Montgomery County investigators are exploring potential breaches in the county’s conflict-of-interest ethics rules as part of a probe into whether public safety officers used taxpayer funds to get steep discounts on guns, county officials said.
“There are issues to be explored,” said Edward Lattner, a division chief in the County Attorney’s Office who handles ethics-related issues.
Specifically, county officials said the county would examine whether its policy prohibiting employees from owning or working for a company that contracts with the county department they work for was broken.
Two police officers are listed as the owners of the Global Law Enforcement Advisory Group, which county officials said essentially became Applied Sciences for Public Safety. Officials have said the company offered training classes for about $1,600 in which public safety officials also were able to buy guns such as a Glock handgun and a sniper rifle at massive discounts. Class attendees were reimbursed by a taxpayer-funded tuition-assistance program.
Records show that five additional police officers were approved to work for the two companies, and a sheriff’s deputy is listed as the owner of a house that Applied Sciences lists as its office address.
The county has paid both companies a total of nearly $500,000.
County officials said they expected the investigation to include a look into whether the police officers tried to promote the classes to other law enforcement personnel while on duty. Ethics rules prevent employees from soliciting referrals for their outside jobs while on the clock.
Council President Phil Andrews, D-Gaithersburg/Rockville, said he also wanted to know whether the county’s Ethics Commission was aware that two officers were part owners of Global when it granted approval for the officers to work as “senior consultants” for the company.
All seven police officers received approval to work for the two companies from the county’s Ethics Commission as instructors or consultants. None could be reached for comment.
The county has frozen payment to Applied Sciences over concerns the company may have used money from a tuition assistance program to subsidize guns that were offered to hundreds of county law enforcement personnel who have taken or signed up to take the company’s courses.
The company advertises $1,600 training classes that focus on police shootouts, though past participants have said the classes are not the highest quality and involved shooting paintball guns, according to Sheriff Raymond Kight.
County officials have tasked County Attorney Leon Rodriguez to investigate the classes further. Rodriguez has stayed mum on the investigation’s scope, except to say that “everything is on the table.”
