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Every Weapon, Armored Truck, and Plane the Pentagon Gave To Local Police

Posted by samzenpus on from the going-down-the-list dept.

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.

5 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Anything sold to the police should be sold... by Karmashock · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

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    1. Re:Anything sold to the police should be sold... by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Informative

      The police are under civil law, therefore they are "civilians" by the definition of the word.

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  2. Re:$900 Flashlight? by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The 850$ kickback.

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  3. Arming the enemy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, but why would they want to arm their enemy.

    Captcha: treaty

  4. Re:$1000 Flashlights? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Camouflage netting seems to be a biggy. The Anchorage, Alaska DEA got a $26,000 radar evading camo net system for some bizarre reason. Perhaps they're fighting an onslaught of radar equipped meth labs hidden in Polar Bear dens above the Arctic Circle. Who knows.

    Night vision systems are also popular. That makes sense, but boy am I jealous.

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