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Every Weapon, Armored Truck, and Plane the Pentagon Gave To Local Police
v3rgEz writes You may have heard that the image-conscious Los Angeles Unified School District chose to return the grenade launchers it received from the Defense Department's surplus equipment program. You probably have not heard about some of the more obscure beneficiaries of the Pentagon giveaway, but now you can after MuckRock got the Department of Defense to release the full database, letting anyone browse what gear their local department has received.
Per the Second Amendment, we all have the right to keep and bear arms. So, why are they only giving these to police? I'd like at least a token weapon (like a single pistol or rifle) for my share of taxes, that went to research, develop, and produce them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And why did they give our local PD 145 flashlights worth $130K? What does a thousand-dollar flashlight even /look/ like?
... to the people.
This limits what you'll sell to the police because a lot of this hardware you don't want in "civilian" hands... the police ARE civilians. They are not military.
Anything the police are able to buy, should be something the average citizen can buy.
Pistols?
Rifles?
Shotguns?
Body armor?
Tear gas?
Gas masks?
Flash bangs?
Tasers?
All of that can be sold to civilians already. No issue there.
Tanks?
Machine guns?
THAT crosses a line.
If I can't buy a tank then I don't want to see the police using them either. Both the police and the general public must operate under the same rules.
If police are getting out gunned by people that have automatic weapons, then we can look at that situation and see how that happened. From what I've seen, that mostly happens with the cartels if it happens at all. And in those cases, you're dealing with a failure of the border patrol etc. Regardless, you can bring in the FBI if you really want to bring some firepower down on their heads.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'd like to know what kind of Flashlights Santa Clara, CA received at $900 each. ($130K for 145 of them).
They received a utility truck worth $47K - if they put just 53 of their flashlights in the back of the truck, they'd be worth more than the truck itself.
What makes these flashlights worth $900?
I'm happy to say that none of my local police departments received anything too crazy (grenade launchers, APC's, etc). Mostly it was pretty reasonable stuff like rifles, pistols, gear, trucks, etc. I am a tad concerned with the number of weapons some of them received, most of the departments seemed to want an assault rifle for every single officer and enough pistols for every employee in their department. I realize that police need to keep up with some of the stuff used by the exceedingly rare nutcase but a few well trained officers with a few properly maintained rifles would seem more suited to that end rather than a bunch of poorly trained officers with some rusty possibly inoperative rifles in the back of their cars.
Yes, but why would they want to arm their enemy.
Captcha: treaty
All this means is that we got the crap scared out of us at various points in recent history (roughly 5 years after the end of the cold war and 9/11, respectively) and we ended up "recouping" some of the costs incurred by the original freakouts by sending the crap we bought for the defense department to local police departments in the hopes that it might be useful for something. Want a less militarized police force? Don't fund the military to the point of embarrassing overkill, folks.
Posterity, my posterior.
As far as i know it was 1961 when the city of Ft. Lauderdale got the first police tank. It was in fear of the dreaded college students on Ft. Lauderdale beach on spring break. It was stored underneath the local public swimming pool. It featured such things as tear gas sprays and rubber bullets. But the heavy, tracked vehicle was a threat as our beach road was normally covered with students. We had as many as 500,000 at one time. About 1962 colleges started to stagger their spring breaks to avoid crowding at resort areas and the FT. Lauderdale police and officials were ugly enough to cause less kids to come to Ft. Lauderdale anyway. And yes, kids really were assaulted for no reason by over worked cops. I was there and saw it first hand. Oh Lord save us from the hordes of scholars descending upon us.
Who can beat their 120+ line items of largess in a town with less than 5000 people? The Florence Facebook photos page is to die for. It took me 5 minutes to recover. Looks like a total LE staff around 12. (including the dog). I want pictures of Florence Cops on Mules!
It's amazing that our tax dollars pay for the equipment to be bought on DOD contracts on the federal level, and then our state tax dollars turn around to pay for it a second time. What a complete fucking sham.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Because 9/11.
No, really. This was just another piece of police state bullshit rammed through by Republicans after 9/11, along with warrantless surveillance by the NSA, the Patriot Act, and civil forfeiture laws http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/videos/john-oliver-amplifies-the-absurdity-of-civil-forfeitures-20141006, which allow police to seize your property with only an accusation.
Remember this next time the Republicans get on their soapbox pretending to be Libertarians.
I'm sorry, this is a democratic republic. "Stepping in" is your job. If you wait for someone else to "step in," things will only get worse.
Speak to your elected representatives at worst, or run for office if you really care about your children. No one else cares about them the way that you do. You do care about your children and their future, and that's the most basic prerequisite for a working democracy.
The next step is taking the initiative to be an active member of your society rather than passively waiting for others to do something. When the Romans talked about "pietas," they meant acting in a way that benefitted their family and state, not just themselves, and not failing to act. When the Founding Fathers threw off the yoke of British tyranny and formed a new nation, they didn't wait for someone else to come and "step in" for them: they formed a government and wrote a constitution limiting that government's power and rejected the idea of standing armies and forged a new way of life to secure the blessings of liberty for their posterity. When women and blacks earned the right for their children to be full members of society with equal rights under the law, it wasn't by waiting for the white man to come to his senses and "step in," but by convincing everyone of the justice of their cause.
If you love your children, run for some office and change things for the better. Five hundred and thirty five good fathers and mothers like you, or one out of every half million citizens, could turn this country around just by looking out for their children. But you don't have to get elected to Congress: just become a member of your city council or county government and stop your police from wasting your tax money on MRAPs and military hardware. Do your job, or else your children will grow up in someone else's world.
Need a mine-resistant vehicle?
Because it is resistant to small arms fire that would make Swiss cheese out of a police car. It give the officers a chance to get close to a perp with much less risk to them. If the perp has pipe bombs (hardly unknown) they won't do him much good. Getting the drift?
Can some one please step in already? I don't like the idea that my children could grow up in a country where police brutality is the norm.
Police brutality isn't the norm. Tell your children that they should not attack police officers, resist arrest, or flee from the police at high speeds, since those are the stupid acts that tend to get people hurt. If you can't manage that, don't have children.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This MIGHT not be quite as idiotic as it sounds initially. Grenade launchers come in two varieties, 40mm and 37mm.
The 40mm ones are what the military uses, a number of lethal rounds are manufactured for them (HE, HEDP, buckshot, etc.) they have rifled barrels to improve range and accuracy. They are classified as destructive devices and are very tightly controlled.
The 37mm ones are non-restricted (individuals can buy them in many states) and are classified as flare guns, only low-lethality rounds are manufactured in 37mm and they are smoothbore. They are used for crowd control and signaling. I believe private citizens can only purchase signaling rounds (smoke, flares) and others like teargas and rubber bullets are restricted to law enforcement only.
I'm not sure why a school district needs to fire teargas or rubber bullets (isn't that when you call the police) but it would at least be less idiotic that giving them grenade launchers capable of firing explosive rounds.
Probably they wanted a larger vehicle able to hold a fair number of offices with some cross country ability. Getting something from the military is significantly cheaper than buying something built for that purpose. It may not be perfect but it is good value.
Because the police are the ones out and about in the small hours of the morning. If you are outside for sustained periods it doesn't need to be below freezing to be unpleasent enough to reduce your effectiveness.
What I'm curious about is how in the hell two disposable cups cost $127.30
Or how 220 gauze bandages comes to $424.60
Or 17 rolls of "pressure sensitive adhesive tape" (read: likely duct tape or equivalent) is $281.69
And a single plastic bag listed at $194.75
Does the US military electroplate their gear with precious metals before selling it, or what? I'm not even a US citizen, but those prices - sans a reasonable explanation - seem obscene.
PS: Taken from the MO Department of Public Safety.
Police brutality isn't the norm.
[citation needed] I have never been anything other than unfailingly polite and in fact compliant when I have encountered law enforcement, and yet they have literally always reactive in some sort of excessive manner. My very first police encounter was being arrested for vandalism of something I did not harm in any way whatsoever, being handcuffed too tightly, and put in the front of a modern shitpile FWD cruiser with my face up against the dashboard while my hand turned purple. Wasn't even 18 yet.
As far as I can tell, police brutality is the norm.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
John Oliver did a funny yet sad piece on Fergusson, MO and police militarization. My favorite part is the two stoners in Saginaw, MI filming the sheriff's armored truck; particularly when one has a moment of clarity and wonders how bad their city really is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
A couple examples from my home county:
LAMP,INCANDESCENT 15 $5,096.70
LIFE PRESERVER,YOKE 12 $11,908.32
It seems like someone is scamming someone here. Or, is Uncle Sam actually paying over $300 each for light bulbs (maybe complete lamps)? $1,000 for a life preserver?
This concern is aside from the county's acquisition of a tank, APC's, mine resistant vehicle, dozens of assault rifles, etc.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
I'm curious why my local Agriculture Department needs a bunch of M-16s.
I know that the "5.56mm rifle" is an M-16, and the ".45 cal pistol" would be a 1911, but what is the "7.62mm rifle"? I'm hoping it's an old M-14 rifle. I'm hoping these are not M-60s!
Proverbs 21:19
Those still seem extremely excessive even then unless the cops there are a bunch of pussies. I go deer hunting up in northern Minnesota with lighter cloths than that and often it will be near 0F at night and a warm day might be 35F and I sleep in a tent. If I am moving around, you know like walking a beat, back at camp I can wear a pair of bib overalls and a flannel shirt and be fine even if it is in the teens out.
Time to offend someone
I like the prices on this. M16 for $120 and the 7.62 for $130. I think that SWAT can have most of this if its surplus. But not the patrol units. They have SWAT to call in for assistance. But the whole DoD having all this surplus is crazy.
1600 Snow Parkas
was this just a 'HAHA beat you to it Alaska"
That's nothing Los Angeles Sherifs have them beat with 1600 parkas.
The 'USFS GIFFORD PINCHOT NAT'L FOREST' received over $1.4 million in items. It's a sizable place in southern Washington, but that still seems high. Turns out that $1.1 million of that was for FOUR rugged PDAs. Most everything they got were tools. US DOJ ATF RENTON recieved 5 multimeters valued at over $60k apiece, and other things like weather stations and oscilloscopes. PULLMAN POLICE DEPT got $22 of items: 6 pairs of sun/wind/dust goggles. KING COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE took in over 2 million, including a million-dollar utility helicopter, some sort of spectroscopy detectors, and big trailer generators. SPOKANE COUNTY SHERIFF OFFICE got a FLIR system and 3 'observation' helicopters which were valued at $276k. Quite a few departments got an MRAP and guns, but the majority of items seem to be pretty useful, non-scary things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
You're not going to win a high-speed chase driving an MRAP. As officers don't receive training in how to properly operate them, they're actually more likely to injure themselves by rolling one over than to ever have a legitimate law enforcement use for one.
MRAPs are expensive, they chew up roads, and they roll over at the drop of a hat. They are useful for one thing: protecting the occupants from explosive devices.
I actually have never heard of a case of someone throwing pipe bombs at police in pursuit. I would be quite interested in reading more about the incident.
Cross country in an MRAP? That's an amusing mental image.