Making the Most of the Gift of Grab

Meet Ron Gillespie and Bill Elmblad, a pair of armed, uniformed Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who may be the best in the nation at what they do.

They haven’t patrolled a street, investigated a crime, arrested a suspect or pulled a gun in years.

They are professional scavengers, and they have earned both their bosses’ praise and critics’ scorn because of their multimillion-dollar hauls.

Their patrol vehicle is an 18-wheeler flatbed; their beat is a string of military bases up and down California, and their full-time job is to snag hand-me-down military surplus to stock the Sheriff’s Department.

This day they’re at Vandenberg, loading up drywall to expand a jail machine shop and claiming seven tool chests that were used in a military hospital.

Already, their truck is full of goodies picked up the previous day at the Port Hueneme Navy base: computers for detectives, cots for SWAT officers and a milling machine to equip an inmates’ vocational shop.

Gillespie and Elmblad still talk of the time they picked up 40,000 pairs of new socks for jail inmates--saving the county $80,000, and of the huge earth-grading machine they acquired so inmates could compact the landfill behind the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Facility in Castaic.

The deputies figure they have saved the county untold millions over the past several years. “If we don’t take it,” they say, “someone else will grab it.”

That aggressiveness has earned plaudits in some quarters, but it also has elicited concern from federal bureaucrats who say the pair have taken more surplus than their department is entitled to.

Under federal law, police agencies such as the Sheriff’s Department can skim the cream of military surplus for drug enforcement--getting dibs ahead of virtually all other public agencies, and ahead of qualified nonprofit organizations, such as hospitals, homeless shelters and schools.

The law, Section 1208 of the 1990-91 National Defense Authorization Act, was intended by Congress to allow the Defense Department to hand over helicopters, camouflage jackets, specialized trucks, night-vision scopes, flak jackets and the like so officers could catch drug traffickers.

An estimated 10,000 law enforcement agencies in the nation have participated in the surplus program. But none have taken as much as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, including material that seemed to have little direct connection with drug enforcement. The reason, a county official acknowledges, is that the deputies used a loophole in the law to the county’s benefit.

Among just a few of the items Elmblad and Gillespie acquired during a two-year period are thousands of light bulbs, a half-dozen forklifts, 120 refrigerators, more than 1,000 pairs of boots, 1,340 coveralls, 257,396 pairs of socks, 22 air conditioners, tons of building material, 13 wheelchairs, 140 boxes of sanitary napkins, six basketball backboards, two sewing machines and 71 meat slicers. (The Defense Department gave The Times the list of materials under the Freedom of Information Act.)

By contrast, during the same two-year period, the Los Angeles Police Department took a handful of surplus items--including a workbench and five helicopters.

The two deputies, federal officials say with equal bitterness and amazement, have turned scavenging into an art form.

“Our concern with [them] is a matter of accountability,” said one federal official who did not want to be identified because he had been directed not to openly criticize the program. “This stuff was paid for by all the taxpayers, not just the folks in L.A. County. Other agencies have needs for the items that they’re taking in L.A.”

Use of military surplus to help maintain and equip jails or to clothe and feed inmates is an inappropriate application of the law, said Chris Butterworth, president of the National Assn. of State Agencies for Surplus Property. The group, which represents the officials who oversee the distribution of military surplus to agencies within their states, voiced serious concerns about accountability of the program during recent congressional hearings.

“There are other, very eligible and very needy organizations, both tax-supported and private nonprofit, that have a need for these kinds of properties but which are getting the door shut on them because law enforcement groups are accessing the property first,” Butterworth said.

The amount of surplus that goes toward drug interdiction is, in fact, a small fraction of military surplus distributed in any given year. The surplus reflects the military’s constant turnover of material, including never-used goods that are replaced with newer items, and used material that is discarded.

Of $24 billion in material declared surplus by military branches in the last fiscal year--a price tag based on the items’ value when first acquired by the government--nearly half was immediately deemed junk and scrapped.

About $2 billion was reused by other military branches.

Of the estimated $10.6-billion balance, only about $245 million worth of material was channeled via the Section 1208 program to law enforcement for the drug war. Of that amount, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department took material originally worth $5 million--more than any other law enforcement agency, federal officials say.

About $1.1 billion was claimed by federal, state, school and local civilian agencies and nonprofit groups. They had to wait for anti-drug agencies to take what they wanted.

Military material originally valued at about $9.2 billion--surplus that was worth much less at time of disposal--ultimately was sold to scavengers at public auctions at military bases. They, in turn, sell the stuff at swap meets, surplus stores or by mail.

The dregs--originally worth about $557 million but now valued by nobody--was thrown away.

Gillespie and Elmblad are unapologetic about the amount of material they have taken in over the years. “We’re aggressive at what we do,” Gillespie said.

The deputies, formerly assigned to the San Dimas sheriff’s station, asked for the military surplus beat more than 10 years ago--prior to the 1208 program, when the department competed for military surplus at the same level as other public agencies.

All the department brass know them--and pepper them with requests for surplus.

The deputies review military surplus lists on the Internet to see what requests can be filled, and--in their cellular phone- and cellular fax-equipped Peterbilt truck--spend three days a week on the road. They inspect the material at bases and--if it passes muster--put a freeze on it while awaiting formal approval to pick it up on their next trip.

The deputies cite a provision of the law as enabling them to take material that seems to have little relevance to the drug war. That loophole--which was tightened after The Times made inquiries--allowed law enforcement to take surplus if it could be applied toward “demand reduction.”

Federal officials said demand reduction refers to drug rehabilitation, education and diversion programs intended to wean people off drugs--that is, to reduce the demand for drugs.

But Gillespie and Elmblad unabashedly interpreted “demand reduction” to mean they could acquire military surplus if it reduced the department’s budgetary demands, thereby freeing money for drug investigations.

So they claimed clothing for inmates; machinery, building supplies and kitchen appliances for the jails; fans and refrigerators for detectives, and presses for the county’s print shop. They’ve acquired 50 zoom-lens cameras, 1.3 million sandbags, a $1,627 plumber’s tool kit, a $65,000 diesel-powered lawn mower, even basketball backboards--which did not go to a jail recreation yard but were hung in a gymnasium for deputy recruits.

To be sure, much of what the department has taken has a direct nexus to the drug war: night-vision goggles, gas masks, binoculars and ammunition vests--along with 432 folding shovels.

The actual value of what the department has acquired is hard to determine. Much of it is virtually new or unused; other surplus presumably is in disrepair and is cannibalized for parts.

From January 1994 to May of this year, Elmblad and Gillespie acquired material originally valued at more than $9.7 million.

Federal surplus experts say the present value of the material taken by the sheriff’s department probably is about half that, because of depreciation. Because of the drug-fighting priority, the department can take surplus that’s in the best shape, including some overstocked items in the original packaging.

Sally Reed, who left her post as the county’s chief administrative officer in May, said she applauded the deputies for their aggressive attitude in seeking surplus as a way to save the Sheriff’s Department money. But she said she did not know details of the program.

Fred Ramirez, director of administrative services for the Sheriff’s Department and Elmblad and Gillespie’s boss, vigorously defends his department’s acquisitions.

Material that is not directly linked to drug enforcement still is appropriate for the department to take, Ramirez said, to help maintain jail facilities and to help clothe, feed and train inmates--60% of whom, he said, are in custody on drug-related charges.

“These guys [Elmblad and Gillespie] are doing God’s work for us,” he said. “Other jurisdictions aren’t pursuing it as aggressively as we are. I’m proud that we’re going after this material.”

“If we’re taking advantage of a federal loophole, I hope it continues,” Ramirez said. “If we’ve angered other people who want to get their hands on it, I’m sorry.”

Until this year, no state or federal officials had challenged Gillespie and Elmblad in their wildly successful scavenger hunt. But the question of overall accountability in the surplus program sparked congressional hearings earlier this year. Under discussion was one bill to eliminate the 1208 program because of alleged abuses--and a competing one to expand it, because a growing number of police agencies are learning of it. Both are awaiting committee action.

Permission to acquire surplus for drug interdiction first comes from the Defense Department. Then a bureaucrat in Sacramento, who is assigned to oversee how California cops use military surplus for drug work, must assure Washington that requests are legitimate.

“They must pass a common-sense test--that the material will support drug operations,” said Coast Guard Lt. Tim Hutson. He heads the Defense Department’s military surplus regional screening office in El Segundo, through which California police requests initially are channeled.

Hutson said his office is supposed to be the watchdog “to make sure they use it for the intended purpose,” but the state does the follow-up auditing.

California National Guard Maj. Ron Hooks, assigned to oversee California law enforcement’s use of military surplus, conceded in an interview last year that “some of the things these guys ask for is not related directly to counter drugs.”

“I asked the L.A. sheriffs what they were going to do with a metal lathe and they said they were going to teach [inmates] new skills. I think that’s an excellent use of this property.”

Indeed, Hooks said last year he had never vetoed a request by a California law enforcement agency for military surplus--including the time the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sought stainless-steel kitchen equipment.

“I was concerned when I took this program over that this [material] wasn’t drug-interdiction stuff, but they explained the legislative intent of the program, they explained ‘demand reduction,’ and I said great,” he said at the time.

Air Force Col. Charles W. Masters of the Defense Department’s surplus disposal arm acknowledged that in the absence--until this year--of specific giveaway guidelines, it was possible that some law enforcement agencies could abuse the process.

While not specifically discussing how Gillespie and Elmblad have tapped the program, Masters said that if a drug interdiction agency “could make a case to its state coordinator, as hard a stretch as that request might be, we depended on that coordinator to tell us it was legitimate.”

But during the course of The Times’ investigation, the Defense Department reorganized its management of the program and this spring asked each state’s 1208 coordinator to operate under more stringent guidelines.

Now, requests for surplus for “demand reduction” must be specifically channeled through each state’s drug treatment program coordinator for approval, to make sure the material is earmarked for a drug-reduction program.

As a result, Elmblad said, his department has stopped requesting surplus material under that definition, and Hooks says he is taking a more critical look at other requests by Elmblad and Gillespie.

“The meat slicers that were approved in the past? They wouldn’t get them today,” Hooks said in a follow-up interview earlier this year.

Although now handcuffed by the recently tightened guidelines, Elmblad and Gillespie still work full-time in competing for surplus alongside other agencies. “The job is more challenging now,” Gillespie said.

Poor oversight of the surplus giveaway law--and the county Sheriff’s Department’s success in capitalizing on it--has been a source of frustration and anger among some officials around the country.

Chris Butterworth said that in many states--like his own, Florida--the surplus coordinator oversees the 1208 program as well as surplus distribution to other agencies. With such coordination, he said, law enforcement excesses are minimized because officials like him look critically at police requests in order to fairly balance requests among all qualified agencies.

In California, however, there is no such single-office coordination and oversight, and the state Department of General Services only can distribute what is not already channeled through Hooks to Elmblad and Gillespie and their less-aggressive counterparts.

Marion County, Ohio, Sheriff John Butterworth, a director of the National Sheriff’s Assn., acknowledged that “other government and quasi-government entities see law enforcement as having unequal access to surplus” and worry about being “shortchanged” as surplus is distributed around the country.

To guard against criticism, he said, his department only takes material under Section 1208 that has a “strict, drug-interdiction” purpose to it.

“But it’s not L.A. County’s fault that it is acquiring all this material,” said Butterworth, who is not related to Chris Butterworth. “They may see it as essential for their program.”

Said Gillespie: “We’re certainly motivated in what we do, and we get a lot of accolades from our own department. There’s a lot of pride in what we do.”

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From Sleeping Bags to Body Bags

The Department of Defense runs the nation’s largest thrift shop, offering excess equipment and supplies to other government agencies before ultimately selling leftover military surplus at public auctions.

These castoffs--free except for a small handling fee--run the gamut.

In recent months, for example, Malibu claimed 22 firefighting helmets, two utility trucks and a sedan; Long Beach took white paint; Santa Fe Springs claimed abrasive cloth, sleeping bags and a wringer mop, and Maywood snagged radios, chairs, desks, lights and an emergency generator.

Burbank recently acquired a cafeteria dish rack, a food grater, ammunition cans for storage and 300 body bags--for use as litters to carry injured people in the event of disasters or mass hospital evacuations.

UCLA took cargo nets for students to climb in outdoor wilderness training. The Saddleback Valley Unified School District in Orange County got camouflage netting for drama class props, and the Orange Unified School District claimed camouflage netting and parachutes as decorations for school parties.