MILITARY MUSCLE COMES TO MAYBERRY

U.S. Donates Gear, Grenade Launchers

Black River Falls may have a small police department, but it's packing some
big firepower.

The Police Department's nine officers have at their disposal four M-16
automatic rifles and a 40-mm grenade launcher - armed with rubber
projectile canisters in case of a riot at the nearby Jackson Correctional
Institution - all compliments of Uncle Sam.

"With a small department, and even with large ones, you don't often run
into situations where you require that kind of firepower," Black River
Falls Police Chief Don Gilberg said of the grenade launcher. "But with the
prison nearby and the possibility of a general uprising, it's better to
have it when you need it than not."

The Black River Falls Police Department is one of thousands of agencies
across the country taking advantage of a federal program that gives
military surplus items - everything from office equipment to armored
personnel carriers - to local law enforcement agencies.

Since 1994, the military has given M-16 automatic rifles to more than 60
Wisconsin police departments. (Mostly leftovers from the Vietnam War era,
those weapons are no longer available.) It has issued two armored vehicles
and approved at least two others. Four departments have received grenade
launchers - which also can be used for delivering tear gas charges or smoke
grenades - and at least seven others have requested them.

Police officials, citing national trends, say it's important to be prepared
for any contingency. Many point to California.

"California is kind of like the barometer for the rest of the country,"
said Steve Pederson, public information officer for the Waukesha County
Sheriff's Office, which has been approved for an armored vehicle.

In Waunakee, just north of Madison, the Police Department has received five
M-16s, protective vests and a sniper rifle, which according to Police Chief
Kevin Plendl has saved his department between $6,000 and $8,000. The
department was approved for a grenade launcher, which the department,
because of a change in administration, never picked up.

"Some of these agencies wouldn't have a fraction of what they have without
this program," said Lt. Steve Sell of the Wisconsin State Patrol, the
state's administrator for the Law Enforcement Security Program, a Defense
Department project that disburses military surplus equipment to local agencies.

The program originated in the Defense Department's Drug Enforcement Policy
and Support Office in 1981 to assist civilian police with an array of
services in the enforcement of drug laws. In 1994, Congress created the
reutilization program to focus on handing out equipment, including
high-tech weapons formerly reserved for military use. By 1997 the Defense
Department had given U.S. police departments 1.2 million pieces of military
equipment, including 73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers.

During the 1990s, the military handed out 99,799 items worth $18 million to
local law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin.

Just north of Dane County, the Columbia County Sheriff's Department alone
received 5,396 pieces of equipment worth $1.75 million, including 11 M-16s,
21 bayonets, four boats, a periscope, and 41 vehicles, one of which was
converted into a mobile command center for the SWAT team. It has also
received surveillance equipment, cold weather gear, tools, battle dress
uniforms, flak jackets, chemical suits, computers and office equipment.

The Madison Police Department has made limited use of the program. It
received 10 M-16s in 1996.

"Having been a sheriff, I can see a lot of departments going after this
stuff because they're financially strapped," said the State Patrol's Sell,
who was Marquette County sheriff in the early 1990s.

"Police departments are always out there trolling for dollars," agreed
Steven Brandl, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But he sees police departments' scramble to amass
military weaponry as a dangerous trend.

"In a lot of respects that's not really healthy," Brandl said. "It
reinforces the idea that they're engaged in a war on crime."

Particularly problematic, he says, is that while the federal government is
arming police departments, it is also promoting a softer, gentler approach
to law enforcement with the Community Oriented Policing program, which
through the 1990s funded thousands of new community-oriented police officers.

"Community policing initiatives and stockpiling weapons and grenade
launchers are totally incompatible," Brandl said.