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.
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