Van Police Department Purchases New Weapons

By Donna Limberger

The Van Police Department recently upgraded their weapons inventory with the purchase of three Bushmaster rifles.

Four rifles, two Ruger Semi- Automatic Mini 14s and two Olympic Arms Semi Automatic AR 15s were sold and the money from those sales allowed for the purchase of the new guns.

"We are legally able to sell these guns to the public but we sold to law enforcement officers so that they did not end up in the wrong hands," said Van Police Chief Kelly Smith.

Questions had been raised regarding the sale and to the legality of being able to sell the guns to individuals and not going through the bid process.

The Municipal Law and Procedure Manual allows for the sale without the items having to be put up for bid under Section 14.03, A.

Section 14.03, B allows for charter or ordinance provisions, stating that many municipalities have charter or ordinance provisions governing the sale of personal property. The City of Van has no ordinance in place.

"I have reviewed the actions taken by chief Smith and nothing improper has been done. I have checked everything thoroughly and reviewed this with the city attorney. All was done above board," said Van Mayor Billy Smith.

"Chief Smith has my full backing on this," said Smith.

Chief Smith called a gun distributor in Ft. Worth to get an actual value on the weapons and the guns were sold to individuals for more than the appraised value.

Chief Smith said that the guns that were sold were old and outdated.

"These guns were basically junk. They were misfiring and malfunctioning," said Smith.

Van Police Officer Clarence Layne, who had used one of the old guns in the past, said, "When you fired (the AR 15), it wouldn’t load the last shell. In a shooting situation, this was a dangerous thing and could have gotten someone killed,"

Layne continued by saying, "The new guns are top of the line and you can count on them to fire every time," said Layne.

Chief Smith said that the new weapons also have new magazines, collapsible stocks and are compatible with state of the art optics.

"We have been waiting to teach the rifle proficiency class until we had rifles that were up to standard. We now have those rifles that will be able to meet sate mandated standards," said Chief Smith.