Police add assault rifles across the state

Some 82 cities and towns across the Commonwealth have introduced a total of 1,057 such rifles to their arsenals over the last decade, state public safety officials confirmed yesterday, many of them acquired in recent years in response to the fear of terrorist attacks.

State officials refused to release a list of which cities and towns have deployed what weapons, citing security concerns.

The latest police force to obtain the increased firepower appears to be the MBTA, which just spent $13,000 on a set of semi-automatic assault rifles - 10 Bushmaster, long-range M4s. The T is developing plans to distribute them to transit patrol officers for use in violent emergencies such as terrorist assaults or shooting rampages by individual civilians, transit officials said.

MBTA Police Chief Paul MacMillan said yesterday that he had no intention of deploying the rifles until officers have received adequate training and strict policies are in place for their use. The guns are needed to properly equip frontline officers, who are likely to respond first to a critical emergency, he said.

"We are not going to issue that weapon until we are absolutely sure that we have met all the necessary standards," he said.

MacMillan said that while patrol officers might be asked to use them in the future, the rifles would only be distributed in cases of extreme emergency and not carried around transit stations on a daily basis. He said that is why the public was not told.

"It wouldn't necessarily be standard procedure to inform the public about these specialized weapons that would not be used on routine patrol," he said.

But the T's adoption of the guns is emblematic of a wider proliferation of the weapons in local law enforcement, both in Massachusetts and around the country. The guns are much more powerful and can fire more bullets than typical side arms carried by police officers.

In many cases, distribution of the weapons has expanded from specialized SWAT teams to neighborhood patrol officers, raising questions among community advocates and policy-makers about the safety of citizens and police officers. Mayor Thomas M. Menino, facing criticism last week, rejected the concept of deploying as many as 200 M16s to Boston patrol officers.

Community leaders, surprised by the number of military weapons in use statewide, said they were upset by the lack of public discussion of what they called the apparent "militarization" of local police.

"The very fact community police are being equipped with semi-automatic weapons without a public discussion of the possible political and social implications is unfortunately a major step backwards in terms of Massachusetts' national reputation for promoting progressive law enforcement strategy," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, pastor of the Azusa Christian Community and co-founder of the Boston Ten-Point Coalition.

Most of the weapons, including Boston's, were acquired free of charge as part of a US Military surplus program. When the military phases out certain weapons in favor of other, or newer, equipment, the leftovers are made available to local police agencies across the United States, according to the agency that oversees the program, the US Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service.

Arms can also be declared surplus when the overall size of military forces decreases, thereby shrinking the number of weapons needed.

Service spokesman Ken MacNevin said federal officials depend on state coordinators to certify communities' need for the rifles and oversee their distribution. He could not immediately provide a list of which Massachusetts communities received what surplus weapons.

A spokesman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety, Michael Coelho, gave the overall numbers of rifles and communities that received them but said releasing more specific information could "prejudice public safety by providing a tactical advantage to would-be criminals and terrorists."

"However, we are reviewing the state's role with regards to this program to ensure effective and appropriate oversight is being applied," he said in a statement.

State officials say that beyond basic requirements such as registering the rifles with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there are few regulations that govern how the military's surplus weaponry is used by civilian police departments, with each agency left to determine its own training levels and procedures for the guns' use.

In Boston, police officials first told union leaders they were preparing plans to issue the rifles to dozens of patrol officers who would receive 40 hours of training, according to law enforcement officials quoted last week by the Globe. But the mayor immediately thwarted any plan to issue them to neighborhood officers, and the police commissioner - even though the department had already acquired 200 free rifles from the US military - said he planned to make only about a dozen weapons available to district supervisors.

The MBTA did not get its weapons as part of the military program but instead bought new rifles from the manufacturer with money forfeited during federal drug arrests.

The agency received the guns roughly two months ago and has so far provided patrol officers with four hours of basic training on the weapons. Transit officials do not yet have policies or procedures in place for securing, distributing, or firing the guns in the region's oft-crowded buses, trains, and stations, and says it will not put the guns into service until procedures have been worked out.

Still, the union representing transit patrol officers said it planned to file a grievance today, because it feared its members soon could be asked to use the rifles in the line of duty, despite the lack of procedures and only minimal training.

Union officials said that officers should receive a minimum of 16 hours of training on such high-powered rifles, and that 40 hours is recommended.

"The union's concern is both public and officers' safety," said Doug Louison, lawyer for the MBTA Patrolman's Association. "The concern is that, if called upon to use the weapons, the officers will need to be able to react without wondering how to use the thing. Issuing sophisticated weapons without concern for how they're being utilized is frightening."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.