It came down to zip codes.
That’s the official explanation from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), an arm of the Department of Defense, for discrepancies in its public records showing the quantity and type of military weapons distributed to local law enforcement agencies here.
As reported by C-VILLE last week, statewide data released late last month on a DLA program that steers surplus combat gear to agencies all over the country contradicted statements from local police when it came to what kind of equipment had ended up in Charlottesville and Albemarle. The federal records showed dozens of high-powered assault rifles and other guns as well as 40 pairs of night vision goggles had been acquired by Charlottesville agencies, while Albemarle agencies had just two guns.
Those numbers, it turned out, were all wrong. Charlottesville had merely 26* of the 146 high-powered assault rifles distributed to local agencies, and agencies in Albemarle—the county police department, county sheriff, UVA police, and Scottsville police—had the rest. Local officials had no explanation for the incorrect accounting.
Eventually, however, the DLA did.
The data shared with the public was pulled from an extensive and detailed database by zip code and aggregated by municipality, DLA spokeswoman Mimi Schirmacher explained, and “the zip codes for the [agencies] we have in our property accounting system…link back to the primary zip code for the county.”
Because most of the local agencies in Albemarle have addresses that put them in the greater Charlottesville area, the DLA’s property accounting system tagged all their equipment as belonging to agencies in the city. Schirmacher declined to provide any further information that would have showed the federal agency knew exactly where the combat weapons were, but insisted all the gear is carefully tracked.
“The system used to manage [the] inventory is very detailed to include serial number and photo,” she said via e-mail. “We wouldn’t release that level of detail.”
Local police, however, have opened up about exactly what kind of equipment they have received and how it’s used. Captain Gary Pleasants of the Charlottesville Police shared detailed audits that documented each of the department’s 46 military weapons. Last week, he explained that officers have been trained on the various guns, but that none of the military weapons had been fired during an incident. Officers hope they never need to use the guns, he said, “but if we need them, they’re invaluable.”
The Albemarle County Police Department was unable to provide similar audits by press time, but department spokeswoman Carter Johnson explained why the department asked for the 103 automatic rifles and night vision goggles.
“It seemed like a win-win to receive the equipment we needed, free of charge,” she said in an e-mail. The night vision goggles are an important tool for officers working after dark, she said, and “the rifles are only used in extremely dangerous situations, when we are facing a potential threat which might also be equipped with this equipment.”
One such incident happened in January 2010, when 18-year-old Colby Eppard stole a police car in Greene County, led officers on a three-county chase, and fired at police before he was shot and killed with one of Albemarle’s military-issue assault rifles.
“We want our officers to have the appropriate tools when facing these threats and not increase the risk for their personal safety,” Johnson said. “Should we ever face an active shooter in our community, rifles would be a crucial tool for ending the threat, even from a greater distance.”
*A previous version of this story said the Charlottesville Police Department had 14 assault rifles. As explained in our previous story and as shown in the graphic, they actually have 26: 14 5.56 millimeter rifles and 12 7.6 millimeter rifles.