Read this article and see if it passes the sniff test to you because something stinks to High Heaven when I read it.
Snippets of this should be enough for you to go to the link above and finish reading the original article because you couldn't make this up and there is some bullshit going on even though they are trying to say everything is under control now.
The audit, conducted by Hartford's chief auditor, H. Patrick Campbell, at the request of Police Chief James Rovella, found that the range administrator — identified by Hartford police as Officer Louis Crabtree — purchased an average of 485,000 rounds per year over the past six years, more than 1,000 rounds each for the force of about 400 officers.
But the auditor found that the department would not need more than 240,000 rounds a year, and was actually using about 180,000 rounds. What about the other 200,000-plus rounds? There were no records of ammunition purchased, held in storage or distributed to police officers. Where is it? Documentation "was not adequate to ensure that all ammunition ... was used for HPD purposes and not misappropriated."
snip
Officer Crabtree was dealing with a vendor in Greenfield, Mass., who kept only paper records on a notepad. They don't sell bullets in Connecticut?
Mr. Campbell found that over a 10-month period in 2014, Mr. Crabtree purchased 94,500 rounds of .45-caliber and 9mm ammunition, at a cost of more than $33,000 — even though in 2012 Hartford switched to .40-caliber handguns. According to the audit, Mr. Crabtree acknowledged the purchase of the .45-caliber and 9mm rounds, but said that he did so with the purpose of trading for .40-caliber rounds, which he claimed were in short supply.
It appears that Officer Crabtree has since retired and if by some strange happenstance they find evidence of wrong doing then the State's Attorney will be notified.
3 comments:
It wouldn't let me read the article without subscribing. Sounds to me like someone had a side business selling ammo. Either that or he's stocking up for the zombie apocalypse.
Hmmmm. Since he's already on 'vacation', they will most likely cut his retirement pay for a few months until some other dog & pony show diverts the public's fickle attention, and then jack it back up. A little public embarrassment, a couple months of belt tightening, that's all.
Now, if you or me, John Q. Citizen, tried something like this, we'd already be in the clink.
It does not sound all that unusual to me, stuff like that has been going on at LE ranges for many years and will not stop because of this investigation although it should not be happening. The range master on my first job, Border patrol, drove off with a flat trailer hooked up to his SUV (or whatever they called em back then). There were many a case of .308 and other ammo on that trailer. We thought it would bog him down, it was that heavily loaded. He used to schedule practice shoots out in the desert but not one agent to whom I spoke could ever recall actually having attended one of them.
If the range master, in this current case, was actually absconding with stolen ammo, then he needs to be prosecuted. I must say though, it would be easy for a department of 400 officers to use up 485,000 rounds of ammo in a year for quarterly qualifications, training, and practice. Do the math and it would come down to 1,212 rounds per officer with 200 rounds total left in reserve. Twelve hundred rounds are easily burned up, each officer's allotment going like this: 50 rounds per quarterly qualification, another 50 rounds for a second gun or for second qualification attempt, 150 rounds tactical training, 50 to 100 rounds per officer for practice each quarter. They could use more ammo for special operations team training. Somehow though, that does not sound to me like that was the case with Officer Crabtree. Yet, it also does not sound like his department required strict record keeping before now so I imagine that the ammo could have been used up legitimately but it does not sound likely.
I get a real laugh out of the .40 S&W rounds being in short supply and him getting 9mm and .45 to trade for .4S&W. I watched .40S&W closely for quite awhile as the prices increased and things like 22LR and 5.56 and .45ACP became cost prohibitive and hard to get about a year ago. The reason I watched the 40 cal stuff was because I had some to sell and wanted to get a decent, but not ridiculous, price for it with the ammo market the way it was going. The .40S&W never went up that much, in fact, it was seemingly always available at a fairly decent price. Granted I stopped looking at it about a year ago and things could have changed inside of that year but while I was watching it, it was one of the most available calibers out there. Right now, it is very available as per a check with gunbot.net and still at a decent price. My bet would be that unless retired Officer Crabtree comes up with some records as to where all that ammo went, he may well wind up with something heavy on his heart, like a long term affair with Billy-Bob Bubba in the state penitentiary.
All the best,
GB
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