The Montgomery County Attorney’s Office has hired an outside security consultant to help with its ongoing investigation into whether hundreds of public safety officials tried to use money from a taxpayer-funded tuition program to buy their own guns at a steep discount.
The county is hiring Robert Warshaw, the former police chief of Rochester, N.Y., and the associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Clinton administration, to help direct the investigation, County Attorney Leon Rodriguez said.
“We want to ensure that the public understands that this is an independent set of eyes on this investigation,” Rodriguez said. “An independent and expert set of eyes.”
Rodriguez said the county would pay Warshaw, who now heads a consulting company, $260 an hour for his work. Warshaw will also be able to use his own field investigators for $135-$160 an hour on an “as-needed basis,” Rodriguez said, declining to elaborate on what those circumstances might be.
The total cost for the contract, Rodriguez said, was estimated at $25,000.
Rodriguez, who previously prosecuted white-collar crimes as a federal prosecutor, said he would continue to “actively” handle the investigation.
The county has suspended payment to Applied Sciences for Public Safety, which offered $1,600-a-day training courses for public safety personnel, over questions of whether it used tuition assistance money to offer handguns and sniper rifles at big discounts.
Sheriff Raymond Kight’s office said it found that Applied Sciences was offering course participants a chance to buy a $1,000 Rock River Arms Varmint A4 SWAT-style sniper rifle for $400. More than 100 public safety officials, including 32 firefighters, had signed up for classes with the company this year.
Last year, the company offered $500 Glock handguns for $50, Kight said.
Applied Sciences’ attorney, Walter Booth, has said publicly that the company has done nothing wrong. County officials said they’ve received a letter from the company in response to some of their questions, but the county has continued its investigation and suspension of payment.
The Examiner first reported that Global Law Enforcement Advisory Group, which county officials said became Applied Sciences two years ago and was also part of the investigation, is owned by two county police officers, according to state records. Seven officers were approved by the county’s Ethics Commission to work for the companies.
The county has paid both companies nearly $500,000.
In addition to the County Attorney’s Office investigation, Montgomery County Inspector General Thomas Dagley has started his own investigation.
