Posted: Wednesday, 27 January 2010 10:40AM
OK, Who's Got The Grenade Launcher?
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
In a county as politically corrupt as Luzerne, there’s no telling when the sheriff might have to head off a marauding band of banditos. In this barren land of bad news bureaucrats, keeping an arsenal at your disposal is considered sound public policy.
So what if you lose a Tommy gun in the process.
Former Sheriff Mike Savokinas can’t be blamed for losing the fully automatic Thompson submachine gun, anyway.
County officials aren’t sure if the missing Tommy gun even really existed. County Solicitor Vito Deluca said on “Corbett” yesterday that he’s investigating the story about the mystery missing Tommy gun.
Deluca does know the whereabouts of another .45-caliber Tommy gun, though.
Savokinas sold it.
In this cash-strapped county where any extra money is helpful, Savokinas considers the sale of the antique fully-automatic submachine gun to have been a legitimate public service.
That goes for the other guns he sold, as well.
Deluca said yesterday that he’s still trying to figure out how many guns Savokinas sold before resigning after only a short time in office as an elected official. So far, though, the acting sheriff has not cooperated in the inquiry, according to Deluca, and the solicitor is threatening to ask new county Controller Walter Griffith to subpoena records.
Griffith said yesterday on “Corbett” that he will consider subpoenas as an option to get to the truth.
Savokinas told me in an email yesterday that he sold 20 handguns to employees in his office as well as to himself. All the weapons were handguns, he wrote, and were assessed at $100 apiece. He sold them for $150, he said, earning $50 more per gun for his county office treasury than the guns were worth.
A caller to “Corbett” who said he is familiar with handguns said he doubted that any quality gun would go for as little as $150, let alone $100.
The last gun I sold was about 20 years ago when I sold a 9 mm Smith & Wesson semi-automatic with a 14-shot clip and a night sight for $350.
Compared to that sale, Savokinas’ offer to his deputies sounds right on targert.
Deluca maintains that Savokinas failed to follow strict county and state procedure for the sale of county property.
Savokinas maintains that he was within his rights as a row officer to sell the guns that a number of sheriffs collected over the years from a variety of sources.
Those sources now shape a big piece of this latest county problem.
Where exactly did the guns originate? What kind of guns were they? And how many guns did the sheriff have in his possession anyway?
Savokinas said Friday on “Corbett” that he had 100 guns. In a subsequent on-air call he changed the inventory and said he had 200 guns.
But he only mentioned one Tommy gun. A news story over the weekend raised the possibility of a second Tommy gun for which nobody can account.
Before you know it, some deputy is going to show up for work with explosives in his underwear, arguing that dynamite shorts are better for self-defense than a Taser, which is what the acting sheriff said he used the proceeds from the gun sale to buy – about $19,000 worth of Tasers, as a matter of fact.
Clearly the latest story out of the courthouse gets more shocking every day.
And we need answers to each and every question. But mostly we need to know if county officials had a second Tommy gun. If they did, where is it?
The sold Tommy gun supposedly came from county prison officials who 20-some years ago presented the gun to the then-sheriff. The gun collected dust – except for deputies occasionally using the gun for target practice, according to Savokinas – until the sheriff decided to sell it.
Who originally owned the gun? The Mafia? The Marines? Ma Barker? Did another Tommy gun exist?
I received an email yesterday from a retired prison guard who said he remembers a couple of Tommy guns at the prison back in the 80s as well as an antique gas grenade launcher.
OK, who’s got the grenade launcher?
Do I have to call Homeland Security?
Don’t be surprised if, during the investigation, Osama bin Laden turns up working in the prison commissary.
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