Montgomery County officials are investigating whether more than 100 public safety officials tried to use money from a taxpayer-funded tuition program to buy their own personal sniper rifles at a steep discount.
The county is investigating whether a local company it has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to train its police officers, prison guards and sheriff deputies used a substantial part of that money to subsidize guns it sold to county employees.
Sheriff Raymond Kight’s office began an investigation last week after finding some discrepancies in some of the 14 applications employees filled out to attend a one-day $1,600 class with Applied Sciences for Public Safety. The company has employed at least three county police officers and advertises training on how to deal with shootouts and other police situations. Past participants have said the classes consisted of playing with paintball guns, according to the sheriff’s office.
The investigation uncovered that participants were being offered a chance to buy a $1,000 Rock River Arms Varmint A4 SWAT-style sniper rifle for $400 at the end of the course, Kight said. Last year, the course sold $500 Glock handguns for $50, Kight said.
The sheriff’s office immediately suspended all course applications over questions “as to whether or not somebody could purchase guns for that amount of money” without using funds from the tuition program, said Chief Deputy Darren Popkin.
Officials said the county is investigating whether employees who signed up for the course thought they were going to a legitimate training class or did so to buy a gun that may have been mostly paid for by the county.
“It’s a fraud if it’s true,” Kight said. “It’s using county money for something that’s going to be for your own personal use and your own personal ownership.”
County Executive Ike Leggett’s spokesman, Patrick Lacefield, said the county has suspended all 109 applications for courses with Applied Science for Public Safety, including 32 by firefighters, pending a review by the county’s human resources department.
Lacefield said 330 county employees, mostly police officers, have taken courses with the company in the last two years at roughly $1,500 each.
The county allocates more than $800,000 a year for its employees to take college courses or other training. Each employee is allocated $1,630 a year, which they don’t have to pay back if they continue working for the county for one or two years.
The human resources department or a supervisor has to sign off on tuition assistance applications. The money is distributed on a first-come, first served basis. New money became available July 1, when the county’s fiscal year started.
Lacefield said county officials had spoken with a marketer for Applied Science for Public Safety who denied that any money from the tuition assistance program had been used to subsidized the price of the guns. Lacefield added that the county had not yet determined who owns the company.
Three county police officers list the company as their secondary employer on public records from 2008. And a sheriff’s deputy’s Laytonsville house is listed in a company brochure as the address where participants can send payments and where the company’s “close combat quarters combat training facility” is located.
Phone calls and e-mails to the company and its representatives were not immediately returned.
