Iraq war hurts local police

Here's a story outlining the problem of shortages of ammunition due to the demands of the war in Iraq that is starting impact local police agencies, It isn't that police have to go out on the streets with unloaded guns, but numerous police agencies are cutting back on weapons training. Montgomery County, MD police have cut back on the number of cases officers can use during a firing range training session from 10 to three. The Loudon County (VA) sheriffs' property manager says lag time on ordering ammunition was three to four months before the war; now it's six months to a year. Gene Voegelin of the International Association of Chiefs of Police says that "dozens of chiefs at a meeting of the organization two weeks ago agreed that scarcity of ammunition is a widespread problem."

Perhaps police will find they didn't really need all that much weapons training, though some agencies expressed concern about an eventual effect on officer competence as marksmen. And this alone isn't a sufficient reason to end the war in Iraq. But it's an example of how the war -- which in truth hasn't yet had all that dramatic impact on the home front -- is starting to have a deleterious effect at least on the police.