After the media published stories about transferring military surplus to arm police dept's; the Department of Defense put a temporary halt to the program.
The Defense Department has stopped issuing weapons to thousands of law enforcement agencies until it is satisfied that state officials can account for all the surplus guns, aircraft, Humvees and armored personnel carriers it has given police under a $2.6 billion program, The Associated Press has learned.
The department’s Defense Logistics Agency ordered state-appointed coordinators in 49 states to certify the whereabouts of that equipment that has already been distributed through the long-running arrangement overseen by the agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office. The temporary halt on transferring weapons applies to all states, agency officials said Thursday.
The program provides police departments and other law enforcement agencies with military equipment ranging from guns and helicopters to computers and air conditioners and even toilet paper. The equipment is cheap or free for law enforcement agencies to acquire, but much of it comes with strict rules that prohibit it from being sold and dictate how it must be tracked.
The military decided to conduct a “one-time, clean sweep’’ of all state inventories instead of reviewing them piecemeal, said Kenneth MacNevin, a spokesman for the federal agency. While some gear, including guns, has been stolen or otherwise gone missing over the years, MacNevin said the reporting requirements themselves aren’t new and that the review wasn’t prompted by anything specific.
“Leadership decided to make sure we have a good, full accounting for all of this,’’ he said. “We’re not doing this based on any thought there’s a problem. We’re doing it because accountability is accountability.’’
However, MacNevin said a pair of news media reports and a weeks-long series of AP requests for records were factors in the decision to send letters to the states late last month ordering them to comply with program rules or face suspension from it. Only New Hampshire didn’t get a letter, for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-08/news/32126935_1_federal-agency-weapons-accounting
Free military surplus gear a boon to local CA. law enforcement.
Among its fleet of helicopters, patrol cars, inmate buses and other vehicles, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department keeps four long-haul semitrailers ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Their purpose: Travel the country retrieving discarded – and free of charge – U.S. military hand-me-downs for its deputies to use in California.
M16 rifles, helicopters, microwaves, survival kits, workout equipment, bayonet knives, ammunition cans and more – the LA sheriff’s office snaps up an average of $4 million to $5 million in surplus military equipment annually.
“You name it,” said Sgt. Bob Watkins, whose unit of four deputies checks an online database every Saturday for newly available items. “Anything the military uses on a daily basis, from toilet paper to heavy equipment and everything in between – if we can use it and we can get it from them for free, it comes through our program, and our department doesn’t have to go out and buy it.”
Los Angeles County is far from alone in tapping a vast supply of free military surplus to arm and equip its officers. Public agencies and employees as diverse as Oakland school police have grabbed cast-off military goods that become available on a weekly basis.
The Department of Defense’s equipment bazaar is another sign of how aggressively some police departments increasingly resemble small armies. Civilian law enforcement have equipped themselves with assault-style weapons and even tanks, first as part of the war on drugs and later in the name of fighting terrorism.
California police accumulated more equipment during 2011 than any other year in the equipment-transfer program’s two-decade history, according to a California Watch analysis of U.S. Department of Defense data.
A total of 163,344 new and used items valued at $26.2 million – from bath mats acquired by the sheriff of Sonoma County to a full-tracked tank for rural San Joaquin County – were transferred last year to state and local agencies.
Police nationwide sought $498 million worth of equipment, including 60 aircraft and thousands more weapons than in 2010. Listed dollar amounts are based on what the military initially paid for the equipment.
More than 17,000 public agencies across the country – mostly police and sheriff, but some fire departments – have taken advantage of the equipment giveaway of an estimated $2.8 billion since Congress enacted laws in the 1990s that created the program.
Read more:
http://californiawatch.org/public-safety/free-military-surplus-gear-boon-local-calif-law-enforcement-15493