That Time The Chelan County Sheriff's Office Lost a Machine Gun

The story of a fully-automatic M16 that went missing from the CCSO armory, and the consequences faced by the deputy who reported it

A M16A1 rifle being fired on a range.

In 2006, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office received 12 M16A1 rifles from the federal government through the 1033 program, which was set up to funnel unused military equipment to domestic law enforcement agencies for little or no cost.

It would be more than six years later that a Chelan Sheriff’s Office employee would realize and report one of those M16s had gone missing.

His name is Sgt. Marcus “Mike” Harris, and this week NCWlife reported that he received a $425,000 from the Sheriff’s Office as a settlement in a suit he brought against Sheriff Brian Burnett’s administration in 2017. In the suit Harris claimed he was targeted for retaliation by Burnett’s administration after he investigated the disappearance of the fully-automatic M16.

“His lawsuit claimed he was first targeted by his superiors when he investigated the disappearance of a fully automatic Army surplus M16 rifle from the department’s armory. Harris took steps to register the rifle with the Army as lost or stolen; then-Undersheriff John Wisemore instead told the Army in 2014 that the weapon was nonfunctional and had been destroyed, although Harris found no evidence of its destruction.”

I obtained Deputy Harris’ reports from that investigation, as well as other documents and emails pertaining to the case.

Dep. Harris

In a narrative report filed by Harris on 1/23/14, he provides a succinct synopsis of how he discovered that the machine gun went missing and what steps he took in response.

On 2/11/14 Harris sent an email to all CCSO personnel informing everyone of a “corrective action plan,” effective immediately.

But by then the cat was out of the bag outside CCSO. Government employees higher up the food chain – people tasked with keeping track of the battlefield weapons the feds farms out to domestic law enforcement agencies like CCSO – were communicating about the situation.

A “Senior Special Agent” from the Office of the Inspector General named Thomas Mulconry sent William Redd, the “Weapons Lead, Western US,” this email about the situation.

I had to look it up, but “opine” means to “hold and state as one's opinion.”

“A letter is needed from CCSO management personnel stating that Colt-M16 rifle, serial number 5439549 was nonfunctional and was subsequently destroyed,” Mulconry writes at the end of the email.

To my knowledge the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office produced no such letter to the Office of the Inspector General.

That might one of the reasons why the U.S. Department of Defense suspended the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office from the 1033 program, according to NCWlife. But the CCSO made efforts to reverse that decision, according to emails between Undersheriff John Wisemore, Deputy Carl Mohns and a government employee in Olympia named Stacy Eaves, with the state department of “Enterprise Services, Surplus Program” who was assigned to the case.

“Stacy, I just want to clarify a certain issue I have been thinking about. While we at the Sheriffs office cannot be 100% sure of the M16 destruction, it is what we believe happened to it. We truly don’t believe it was stolen, nor do we believe it was misplaced. We want to be honest as possible, so I felt some clarification was necessary,” Wisemore wrote. “We will stand behind the fact that we were responsible for the gun and ultimately failed to keep the proper records, but we are confident in our checks and balances as we move forward. Thank you!”

The Sheriff’s Office did issue a '“corrective action plan,” as referenced above.

In it, Sheriff Burnett and Chief Harris outline the new rules:

1. “Our armory has increased security as a key-card entry system has been in place. This now allows only authorized personnel to access the armory with a key-card and not a key.

1. All rifles are photographed.

2. We have a new evidence room and evidence procedures. This included documentation (through paper trail and scanned into computer with unique identifier) of all weapons that are sent for disposal.

3. Firearms instructors are now keeping proper documentation of:

   a. Running/current Master Issue List on weapon allocations, b. Weapons that each Deputy qualifies with, c. Weapons that are transferred between Deputies (when they change assignments or retire), d. The documentation is not just in paper form, but is kept on the county’s main hard drive so paperwork will not be lost.”

That’s a lot to unpack. But the fact that the bosses admit the agency was not “keeping proper documentation” of “weapon allocations” is key.

Harris sheds more light on the situation in an email:

“However, there is no supporting documentation regarding this weapon being disposed of.”

According to NCWlife, “Burnett fired Harris in 2015, charging him with lying in emailed requests for drug samples from the sheriff’s evidence department, and with alleged violations of overtime rules. An arbitrator ruled the department had no just cause for the firing, and reinstated Harris a year later.”

That reinstatement didn’t go well. Harris said he was mistreated after he was back in the line of duty. In his wrongful termination suit he said the agency refused to issue him a weapon, gave him an ill-fitting protective vest and assigned him “a faulty patrol vehicle,” according to NCWlife.

The sheriff’s office denied the allegations but settled with Harris to the tune of $425,000.

For those keeping track at home that brings the total sum that Chelan County taxpayers have paid out because of employment discrimination lawsuits under the Burnett administration in the last five years up to nearly $1.5 million – when you account for Jennifer Tyler. Burnett fired Tyler twice and you read more about that saga here. But it probably won’t be the last time you hear of it because Tyler is currently suing Burnett’s administration in federal court.

To be fair the Chelan County Sheriff’s Department is not an outlier when it comes to losing weapons and equipment acquired through the 1033 program. According to KUOW, a Seattle-based NPR affiliate, East Wenatchee PD also lost an “M16-style rifle” and was also suspended from the program. The Grant County Sheriff’s office also lost an M16 that Sheriff Tom Jones said he believed was stolen.

So that’s three missing M16s from three separate law enforcement agencies in North Central Washington, all made possible because of the federal government via the 1033 program.

When it comes to the M16 that went missing from Chelan County Sheriff’s office it begs the question: if it wasn’t destroyed as Harris “opined” then where did it go?