TRIAD POLICE OFFICERS USE SURPLUS MILITARY WEAPONS

On a 426-acre tract of rolling hills near Asheville, the North Carolina
Arboretum features thousands of varieties of flowers, trees and plants. It
is billed as "one of the most beautiful natural garden settings in America."

It is also home to a police force armed with a surplus U.S. Army machine gun.

"Hopefully it will never have to be utilized," Chief Mike Lindsay said of
his department's M-14 rifle, which was first issued to U.S. troops early in
the Vietnam War.

The arboretum's four-member police force would probably never have its M-14
if not for a federal program that has put at least 1,156 surplus military
machine guns in the hands of North Carolina law enforcement agencies since
1994. In the Triad, 106 machine guns have been issued to police agencies.

The program has helped arm some agencies on par with the world's fighting
forces, handing out $84 million in equipment in the state. Police and
sheriff's deputies in the Triad count M-16s, grenade launchers, Humvees,
mine detectors and bayonets among their arsenals, a far cry from idyllic
Mayberry, where Deputy Fife carried an unloaded revolver on his hip and a
bullet in his chest pocket.

A glut of war materiel that outlived its usefulness to the military spurred
Congress in 1991 to open stockpiles to local sheriffs and police chiefs. At
first, the equipment was intended to fight the domestic War on Drugs, but
the program was later broadened for use in any law enforcement mission.

Lawmakers envisioned the program would give police agencies the firepower
to deal with heavily armed drug runners. But in practice, the rifles have
been used to shoot people looking to commit "suicide by cop."

There are few regulations on what kind of security and training departments
must have to get the weapons, which can go for thousands of dollars on the
black market. In one case, a police chief illegally traded his department's
three machine guns with a gun dealer for a half-dozen shotguns.

So many of the weapons were being issued that state officials had to cut
back on the number of machine guns they will give to police agencies.
Records show that 73 police agencies have more of the weapons than the
program's rules allow.

M-16's by mail

Getting a machine gun begins when a police department sends a letter asking
for equipment to Law Enforcement Support Services, the Raleigh-based state
agency that coordinates the program. The agency reviews requests, making
sure the departments promise to train their officers, store the weapons
properly and not sell weapons to private buyers.

That request is forwarded to the Department of Defense, which combs its
stocks for a suitable match. Once a rifle is found, it is shipped by FedEx
or UPS. The weapons are free -- the police agencies pay for shipping.

Related story:

a.. Police agencies find surplus cost-efficient

About half of the rifles issued in the state are M-16s, fully automatic
rifles. The other half are M-14s, an earlier model that is capable of
firing automatically but is usually modified to shoot only once for every
pull of the trigger.

In the Triad, home to 106 M-14s and M-16s, many police forces have equipped
their SWAT teams with the weapons for standoffs and entries into buildings.
At agencies with larger budgets, officers keep their skills sharp by
training with the weapons once a month. At smaller departments, officers
train less often.

Many of the weapons have gone to smaller Triad towns that rarely see major
crime waves. The six-member police force in the Randolph County town of
Ramseur has four machine guns. In Rockingham County, Madison's 15-member
police force is equipped with six military rifles.

All the firepower was too much for Gerald Thomas, who served as Liberty's
police chief until leaving to work for the State Bureau of Investigation in
July. His predecessor, Roy Taylor, obtained the department's four M-14s and
one M-16 in 1994 and 1998 through the federal program. The department's
request said that "these weapons will represent an 'upper hand' against
weapons that are traditionally used by drug dealers and users."

Thomas ordered the weapons to be locked in the department's evidence room,
leaving his officers to use their standard-issue pistols and shotguns if
needed.

"Here in town, you don't need it," Thomas said. "By the time you got it
out, you would have used the other two."

Thomas said he couldn't understand why the department needed five of the
guns since the department has only two officers on duty at any one time. If
a situation arose that required that kind of firepower, officers would have
to call the sheriff for help anyway.

The Los Angeles case

Other chiefs stand by their weapons, calling them a low-cost insurance
policy against heavily armed suspects. Almost all point to a 1997 shootout
in Los Angeles, where two bank robbers covered in military-style body armor
and armed with automatic rifles went on a rampage. More than a thousand
bullets were fired in the exchange, which ended when one suspect shot
himself and the other was hit in his unprotected legs.

Eden Police Chief Gary Benthin, whose 46-member force carries 11 fully
automatic M-16s, cited the Los Angeles shooting as a reason his department
needed the extra firepower. Benthin admitted the likelihood of that
happening in Eden is small -- the town averages about one homicide a year
- -- but said the guns are there just in case.

"We want to make sure that doesn't happen here," he said. "It only takes once."

But that example could be an excuse, says Martin Fackler. Fackler is a
military ballistics expert and Vietnam War combat surgeon. He directed an
Army laboratory that studied the effects of bullets on the human body.

Fackler pointed out that the Los Angeles SWAT officers had M-16s but were
still unable to stop the suspects.

"Now all the police think they need an M-16 to get through the body armor,"
Fackler said. "They got M-16s, but it didn't penetrate the body armor."

Contrary to its image of having a lot of stopping power, Fackler said the
M-16 fires a relatively small bullet but at a higher speed. When the bullet
hits a person at close range, it is designed to fracture into several
pieces. Though it can cause serious internal damage, it doesn't hit with a
great deal of force. Fackler said officers should stick to shotguns.

"I'm not at all in favor of police having M-16s," he said. "It is far less
effective than any other weapon."

The M-16 carried by local officers is an early model of the rifle currently
issued to U.S. troops. It is capable of being fired in automatic mode,
meaning its 30-round magazine could be emptied in about three seconds if
the trigger is held down. If used in automatic mode, the M-16 can be wildly
inaccurate, Fackler said.

"All it does is waste a lot of bullets, and you don't hit anything," he said.

SWAT's weapon of choice

On a sweltering June afternoon, Guilford County sheriff's deputies trained
in full camouflage, lining up to storm a school bus in the parking lot
behind Ragsdale High School in Jamestown. A masked deputy with an M-16 led
a dozen members of the sheriff's Emergency Response Team along the side of
the bus into position. The lead deputy moved in front of the bus, training
his rifle on the driver.

The exercise was one of the team's monthly training activities. Later that
day, the team practiced advancing down the school's hallways and entering
classrooms.

The team wears military camouflage, trains on military bases and has 10
surplus military rifles at its disposal: six M-16s and four M-14s.
Detective Vic Maynard, who heads the team, said local law enforcement might
be called into service if terrorists were to strike in the Triad and
military forces weren't available to help.

Even against criminals, Maynard said his team had to be equipped to at
least match their firepower and range. Before getting their machine guns,
deputies could be shot by a suspect armed with a hunting rifle that was out
of the range of their standard-issue pistols.

"If we don't at least meet them, the cards are already stacked against
you," Maynard said.

Maynard is the only officer in Guilford County ever to fire an M-16 at a
suspect.

In 1997, 32-year-old Ronald Graham Wray, intoxicated, threatened to commit
suicide. Armed with a shotgun and a rifle, he walked into his back yard and
started shooting into the air. Maynard, armed with an M-16, and officer
Clint Gantos, carrying a shotgun, arrived on the scene and approached Wray.

Maynard tried to persuade the man to lay down his weapons, but instead Wray
pointed a gun toward the officers. Maynard and Gantos fired from about 27
yards away, killing Wray.

A similar scene took place last year in Gastonia, the only other time in
which military weapons were used statewide, according to SBI records. In
that case, 53-year-old Carmon Ray Edwards showed up at his estranged wife's
house and started shooting. An SBI report said he was seen motioning to an
officer "as if he wanted (the officer) to shoot him." Edwards had a history
of depression and recently had been laid off from his job.

When more officers arrived and approached Edwards on the driveway, he
pointed his handgun toward them. Several officers fired, including one SWAT
team member with an M-16, hitting him three times. Edwards fell to the
ground, his blood flowing onto the names of his children etched into the
concrete driveway.

Authorities in both cases ruled that the shootings were justified.

New rules

Four years ago, state regulators began to realize that many small-town
departments were requesting too many weapons. Neil Woodcock, who heads the
state agency that approves military transfers to police departments, said
at first there was no limit to what departments could ask for.

Now, departments are limited to one machine gun for every five sworn
officers. But state records show that 73 police agencies have more rifles
than the new rules allow. Woodcock said he isn't willing to ask police
chiefs to return already issued weapons.

Even with rules in place, the rifles can slip out of the hands of police
agencies and into the private market. In the Pitt County town of Bethel,
the police department needed to equip its officers with shotguns but didn't
have the money to pay for them.

Chief Reggie Roberts said he was talking to a local gun dealer, Daniel
Crouch, about the problem one day in 2001. Roberts worked out a deal with
Crouch to trade the department's three military surplus M-14s in exchange
for seven shotguns. He said he didn't know at the time that the surplus
program's rules and federal law prohibit the weapons from being sold to a
private dealer.

"I was ignorant about the fact that I wasn't supposed to do that," Roberts
said. "I was told you keep the equipment for a certain time, and then you
do what you want with it."

Crouch said he didn't know what kind of weapons Roberts was trading when he
made the deal. He said when he got the rifles from Roberts, he realized
they were machine guns and notified the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms.

ATF agents declined to comment on the case or whether the weapons had been
recovered. Woodcock said he was disturbed by the fact that surplus weapons
had slipped into private hands. But he said he could understand why Roberts
didn't know what he did was illegal since a previous chief had requested
the guns.

"I'm sure he didn't go back and look at what the other chiefs signed,"
Woodcock said.

Roberts' officers still use the shotguns he got in the trade. He says
they're much better than the M-14s anyway.

"We're a small-town police department. We don't need the heavy artillery."