How A Group Of Navy Sailors Created Their Own Illegal Police Force
By on August 27, 2017
It took 12 years for the Navy to catch wind of it. The navy’s biggest shipyard in the United States had a team of directors and officers who illegally procured over $21 million in public funds along with a level of weaponry that would rival any mid-sized metropolitan city.
Their goal? To create a police force sanctioned by no government agency with equipment furnished exclusively by the American taxpayer.
This included:
- An armored carrier
- Thousands of rounds of ammunition
- High-powered rifle scopes
- Night vision goggles
- Ballistic vests and helmets
- Ninety-two vehicles: mostly Suburbans and Humvees
- A $150,000 speedboat that was lavished with an extra $200,000 in upgrades and upkeep
- A license plate machine that issued fictitious license plates
As Federal News Radio reports, seven commanding officers are now claiming they had no realization of what amounts to the largest theft of taxpayer resources in Navy history. None of the taxpayer funds or equipment have ever been recovered and neither the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, nor the U.S. Attorney Ofiicerhas have shown an interest in prosecuting the case according to Peter Lintner, the Deputy Director of Investigations at Naval Seas Systems Command.
“The issue with this is that most of the senior folks – the commanding officer at the time, the executive director, the security director and deputy director, the director of the shipyard – all retired, in some cases before they wanted to because they were afraid this was going to go to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service,” he said. “We asked if we could go after those folks in retirement and we were told it’s just too hard to do. I’ve been told that some of these folks have tried to get back into the security world after they retired and discovered that the word had been put out that they weren’t trustworthy, and none of them have been able to get jobs in security, as far as we know. So apparently somebody’s keeping track of them. But there’s no recoupment of money, nobody’s out searching for the vehicles that disappeared. That’s not happening.”
Federal News Radio offers an excellent in-depth analysis of what took place and why this systematic theft has been swept under the proverbial rug.
Comments are closed here.