Some North Olympic Peninsula law enforcement agencies have felt the sting of ammunition use in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages that have hit police departments nationwide and prevented some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.
An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff’s departments across the county found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition.
Closer to home, the Forks Police Department, Clallam County Sheriff’s Department and Port Townsend Police Department all have felt the strains of the delays.
“We have been waiting for months for handgun ammunition,” Forks Police Chief Mike Powell said.
The department is experiencing long waits especially for .40-caliber ammunition.
“We were told it was due to the war and that the military service personnel get a higher priority than the law enforcement here in the states,” Powell said.
Orders that would normally take a matter of a couple of weeks have already taken several months, with no clue on when they might show up.
Most of the rounds are used for training purposes, with a smaller stash for duty use ammunition.
Forgoing proper, repetitive weapons training comes with a price on the streets, police say, in diminished accuracy, quickness on the draw and basic decision-making skills.
“They are used in training that we require with our rifles that we require our officers to qualify with once a year,” Clallam County Undersheriff Ron Peregrine said.
Shortages in his department have focused on .223-caliber rifle ammunition, a round similar to that fired by the military’s M-16 and M4 rifles.
“When you are using something that can have deadly force, you want training and you want ammunition to do that with.”
