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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Police departments "lose" military-issued weapons



Missing in Action
Even Humvees are "misplaced" by police departments.


(Fusion News)  -  Haunting images of local police officials using military-issued equipment to quell protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have raised new concerns about the Pentagon's controversial program to equip local and state police departments with military surplus weaponry.

The program, now under White House review, has been plagued by messy bookkeeping, bureaucratic confusion and scores of missing weapons.  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.
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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.  "[The program] is obviously very sloppy, and it's another reason that Congress needs to revisit this promptly," said Tim Lynch, director of the CATO Institute's project on criminal justice. "We don't know where these weapons are going, whether they are really lost, or whether there is corruption involved."
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More troubling yet is the possibility that some of the missing weapons, which were given to local police departments as part of a decades' old government program to equip cops for the wars on terrorism and drugs, are actually being sold on the black market, Lynch said.  "That uncertainty is very unsettling," he told Fusion.
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Since the program began in 1990, more than $4.3 billion in equipment and weapons has been transferred to more than 8,000 participating police departments, according to the Pentagon.

Read More at Fusion.net


"I thought you had the guns." 
"No you did"

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