ASU police plan to return surplus M-16 assault rifles

• ASU doesn't plan to use M-16s acquired from military.
• University plans to replace with standard, newer rifles.
• Most of the sworn officers have not been trained on the M-16s.

Less than two weeks after it was disclosed Arizona State University had acquired M-16 assault rifles under a government surplus weapons program, ASU officials said Monday they plan to return them.

ASU spokeswoman Julie Newberg said the department is in the process of returning the weapons and replacing with "standard but newer rifles," which could be used in situations such as confronting a shooter. ASU officials have not decided which rifles to replace them with yet.

The surplus M-16 weapons were distributed to local agencies as part of the the Department of Defense Excess Property Program.The M-16s once had the capability of firing more than one round but had been converted to fire once each time the trigger is pulled, ASU officials said.

Sgt. Daniel Macias, a spokesman for ASU Police, told Cronkite News earlier this month that the rifles were acquired a year and a half ago from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which wanted to get rid of the weapons it acquired under the program.

ASU interim Police Chief Mike Thompson said in a statement Monday that the majority of sworn personnel haven't been trained on the M-16s because ASU police didn't have a rifle range available for the 40 hours of required range and classroom training. About five members of the department received training, he said

The rifles have been stored at the Police Department since they were acquired except for when they were used for training, he said.

Thompson said the lack of training was not because of a shortage of ASU police patrol officers.

The Arizona Republic recently reported a story about staffing shortages in the university's police department.

The Republic found ASU police struggled to schedule a full complement of patrol officers, failing to meet its own requirements a majority of the days during the spring semester. Six out of seven days during the semester, at least one shift did not have all seven officers scheduled that ASU police requires to patrol Tempe and three other satellite campuses.

As a result, supervisors had to either pay overtime, reassign someone from another job or leave positions on a shift vacant. The department couldn't say how often it left a post empty on any given patrol shift.

ASU's ratio of sworn officers to students is about 25 percent below the national average for large, public schools, a national report found.

ASU officials acknowledged there have been staffing challenges but say they have been hiring to bolster department resources. The police budget was increased for the budget year that began July 1 with six new officers hired since then.

Jim Rund, an ASU senior vice president, was asked about police staffing during an Arizona Board of Regents committee meeting last week, when student safety was discussed.

Rund said that some of the recent media coverage on staffing "was more historical than current," adding that "I think we're in good stead as we sit here today and going forward."

Reach the reporter at: (602-444-8072) oranne.ryman@arizonarepublic.com

Emilie Eaton of Cronkite News service contributed to this story.