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Why Has the U.S. Forest Service
Purchased $600,000 Worth of Tasers?
Ann Shibler
JBS
Tuesday December 11, 2007
Already in debt and understaffed, the U.S. Forest
Service just spent $600,000 in purchasing handheld Tasers for
every member of its Law Enforcement division.
Follow this link to the original source: "Cash
Starved Forest Service Spends $600,000 to Buy Tasers"
Near the end of the U.S. Forest Service's fiscal year in September,
there was a hurried single-source purchase of 700 Tasers for the
Law Enforcement and Investigations division of the U.S. Forest
Service. The Tasers are now sitting in storage, as there were
no rules governing their use or a required training program yet
developed by the USFS.
In fact, there was no public input, or congressional review of
the purchase. There wasn't even a written explanation as to why
the devices were needed. There was a very brief justification
statement that really only described the item for purchase.
(Article continues below)
Jeff Ruch of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
(PEER) did request and receive, under the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA), records relating to the amount the Forest Service
paid for the devices ($600,001.52 — $857 apiece), and the
justification statement, but not any information that described
the training that would have to be provided to agency personnel
who will use the electronic Tasers. USFS director John Twiss issued
a statement: "In the interest of customer service, we can
tell you that the Forest Service is currently developing the required
training and law enforcement officers will be required to attend
prior to the issuance of, or authorization to carry or use, an
Electronic Control Device."
With the devastating forest fires of the past summer, one would
think that director Twiss would have more important matters to
address than the purchase of what we now know to be lethal weapons.
The agency is presently a quarter of a billion dollars in debt
and has 200 vacant positions, some lost to budget cuts and more
to agents who have been reassigned to other obligations such as
border patrol for the Department of Homeland Security. The USFS
has over 750,000 million annual visitors and that leaves one officer
overseeing approximately 1.5 million visitors and covering 300,000
acres of forest, and even more budget cuts are looming.
PEER, in 2005, released information on director John Twiss, claiming
he is the first person without any law enforcement qualifications
or credentials to head the USFS — he's a civilian with desk
experience and nothing more. In the early 1990s, Congress mandated
that the Forest Service law enforcement division be independent
of the agency chain-of-command, in order to ensure fair and independent
investigations and internal probes. But Twiss signaled that he
would see an end to such independency, and according to Ruch would
see to it, "that all future Forest Service investigations
will be politically vetted."
Lethal Tasers in the hands of untrained federal agents, compounded
by the bureaucratic management style of the present director,
with the accompanying potential for serious abuse certainly doesn’t
bode well for park visitors.
Jeff Ruch of PEER said it best when he opined, "As a result,
in addition to the howl of the coyote and the hoot of the owl,
the plaintive cry of "Don't tase me, bro!' may soon echo
through the forest night."
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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