Ohio can’t get military surplus till next year
Relics of American military campaigns are housed in a locked and dusty warehouse on the city’s Northeast Side.
There are rusted knives from both the Korean and Vietnam wars. A camouflagepainted semi-truck is parked alongside the building. Elsewhere, green-painted generators are stacked.
This is the home of the Columbus Division of Police’s military surplus equipment. The city acquired it through a federal program
program that allowed local law-enforcement agencies to get the military’s unwanted equipment for free.
Police departments, including Columbus, again will have the opportunity to get tactical equipment, now that restrictions have been lifted. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions outlined the plans last week at a national Fraternal Order of Police convention.
However, lawenforcement agencies in Ohio might have to wait until next year before they can ask for more.
Ohio has been the largest participant in the program, with 551 agencies in possession of equipment, but the state has been suspended for violating inventory-control protocol. Officials anticipate that it will be 2018 before the state is brought back into compliance with federal rules. In the meantime, no new orders will be granted.
How it works
Congress initially authorized the program during the 1990-1991 session so that excess Department of Defense property could be transferred to federal and state agencies to fight the war on drugs. Over the years, the scope expanded.
The Defense Logistics Agency has managed the surplus program since 1995. The surplus includes a range of items used by the military, from the benign to the lethal. Office equipment, computers, clothing, aircraft, boats, vehicles and weapons are among the items. Agencies have to meet specific criteria to be accepted into the program. Their requests are screened by a state coordinator appointed by each governor and later by the Defense Logistics Agency.
The agencies don’t pay for the items, but they do pay for shipping, storage and any needed repair or maintenance. General equipment, like office supplies or sleeping bags, is tracked by the federal government for a year. After that, the items belong to the lawenforcement agency. Tactical equipment, such as mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles or M16 assault rifles, is tracked for its life. Those items are considered on loan to law-enforcement agencies.
Reversing Obama’s order
Restrictions were placed on some tactical items in January 2015 through an executive order by President Barack Obama after clashes erupted between police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer in August 2014.
Responding officers were outfitted with military equipment. Critics said the heavily armed response created more tension and fear in the community. As a result, law-enforcement agencies were banned from having track-propelled vehicles, grenade launchers, armed aircraft, .50-caliber guns, bayonets and camouflage clothing. Departments across the country were required to return those items.
President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that the military gear is needed to help officers do their jobs and protect the public.
Jason Pappas, president of Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge No. 9, who was at the convention, said the announcement received rousing applause.
“It was welcomed news,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity for law enforcement to get lifesaving equipment for both the public and the police.”
Critics of Trump’s order say it could lead to increased use-offorce incidents between police and the public.
“This would basically allow those militarygrade weapons to come into Ohio,” said Jocelyn Rosnick, assistant policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. “This is a big problem. We know our communities are not war zones.”
Ohio suspended
Ohio is one of two states suspended from participating in the program; the other is Rhode Island.
Ohio was suspended because of an unauthorized transfer of an M16 rifle between lawenforcement agencies in 2016 in violation of inventory-control protocol, said Dustyn Fox of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, who spoke on behalf of the state coordinator’s office.
“They’re very strict with how they handle the policies and procedures,” Fox said.
Although the state has fixed the transfer issue, the federal program requires that all participating lawenforcement agencies be retrained before Ohio’s suspension is lifted, he said.
Training has been conducted for 370 of the 551 participating agencies, or 67 percent. Officials estimate it will be sometime next year before that process is completed. Local agencies will have to wait until the state’s retraining is completed to get access to more equipment.
Plans for future
Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said he plans to acquire more military equipment, although “probably no bayonets.”
His office’s current inventory includes a Peacekeeper Protected Response Vehicle, which is an armored personnel carrier, plus an MRAP and other vehicles. He said his office’s SWAT team has used the MRAP a few times since getting it in 2014, including in a barricade situation in which an armed man refused to come out of his house; he surrendered when the vehicle showed up.
“I think it was a great program because it didn’t cost anything,” Phalen said. “It fills a need for law enforcement to have these things and use them.”
Columbus Police Lt. Dave Hughes said the division has no plans to request equipment.
The only items the division has obtained since Ferguson are the most expensive on its list: 25 aircraft engines valued at more than $6.6 million. The engines are used as replacements and spare parts in repairing the division’s helicopters.
Some of the surplus items, such as M16 rifles modified to semi-automatic mode, are used by officers. The division has nearly 350 rifles; about half of those are issued to officers.
Other items, such as a tool kit to fix an F-16 fighter jet, are stored in the warehouse.
“We don’t even have an F-16. I don’t know why these guys would even get that,” said Hughes, who oversees the program.
The division was embarrassed nearly four years ago when the officer who previously oversaw the program stole the military equipment and sold some of it. Former Columbus police Officer Steven E. Dean pleaded guilty to embezzlement from a federally funded program and theft of public property in 2014 and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison.
The division is still going through the items Dean accumulated and deciding whether to keep them and how to repurpose those it does. A sole part-time clerk, who makes $18.23 an hour, has the job of sorting the items at the warehouse; he started going through them in recent weeks.
“It was kind of amazing these guys were able to get this stuff. A lot of it doesn’t have a law-enforcement purpose,” Hughes said. “We’re working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”