Police Feel Wartime Pinch on Ammo

Even as the military's need for ammunition has soared, domestic police agencies have increased their firepower in light of catastrophes that once seemed unimaginable, including the terror attacks of 2001. Many departments have provided patrol officers with variations on the AR-15 and similar rifles that fire .223-caliber rounds -- the same round fired by the military's M-16 and M-4 assault rifles.

Reacting in part to shortages experienced by police in New Orleans after the hurricane there in 2005, then-D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey ordered his department to keep 200,000 rounds on hand -- a stockpile that was dubbed the "Katrina reserve," said Lt. Sam Golway, commander of D.C. police firearms training division.

"What we're seeing is orders for law enforcement ammunition that have increased 40 percent in just the last year," said Brian Grace, a spokesman for Alliant Techsystems, a leading supplier for police departments across the country. The company plans a $5 million expansion to increase manufacturing capacity at two plants, he said.

Alliant, which operates the government's Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri, is the government's primary supplier of small-caliber ammunition. The company is also a leading supplier for police departments across the country. In April 2000, the Lake City plant had 650 employees and produced 350 million rounds a year, he said. Today, he said, it runs at full capacity 24 hours a day, employing 2,500 workers and producing 1.2 billion rounds a year.

In Loudoun, sheriff's deputies recently stopped using an Alliant-made .223-caliber round at the firing range because of delivery delays of nearly a year. The agency switched to a Winchester-made round that costs 2 1/2 times as much, Gutshall said.

In Anne Arundel County, backlogs of up to a year on orders have police officials on tenterhooks. "The suppliers don't give us an answer of when and if we'll get those rounds, so we have to just place our order and hope for the best," said Cpl. Mark Shawkey, a police spokesman.

Anne Arundel police spent $48,000 on ammunition this year and project a 15 to 20 percent increase next year. As a result, the department no longer supplies ammunition for officers' off-duty weapons. The department is considering collaborating with other police agencies facing similar problems, Shawkey said.

"It's a serious issue that we're concerned about," he said. "Right now, it's not affecting us in terms of keeping up our training standards, but we're meeting with other vendors and getting together with other police agencies to see if we can pool our resources."

D.C. police, like many large urban agencies, have coped with the shortage by increasing the size of their orders and placing them six months in advance, officials said.