BAYONETS A REAL STICKING POINT; POLICE AGENCIES DENY SURPLUS WEAPONS WOULD WIND UP ON RIFLES.

Byline: Steve Geissinger Associated Press 

Bayonets, a symbol of brutal hand-to-hand warfare, have bolstered the arsenals of police in California and 22 other states as part of a massive flow of surplus military gear.

More than 6,400 bayonets, knives with mounts that allow them to be attached to the end of rifles, went to law enforcement agencies between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, according to the Defense Logistics Agency in Washington, D.C.

Eight California law enforcement agencies have acquired a total of 415 bayonets since May 1996, according to records obtained from the Governor's Office of Criminal Justice Planning.

One agency, Los Angeles, is now returning its bayonets, one denies acquiring them and five say they would use them only as utility knives - to cut or pry during operations such as rescues or marijuana eradication - and would never put them on the ends of rifles.

San Joaquin County Sheriff Baxter Dunn said he could envision his SWAT team members, who were issued some of his department's 75 bayonets, placing them on the ends of their rifles but only to cut screens or pry open doors when storming a structure. They were acquired as utility knives, he said.

``I don't see them as stabbing or defensive weapons,'' Dunn said.

No California law bars arming law officers with knives or bayonets, said Ron Allen of the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. Most standards for arming officers are left to local jurisdictions.

But some question whether military weapons, particularly bayonets, have any place in civilian law enforcement.

``We can imagine no circumstances whatsoever where it would be appropriate for a local police agency to put a bayonet on the end of a rifle,'' said John Crew, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

The Los Angeles Police Department is returning its 42 bayonets. After an inquiry by The Associated Press, the department conducted an internal probe and concluded the acquisition of bayonets by a police sergeant was inappropriate.

``I'm sure the flavor of your story is that we acquired M-16s (assault rifles) and now we have bayonets to go on them,'' said Cmdr. Rick Dinse.

But Dinse said the bayonets are being returned to the military because the department has no use for them and that regulations will soon be in place to more carefully monitor transfers of excess military gear to the agency.

Since November 1996, more than $30 million in excess military hardware has gone - mostly free of charge - to more than 200 law enforcement agencies in California, said David Shaw of the state Criminal Justice Planning office.

Through the state clearinghouse, California officers have received surplus armored cars, planes, helicopters, trucks, assault rifles, sniper scopes, night-vision gear, gas masks, chemical suits, body armor, helmets, parachutes, fatigues, paper shredders, safes and much more.

``As long as it's not a cannon, they'll probably get it,'' said Shaw, who determines whether requested equipment is appropriate for a department.

Nationally, from October 1996 to September 1997, a total of 43,253 items originally valued at $204.3 million has gone to more than 11,000 government law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, said Tara Jennings-May, a Defense Logistics Agency spokeswoman.

Of the bayonets, the most went to North Carolina, followed by Connecticut and Indiana, the agency said. No detailed state-by-state list was available.

The surplus program began in 1990 with the requirement that agencies use the gear to fight drugs, but dropped that rule with the expansion of the program last year, Jennings-May said.

Five of the California departments that took bayonets - the Anaheim, Eureka, and San Francisco police agencies and the Madera and Humboldt sheriff's offices - said they would never attach them to their rifles. The agencies said they would use them only as utility knives.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said that besides providing some of its 75 bayonets to SWAT officers for various uses, it issued them to detectives as utility knives.

The Anaheim Police Department had at least 94 bayonets, but is only keeping 50. The San Francisco Police Department has 75; the Madera County Sheriff's Office, 40; the Eureka Police Department, 11.

One agency - the Ontario Police Department - denied a state report that it had received 20 bayonets.

Gary Philp, chief deputy of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, said the 50 bayonets his department received are useful as cutting tools in the rugged, heavily forested redwood country of northwestern California.

``We wouldn't allow anybody to put them on their guns,'' he said. ``There's only one reason (to put them on guns). We're not the Army. We don't do hand-to-hand combat. It doesn't meet our needs. It's not what civilian law enforcement should be doing.''