A federal program that doles out surplus military equipment has sent thousands of weapons to dozens of law enforcement agencies across Indiana, giving many small police departments access to big firepower.

In 15 years, the Department of Defense has issued more than 3,100 weapons statewide – more than 500 in northeast Indiana – for little more than the cost of shipping.

Some are pistols and shotguns, weapons long standard among police forces of all sizes.

But nearly two-thirds of the firearms handed out are military-grade rifles, including 1,325 M-16s, capable of fully automatic fire. Seven agencies, including Auburn’s police department, received grenade launchers.

The result is that departments that protect towns like Shipshewana, Rome City and Stilesville (a central Indiana town, population 285) have been able to equip their officers with weaponry that might otherwise be in the realm of only the military and larger police agencies.

A Journal Gazette analysis of more than 400 orders for military surplus weapons shows that across Indiana almost one in four of the M-16 automatic rifles went to police departments that protect communities with populations of less than 15,000.

About a third of those rifles went to departments that protect more than 100,000 people like the Fort Wayne Police Department.

The need

Shipshewana Marshal Tom Fitch is quick to point out that he and his three full-time deputies protect more than the town’s 530-some residents. Tens of thousands of tourists often bring challenges that would otherwise be foreign to the largely Amish and Mennonite community, Fitch said.

For this reason, the marshal and each full-time officer in the department carry a military surplus rifle in their squad cars – either an M-16 or M-14 rifle.

Fitch and other police chiefs point to the now-infamous 1997 shootout in North Hollywood, Calif., as reason for equipping with rifles. In that conflict, Los Angeles police officers were badly outgunned by two bank robbers who were wearing body armor and firing automatic rifles.

Rifles are more powerful and have greater accuracy at a much longer range than the pistols officers carry.

“Those guys were outgunned. We could run into that same thing here very easily, especially in a rural county where everybody’s got weapons,” Rome City Marshal Steve Heltzel said.

In Fort Wayne in 1994, two officers on routine patrol came upon bank robbers armed with automatic weapons. The robbers, who were suspects in a Wisconsin robbery in which an officer was killed, fired their weapons at Fort Wayne police, grazing one.

In 2003, police in Kosciusko County ran into a similar situation. Two men wearing body armor and carrying military-style weapons robbed a Kosciusko County bank and shot at the Milford town marshal, striking the door of his squad car.

Scenarios like that are why the Rome City Police Department, which employs two full-time officers, received two M-16 rifles from the program, Heltzel said. Fitch said in the eight years he’s been at the Shipshewana Police Department, no officer has fired any weapon at another person.

The program

The weapons come from a program run by the defense department’s Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, which is responsible for distributing outdated or unneeded military equipment, such as night-vision goggles, Humvees and weapons.

Since 1993, the program has handed out 3,113 rifles, pistols, shotguns and a handful of grenade launchers to Indiana law enforcement agencies. Together, two models of rifles make up about 65 percent of all weapons given out through the program. The remaining weapons are pistols or shotguns.

The M-14 is a heavy semiautomatic rifle, meaning that the shooter must pull the trigger each time to fire the weapon. Indiana law enforcement agencies have received 675 of those weapons since 1993.

By far the most commonly issued weapon, however, is the M-16 rifle – a variant of the weapon currently carried by U.S. troops. It is lighter and more modern than the M-14 and can fire fully automatic. That means the shooter can hold down the trigger and the gun will fire until the magazine is empty. The standard M-16 magazine carries 30 rounds.

In 15 years, 1,325 of these rifles have been given to police departments in Indiana. A few law enforcement agencies have also received M-79 single-shot launchers, which were originally designed to fire 40 mm grenades. Fifteen M-79s have been given to Indiana law enforcement agencies.

Police departments aren’t allowed to buy explosive grenades, said Kenneth MacNevin, a spokesman for the military program. Auburn uses the weapon to fire tear gas grenades and less-lethal rounds such as foam batons and rubber balls, Auburn police Cpl. Jeff Plank said.

To receive weapons, the police departments must pay a handling fee of $19.61 and the shipping costs for each weapon, MacNevin said. Without the program, many small police departments would have a hard time affording rifles, according to Heltzel in Rome City.

The alternative would be to buy AR-15 rifles, which are the popular semiautomatic civilian versions of the M-16, for at least $1,000 each.

Still, if the Rome City marshal had his druthers he would not have opted for fully automatic rifles for liability reasons, he said. Fitch, from Shipshewana, said he made the semiautomatic-only conversion for one of the rifles he received as well.

Oversight

Police departments that receive weapons from the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service must keep a paper trail on each firearm and agree to keep them secure, MacNevin said.

Automatic weapons and grenade launchers must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Direct oversight of the program is left up to each state coordinator, though the federal overseers have begun spot inspections and meetings with state officials every other year to make sure all weapons are accounted for, McNevin said.

MacNevin said he didn’t know whether any weapons from the federal program had been used in shootings that injured innocent civilians. Nationally, however, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the program’s firearms have been stolen, he said.

In 2006, the Indiana Department of Administration audited each agency and found all but seven weapons accounted for.

Of those, three rifles were stolen – including an M-16 from Howard County – two weapons were lost or missing and two had been traded without authorization, state coordinator Bob Flake said.

For his part, Fitch said the paperwork has been well worth the money he’s saved Shipshewana taxpayers.

“This program is a great program,” he said.