, which is mounted on a truck and emits an ear-splitting sound. Local officials used it to disperse G-20 protestors, giving one bystander permanent hearing loss, but which they called “a kinder and gentler way to get people to leave.”

Peoria, Arizona spent $90,000 to install bollards and surveillance cameras at the Peoria Sports Complex, which is used for spring training by the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners. The Oxnard-Thousand Oaks UASI used $75,000 to also purchase surveillance equipment, alarms and closed-circuit television, which it installed in its Civic Arts Plaza, a local theater and cultural center.

"We cannot make every community around the country invulnerable to terrorist attacks by writing large checks from Washington, D.C.," said Coburn, who is seeking to cut the Homeland Security budget, which totaled $46 billion this year. Coburn is widely expected to be the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee in the next Congress.

He said the department's inability to monitor how grant money is spent has led to waste, inefficiency and a false sense of security. He said Congress should reconsider the department's approach to reducing the risk of terrorism.

"I'm not sure we are getting much risk reduction sending people to a zombie apocalypse demonstration," he said.

The study cited abuses in Phoenix and Tucson; Bakersfield, Oxnard, Riverside, Sacramento and San Diego; Denver; Indianapolis; Baton Rouge, La.; Minneapolis; Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio; and Tulsa, Okla.
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=b86fdaeb-86ff-4d19-a112-415ec85aa9b6