The Randolph County Sheriff’s Department will return almost $100,000 worth of surplus military gear after being suspended from a federal program because it cannot account for numerous items.
The items were discovered to be missing in September 2018 in a property inventory conducted after the deputy responsible for keeping track of evidence and equipment resigned, documents obtained under the Sunshine Law show.
That inventory also found that a gun held as evidence and checked out by the deputy, Roy Hardt, was not in the department’s possession. It was one of 21 guns checked out by deputies from the evidence collection for use on duty. The guns were not attached to active cases, Nichols said.
The other 20 guns have since been returned by the deputies.
The Missouri Department of Public Safety in December 2018 blocked Nichols’ department from participating in the Law Enforcement Support Office Program, which offers equipment no longer needed by the Department of Defense. The missing items are 33 AR-15 magazines, five EoTech holographic sights and a telescope straight scope, together worth $4,061.
Any items checked out of the supply room were meant to have been logged each time. The highway patrol deemed the situation as poor accounting of the equipment, Nichols said.
“Apparently, the employee that was taking care of that didn’t put that down or check it out,” he said.
The department will return the remaining equipment because it must find the missing items before it can obtain more.
“We’re in the process of returning all of the equipment because of the headache,” Nichols said.
The support program offers surplus military equipment to law enforcement agencies across the country. Equipment obtained through the program can range from surplus boots, to Humvees and small arms.
The equipment is normally issued out to full-time deputies first. Left over equipment can be doled out to part-time deputies and the Huntsville Police Department, Nichols said.
In total, the sheriff’s office has about $96,000 worth of LESO equipment, said Mike O’Connell, communications director for the Missouri Public Safety Department, which oversees the LESO program. These inventory issues are not common among participating Missouri agencies, O’Connell noted.
“Missouri has roughly 300 to 310 law enforcement agencies participating in the LESO program,” he said. “On average, the number that might have inventory issues in a given year would be in the single digits.”
A law enforcement agency is supposed to self-report in the case of the unaccounted equipment, in which case the agency is placed on a 60-day program suspension with a subsequent investigation. The sheriff office’s handling of the situation after the equipment was reported is fairly routine, O’Connell said.
“This can happen,” he said. “It’s a lot of equipment that has to keep track of.”
The sheriff’s office has not been required to return the remaining equipment, O’Connell said, but they plan to do so anyway, Nichols said.
The LESO equipment was first reported as misplaced in September 2018, soon after Deputy Patrick McKenzie took over the role as evidence/supply officer. The former evidence/supply officer, Hardt, resigned in June 2018. McKenzie attended LESO training in September 2018 and soon after performed a physical inventory of the surplus equipment. He found about $4,000 worth of unaccounted items, according to a Missouri State Highway Patrol incident report.
McKenzie and Nichols reportedly attempted to contact Hardt about the equipment. McKenzie told highway patrol investigators that he never received an inventory transfer of change of accountability for the inventory from Hardt.
Hardt denied taking the equipment and refused to speak to investigators without a lawyer present, but he offered to take a polygraph test, which was ultimately not scheduled before the case was closed in February 2019.
Hardt also claimed, in an email to Nichols, that he did not have the proper time to go over the remaining and distributed equipment with McKenzie and that he was never contacted by anyone at the department in the five months between his resignation and when a physical inventory was done. In the letter, Hardt claimed that he submitted a two-week notice of resignation June 18, 2018, but was told he could terminate his employment early a week later since he had a doctor’s note excusing him from work until July 2.
McKenzie told highway patrol investigators that several people in the sheriff’s office had access to the room and that there were no cameras in the evidence and supply room, according to the highway patrol report. Ethan Fry, a deputy at the time, reportedly turned in eight AR-15 magazines in March 2019. He told McKenzie he had forgotten that he had the magazines, the report states. Since then, an EoTech sight and another magazine were turned in by the Huntsville Police Department, Nichols said.
No charges were ever filed in regards to the LESO equipment.
During the investigation into the equipment, the department also sought a handgun that Hardt had reportedly checked out from the evidence room. McKenzie alleged that the firearm had not been returned to the department after Hardt resigned.
The handgun was one of 21 firearms in evidence that had been checked out by deputies. The weapons were no longer attached to any cases and the owners could not receive them or could not be located, Nichols said.
“If the officers wanted a secondary weapon, I had those issued since they were not on a case,” Nichols said. “…I would never ever issue evidence or anything that was on a case.”
Missouri statute § 542.301 states that law enforcement agencies have the choice to sell or destroy property seized as evidence if it is deemed not useful and no one has claimed it within a year.
“I’m not one that likes to destroy firearms, and of course if you sell them you get pennies on the dollar,” Nichols said. “To me, it stands to reason if there were quality weapons and you could sell them to buy equipment, for pennies on the dollar, why couldn’t you use them for the department?”
All of the firearms issued from evidence other than the missing handgun were taken back and stored, Nichols said.
“When we figured out this former employee wasn’t real good as far as keeping track, we went ahead and collected them all back,” he said. “They’re all in evidence. They’re in there taking up space.”
