May 14--Police departments throughout Ohio are stockpiling millions of dollars worth of military gear -- from army boots to mini-tanks -- through a Defense Department program that provides law enforcement agencies free access to surplus weapons and equipment.
A Hamilton JournalNews investigation found budget-challenged Ohio departments are increasingly using military surplus to arm and equip their staff -- last year acquiring a record $12 million in equipment and weapons through the Pentagon's 1033 program.
That was more than a third of the $33 million in surplus gear obtained since the program started in the mid-1990s. On top of that, Ohio police have received more than 6,000 firearms valued at $2 million, mostly M16 assault rifles.
Last year, Butler County agencies received $87,959 worth of weapons and non-weapons equipment from the federal government. Warren County agencies received $9,726 of weapons and other equipment.
Some law enforcement officials such as Hamilton Police Chief Scott Scrimizzi said the program gets extra life out of military equipment already purchased with tax dollars while giving police access to equipment they couldn't otherwise afford.
"This program allows us to purchase new M-16s out of the box at a minimal cost," he said. "A new M-16 costs about $1,200 each (from a vendor)."
Scrimizzi said the military transfer the weapons to the city for a $50 per rifle shipping fee. Police will still have to purchase slings and tactical lights for each rifle. Scrimizzi said the tactical lights cost about $600 each.
He said the city received 19 M-16s in 2010 and has ordered 10 more this year.
"It's definitely the place where a department can find stuff in a cost-effective manner," he said.
But critics say the program is fueling an increasing militarization of police that has civil rights and public safety implications. They say heavily armed SWAT teams, originally formed to respond to rare events like sniper and hostage situations, now often are used for routine police work like the execution of search warrants, sometimes resulting in botched raids and even deaths of innocent residents.
A mishandled marijuana raid by a Preble County SWAT team resulted in the 2002 death of Clayton Helriggle, who was shot as he came down a stairway. The SWAT team was later disbanded, and Helriggle's survivors received more than $500,000 to settle a civil lawsuit.
Ohio SWAT teams have since carried out numerous other controversial raids with tragic consequences.
Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones said his agency has received weapons and other equipment such as vehicles and computers.
Last year, Butler County Sheriff's Office received 15 M-16s and other items.
Jones said the agency has a couple of pickup trucks, which are still in their military colors, that are used at the sheriff's firing range and when jail inmates are being used for various cleanups.
While the agency can obtain other equipment and vehicles, such as helicopters and armored personnel carriers, Jones said those items eventually become hard to keep up.
He said the agency received an armored vehicle from Hamilton County but had to dispose of it because they could not get parts for it. Jones said he's told his staff not to bring back any junk when they obtain surplus military equipment.
He said the government "isn't going to give up the good stuff."
Several years ago, Jones' office obtained a pair of helicopters from the military and sold them after five years and used the proceeds to purchase a new one. Since then, the agency disposed that helicopter for another new one.
"Our current helicopter is being kept up by drug seizures and forfeitures from the drug dealers, which is nice of them," Jones said.
The "wars" on drugs and terror have led to a troubling blurring of the lines between cops and soldiers, said Shakyra Diaz, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. "Traditionally, the roles of police and the roles of military have been very different -- and for good reason. We cannot have our police looking at members of the community as military combatants."
Formidable tools
Ohio agencies in fiscal 2011 more than doubled their acquisition of surplus items like bulletproof vests, helmets, chemical and biological gas masks, military vehicles, computers and office furnishings, a JournalNews/Middletown Journal analysis of data from the Ohio Department of Public Safety found.
Police say the program helps law enforcement, especially in small towns, keep pace in an arms race with drug dealers and other criminals.
Carlisle Police Chief Mike Bruck said the program allows his small agency to obtain these weapons for emergency use.
In 2011, Carlisle police received 12 M-16s that were valued at $2,144 through the program.
Bruck, a retired Middletown police chief, said Carlisle has used the program before his arrival as chief to obtain M-16s, shotguns and some old handguns.
"We use them to practice with," he said. "We don't use them on a regular basis and are kept locked up."
Bruck noted that a lot of the government surplus equipment is old and outdated.
"This is a good program," he said. "It's well-controlled and there's a renewal process. The government requires that the weapons be accounted for each year."
The state data shows 23 police departments, from Toledo to tiny Uhlrichsville, obtained free armored personnel carriers that look like small tanks without cannons, each with an original acquisition cost of $244,844. The Allen County Sheriff's Office in Lima has acquired more than $4.8 million in gear, including $491,000 worth of laser range finders. The Marion County Sheriff's Office got a helicopter, and police in Delaware, north of Columbus, got a grenade launcher that can fire tear gas canisters.
In Allen County, a deputy is assigned to spend part of his time running acquisitions of military gear, which is stored at the county fairgrounds. Sheriff Samuel Crish said the 1033 program, which is named for the section of law that created it, has been a windfall for an agency that three years ago had to lay off deputies for the first time in its history. Allen County is second only to the Columbus police in use of the program.
"Some of the items we got would be sort of like a wish list for us" if not for the program, Crish said. His office just acquired a Chevrolet Suburban for the K-9 unit, and "we just recently picked up some Hummers we can utilize for drug raids or whatever situation we have. I'm not sure how many we have."
Nationally, police acquired nearly $500 million in military surplus items through the program in fiscal 2011, more than double the fiscal 2010 amount of $212 million, and are on track to match that number in the current fiscal year, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. Much of the gear is used by special weapons and tactics teams. Law enforcement agencies only pay to ship or pick up items.
SWAT teams proliferate
Critics say the expectation that military weaponry will be put to use is part of the problem. Many departments lack the training for the firepower now at their disposal, they argue, racheting up the odds of violent confrontations.
"We've invested a tremendous amount of firepower among people who are not trained to use it, and of course they're using it against our own citizens," said Alphonse Gerhardstein, a Cincinnati attorney specializing in police misconduct cases and a lawyer in the Rush and Wilson lawsuits.
"The law is not protecting citizens from this disproportional use of force."
The SWAT concept was born out of the inadequate police response to the 1966 University of Texas massacre, in which sniper Charles Whitman fired from the institution's landmark tower, killing 16 and wounding 31 before being shot by police 90 minutes into the siege. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates started the first SWAT team later that year. Its first mission was a high-profile confrontation with the Black Panthers in 1969. The team also made headlines in 1974 after successfully ending a standoff with the radical Symbionese Liberation Army. SWAT teams sprung up in major cities, but their mission was limited.
But starting in the 1980s with President Reagan's war on drugs, SWAT teams proliferated and were increasingly used in forced-entry raids on suspected drug houses, said libertarian researcher Radley Balko in a 2006 Cato Institute report.
"These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers," Balko wrote. "They have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders and innocent suspects."
One of Balko's recommendations was to "end the Pentagon giveaways. The primary reason so many police departments across the country can afford SWAT teams is the Pentagon's policy of making surplus military equipment available to those departments for free, or at steep discounts."
Gerhardstein said it's not just a matter of undertrained tactical officers.
Even if officers are well-trained, he said, SWAT missions can go wrong if team commanders make bad decisions or have flawed policies about when heavily armed SWAT teams are deployed.
"It is a full-time job for the military, and it's treated as a part-time exercise by the police," Gerhardstein said. The equipment is driving too many of the decisions. 'When do we bring in the half-track?' It is not standardized."
Staff Writer Ken McCall contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 - Dayton Daily News, Ohio
