Police Can't Find A Bunch Of The Military Weapons And Vehicles That The Pentagon Has Been Handing Out

from the have-secured-parking-lots-with-cameras,-still-lose-Humvees dept

Turning police departments into military bases has been one of the side effects of the 1033 program. This program routes military weapons and vehicles (as well as ancillaries like office equipment and medical supplies) to police forces, asking for nothing in return but a small donation and the use of the words "terrorism" or "drugs" on the application form. The program has been extremely popular and the US government can rest easy knowing that its excess inventory won't go to waste.

Only within the past couple of weeks has anyone in the upper echelons of the government expressed concern about the program. President Obama has ordered a review of military hardware in law enforcement's hands, but previous to this move (forced by Ferguson cops' war-like tactics), the only thing heard from federal or local government has been the occasional bit of proposed legislation (including terribly-timed, objectively awful bills).

The program operates with very little oversight. No one in control of the dispersals seems to do any vetting of requests. This results in towns of 7,000 suddenly being confronted with the fact that their local police (all 12 of them) are now in possession of a mine-resistant vehicle.

This lack of oversight also leads to the following problem -- missing equipment. Apparently, some agencies are acting like spoiled children with too many toys and not taking care of the new stuff they've been given.

Fusion has learned that 184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon's "1033 program" for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.

When you start losing Humvees, it's a good sign you've got more equipment than you really need. Request forms make these items sound like dire necessities but the one thing most people do with stuff they really need is keep track of where it is. A number of agencies are apparently less than concerned about the whereabouts of their terrorist-fighting equipment, only realizing something's missing when they have to perform their yearly check-in with the government reps.

Fusion found that many of the suspensions occur in February, after police departments conduct their year-end weapons inventory.

So, there's a little bit of accountability present in the program. But it's so minimal as to be nearly non-existent. Law enforcement agencies may rat themselves out by reporting missing equipment, but the Pentagon (home of the Defense Logistics Agency which handles the actual hand outs) seems just as badly organized as the agencies they eighty-six.

The decentralized structure of the program makes it difficult — even for the Pentagon — to keep tabs on the standing of participating police departments, or the weapons they've been issued. Officials at the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which runs the equipment-transfer program, were unable to provide specifics about why various police departments were suspended.

Why is a system that supposedly oversees the transfer of military goods to law enforcement decentralized? Well, it's because of bureaucracy. Every state handles it differently, resulting in data being routed through a variety of local agencies before it finally ends up in the Pentagon's hands. Like a game of telephone played by UN members without the assistance of translators, this "system" often returns inaccurate or incomplete information. In some states, the agency law enforcement reports to is the Dept. of Public Safety. In others, it might be something as obscure as the Dept. of Career Education.

Pulling hard numbers on handouts means sending an FOIA to the CIA, and even if a response is given (like a recent one MuckRock acquired), it only provides raw numbers on what was handed out to each state. Nothing is broken down to individual law enforcement agencies. So, we may know approximately where equipment went, but numbers on how much of it has gone missing is something that can only be estimated by the number of suspensions handed out. Those losing weapons and vehicles don't really want to talk about it.

The state coordinator for California said he was "not authorized" to speak on behalf of the agency he runs, and instead deferred all questions to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, which declined repeated requests for details on the 10 suspended programs in the state.

And when they do talk about it, you almost wish they hadn't.

Huntington Beach Police Department said it was suspended from the program last year after losing an M16 assault rifle.

“It was discovered during an internal audit,” Huntington Beach Police Lieutenant Mitchell O'Brien told Fusion. “An investigation was inconclusive as to how that occurred.”

That's comforting. "We don't know how it happened or where it is."

Suspensions might hurt but they're apparently not much of a deterrent. The article lists more than a few repeat offenders. Only in rare cases will offenders be required to return the requisitioned items, and in the one case Fusion was able to track down, it was ordered by the state, not the Pentagon.

Increased power with near-zero accountability. That's a hell of a way to run the business of law enforcement.

Filed Under: defense department, inventory, lost weapons, militarization, militarized police, pentagon, police militarization

Senators Call for Spectrum Inventory

from the we're-missing-one-spectrum dept

There's been a lot of talk over the years about the various studies and statistics used to measure broadband in the US. Very often the figures don't tell a completely accurate story, so there's been a push for the government to get better data as a part of the formation of a national broadband plan. It's clear, though, that wireless access will play a big part of the broadband future of the country, but it has to be handled a little differently. Wired networks can always have more capacity added, but wireless networks have the constraint of a finite amount of radio spectrum. A big part of regulators' work in enabling mobile broadband to blossom is in ensuring that spectrum is being used efficiently. This is part of the drive behind plans like the digital TV transition and the white spaces spectrum, which seek to wring more productivity out of the airwaves. But for more of these types of efforts to move forward, it's crucial to get a better handle on just how the entire spectrum is being used, so a couple of senators have introduced legislation that would have the FCC and NTIA undertake a "spectrum inventory" detailing the usage of spectrum between 300 MHz and 3.5 GHz. Hopefully this will make it clearer how much valuable spectrum is being mismanaged or hoarded, and open the door to some new licensing policies, like spectrum markets, or even just the opening of more spectrum to unlicensed use to take advantage of new technologies.

Filed Under: inventory, spectrum

Wall Street Noticing That The Math On iPhones Doesn't Add Up

from the 2-+-2-only-equals-3? dept

While Wall Street has had something of a love affair with Apple's stock until very recently, it appears that they're finally catching on that not everything may be as rosy as stated. With Apple and AT&T announcing numbers on iPhone sales and iPhone activations, respectively, there's a 1.7 million phone gap between those numbers. Taking into account the recent launches of iPhones in other countries (estimated at 350,000 to 400,000 iPhones so far) and a 20% estimate on people buying iPhones solely for unlocking, there are still nearly 700,000 iPhones unaccounted for... suggesting that they're sitting on store shelves, piling up as unsold inventory. That number suggests at least some gap between perceived demand and actual demand -- while also raising questions about how much effort it will take to eat through that inventory.

Filed Under: inventory, iphones, wall street
Companies: apple