Government Agencies stocking up on body armor, guns, and ammo during President Obama’s watch

• Over $200,000 on body armor spent by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration years, versus just $30,000 in the three previous fiscal years.
• More than $28,000 by the Smithsonian Institution on body armor for its “zoo police and security officers” in fiscal 2012.
Spending watchdogs say these examples, highlighted in an upcoming oversight report by OpenTheBooks.com titled “Arming of the Federal Agencies,” point to a trend of duplicitous federal law enforcement agencies run amok.
“Spending $71.1 million on body armor outside of traditional law enforcement agencies raises troubling questions. It’s no surprise Gallup found that nearly 50 percent of Americans believe the federal government is a threat to their liberty,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of OpenTheBooks.com and author of the oversight report.
“Living in D.C., one gets a sense of the growing police power of the federal government when you increasingly see official cars emblazoned with ‘fill-in-the-blank-agency Police Service’ for obscure bureaucracies you’ve hardly even heard of,” said Chris Edwards, a budget analyst at the Cato Institute.
For spending tens of millions of dollars on body armor and other protective gear for duplicative police forces, the VA, EPA, FDA and 41 other administrative agencies win this week’s Golden Hammer, a weekly distinction awarded by The Washington Times highlighting examples of wasteful federal spending.
“When agencies like the Bureau of Public Debt and Small Business Administration are spending money on body armor and bulletproof vests, it is an indicator of bloat in those agencies’ budgets and the wasteful incentive to spend every dime before the fiscal year-end,” Mr. Edwards said.
Federal agencies employ roughly 120,000 full-time officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests, according to a June 2012 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Administrative agencies with special police like the EPA, IRS and NOAA argue that their officers, just like other law enforcement officers, always face the potential for physical confrontation and must therefore be armed and ready.
“It’s unfortunate that problems like this don’t get addressed until there is some tragedy that occurs. Sometime there is going to be a use of force by someone, and the agency is not going to support the agent,” Mr. Larkin said. “The difference is, the FBI will stand by its agents; DEA will; the Marshals Service will. I had no belief the EPA would stand by its agents. Something like that is going to happen, and only then will the problem get addressed.”