Two-Man Police Department Acquires $1 Million In Military Gear
from the and-you-get-a-truck-and-you-get-a-truck-and-everyone-gets-a-truck! dept
An ultra-safe Michigan town of 6,800 has claimed more than $1 million in military equipment through the Defense Department's 1033 program. The program allows law enforcement agencies to obtain anything from file cabinets to mine-resistant assault vehicles for next to nothing provided the agencies can show a need for the equipment. Most can "show" a "need," since it's pretty easy to type something up about existential terrorist/drug threats. Boilerplate can be adjusted as needed, but for the most part, requests are granted and oversight -- either at the federal and local level -- is almost nonexistent.
This has come to a head in Thetford Township, the fourth-safest municipality in Michigan, and home to more than $1 million in military gear and two (2) police officers.
The free material, received through a federal program, includes mine detectors and Humvees, tractors and backhoes, hydroseeders and forklifts, motorized carts and a riding lawnmower. The landlocked township also has gotten boat motors and dive boots.
While much of the gear worth $1 million has never been used by the township, some has been given to residents, township officials said.
The township supervisor and a trustee said the police have stymied their attempts to find out what equipment they have, where it’s located and why some of it has been given away. The police didn’t keep track of what they had or what they had given away, according to a township audit last year.
A belated, half-hearted audit by Police Chief Bob Kenny (supervisor of one [1] police officer) showed his department had acquired 950 pieces of equipment, including a couple of Humvees, three ATVs, a tractor, a forklift, and a number of other vehicles. More than 300 items are stored "off-site," which apparently means parked on private property and used by private citizens.
Town supervisor Gary Stevens has been trying to get to the bottom of this outsized stockpile. But he's running into resistance. Supporters of the town's two-person police force (and apparent beneficiaries of the federal program) have been pushing back. A recall campaign has been started by farmer Eugene Lehr, who has 21 pieces of military surplus equipment on his property.
A nearby sheriff's department has stepped in to perform an independent audit but has yet to release its findings. Equipment has apparently been given to citizens but no paper trail exists to track who ended up with what and how much may have been sold by the department. But what's left is still impressive. A two-man department somehow justified the acquisition of seven trucks and nine trailers over the last decade, in addition to everything else the department has stockpiled since Bob Kenny became chief.
While it may seem like most of the acquisitions are innocuous -- not the sort of thing one associates with a militarized police force -- the fact remains the program has almost zero oversight. Not until after more than $1 million in equipment was routed to a place that did not have a pressing need for the items did the DoD finally step in and suspend the department's participation in the program. Equipment that may have been put to better use elsewhere is parked on private property or has simply vanished into thin air. This is a waste of tax dollars that does nothing to make policing better or a safe township even safer.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: 1033, defense department, michigan, military gear, military surplus, police, thetford township
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Seems about as legitimate as Disney being a local government, so make some friends in your state government and give it a shot...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
On the other hand, maybe the sheriff's son-in-law works for the DoD and assigns 1033 disbursements without any oversight.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
"desert rusting"
I can't quite put my finger on it, but somehow those reports of tanks rusting away in the desert seem like they might be just a wee bit exaggerated.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Not any of the AC above, but was inspired to take about two seconds to do a Google search which turned up plenty of info, except change 'rust' to 'dust' for increased accuracy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That doesn't explain though why these used tanks aren't being aggressively sold to the many third-world countries that are currently buying ship-loads Soviet-designed tanks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Which doesn't diminish the premise that Congress might be buying things the Armed Forces neither want or need, for economic (a.k.a. political) reasons.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
How should we best refer to the Soviet-built weapons factories that are now located in a multitude of countries since the breakup of the Soviet Union as well as Communist Block? Even saying "Russian designed" omits so many things like the Ukrainian designed and manufactured T-64 tank or the (Soviet-occupied) Czechoslovak designed and manufactured VZ-58 rifle. Or even the many weapons of Soviet origin now being built in every country in Eastern Europe as well as China and various 3rd world countries around the world.
So maybe the "dated" Soviet term is still today the least inaccurate one for general-purpose use?
It's often been said that "Soviet" military gear has tended to be preferred by 3rd worlders due to its simplicity and ability to tolerate abuse and lack of maintenance. For instance, putting ordinary diesel engines in tanks instead of high-tech turboshaft engines like the American M1 tanks have (much lighter & faster, but not something the average garage mechanic can service)
But with such a huge surplus of used tanks and other military equipment, the US could do what the cash-strapped post-USSR countries did in the early 1990s -- sell them dirt-cheap to most any country that was interested.
Politics can always play a role, of course, such as the Obama-era decision to destroy/recycle US military stockpiles of various civilian-legal gun ammunition rather than continue the century-old practice of selling surplus ammunition to civilians when it reaches its marked expiration date. (but then not everyone thinks civilians should even be able to buy things like armor-piercing BMG machine gun ammo even if it's not (yet) outlawed). And like everything related to the military and government, there's always just plain old incompetence as the reason for many things that get done badly or not at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Would you sell tanks equal to what you use to countries that you may develop a desire to invade in the future?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Given the current administration, whom does that preclude?
OK, not given the current administration, but given the vagaries of US foreign policy over the last say 60 years, whom does that preclude? That concept of foreign policy includes our trade negotiation positions.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The military armaments being secretly supplied to insurgents in Syria by the CIA and SOCOM were at first ex-Communist Block (mostly Bulgarian & Ukrainian) made Soviet-era weapons, and then later when America's covert war was no longer covert, modern US-made weapons like TOW anti-tank missiles.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Of course you should install one of those safe encryption back doors I keep hearing about in each tank so you can switch them off at a distance if somebody wants to use them against you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They abused a wasteful program & then just handed stuff out & lost track of it like it was NSA zero-day hacks.
Someone really needs to find out why the hell we had all of these excess items when we are at war in multiple places across the globe. How sometimes we didn't have proper gear for soliders, but a 2 man PD could have run an entire battalion.
This is wasteful & it continues despite all the claims of reform. The government almost cares right now because literally a couple bumpkins ripped them off & its really hard to come back from well this 2 man department really needed an 8th humvee.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whats the big deal?
So now its a crime to be prepared to help citizens during a flood of biblical proportions?
ATVs, trucks, tractors, forklifts and such are all useful on land.
So now its a crime to prepare for helping citizens with their daily lives after the zombie apocalypse?
To protect and serve....
Seems like these two police officers were serving their community very well by providing the resources the community needed to get things done.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Whats the big deal?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, I guess giving a million worth of military gear to a PD with two members is still a lot better than giving a million in gear to a PD that never actually existed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, maybe they can request a mine detector and use that to find the rest of the hardware.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
aLWAYS WONDERED..
How many cars do WE WANT..
How much Heavy equipment do we need..
We could fix up ALL the facilities with ALL the equipment WE NEED..
WHY NOT??
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
now its a 3 man team
i love it when a plan comes together
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The only obvious reason here:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Question
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And yet, time and time again, corrupt elected officials won't be or can't be touched.
It routinely seems that our military has more money than they know what to do with.
"War profiting" has come to American soil. Whatever happened to money and equipment will disappear over there so we don’t have to disappear them here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's not waste when it supports jobs...in my district, so says the politician.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This is totally the beginning of a buddy-cop action movie.
Totally.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: This is totally the beginning of a buddy-cop action movie.
Why do they actually hand out lawn mowers with this program?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: This is totally the beginning of a buddy-cop action movie.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Easy fix
The township supervisor and a trustee said the police have stymied their attempts to find out what equipment they have, where it’s located and why some of it has been given away. The police didn’t keep track of what they had or what they had given away, according to a township audit last year.
Simply find some way to spin the situation such that what was given away, and who owns it now, involves unpaid taxable property, and then let the IRS take it from there. I don't think they would accept, 'yeah, you know, I just cannot remember where I put all that military gear...'
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lies in this Article from Therford Township
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lies in this Article from Therford Township
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]