Does Your DA Have a Zombie Response Team?

The New York Times profiled Cabbo Parish, Louisiana, one of twenty-nine counties in the U.S. that account for half of its death penalty sentences (it is home to the city of Shreveport) and also has the highest per capita death penalty imposition rate of any county with four or more death sentences in the time period studied.  It also profiled acting district attorney behind the trend, Dale Cox.

One colorful detail stuck out from the usual kinds of facts reported in such a story:

[I]n 2012 . . . two senior assistant district attorneys, both of whom continue to prosecute capital cases elsewhere in the state, were forced to resign from the office after they obtained machine guns from a military surplus program through what an inspector general found to be falsified applications. The men had belonged to a group of prosecutors who participated in firearms exercises as part of a unit known as the Caddo Parish Zombie Response Team, sporting arm patches around the office and specialty license plates on their trucks.

From The New York Times.

Yes, that's right, the Cabbo County DA's office had an official, machine gun armed "Zombie Response Team" that received military weapons from the United States Department of Defense to meet their local zombie response needs.

Note that Dale Cox was not the District Attorney in the Parish at the time.