500 American Communities Are Now Armed With Military Tanks and Military Vehicles, and Have Reportedly Lied on Their Applications to Get Them for Free
The Speaker
Military surplus equipment, including vehicles–most familiarly the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Proof (MRAP) BearCat–are becoming common tools of community law enforcement in the US. These battlefield tools are now owned by over 500 communities nationwide. At a cost of around half a million dollars each vehicle–although the first one is often free–police departments seek grants by applying for various federal programs–applications council members have admittedly lied on.
BearCats are heavily-fortified MRAP vehicles usually used by specialized military tactical teams. The vehicles are build to withstand mines and bombs in combat zones. They are equipped to be mounted with weapons the US military specifically refrains from using on people–and sometimes come equipped with these weapons, such as the belt-fed, .50 caliber turreted machine gun atop Richland County, South Carolina’s “Peacemaker.”
Columbia Police Department SWAT Commander Captain E.M. Marsh, who received a new $658,000-valued MRAP for free before Veterans Day last year, said around 500 similar vehicles went to agencies around the country. Five hundred vehicles at that price adds up to $329 million of tax-funded Department of Defense (DOD) spending. In 2013, the US government is considering requests from 750 additional communities, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to Mark Wright, spokesman for the Defense Department, the Pentagon is planning to give away 11,000 MRAPS, each of which is priced at between $400,000 and $700,000 new, and there is “vigorous interest” from police departments, commented Wright.
Approximately 100 BearCats are distributed to local police departments per year, and many of the buyers are recipients of federal grants from the US Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the Homeland Security Department.
Cities and towns governments aren’t the only organizations interested in military vehicles. In 2013, Ohio State University also acquired a MRAP.
The possession of military vehicles and weapons by police has struck some as a highly visual manifestation of government waste, and critics have made various complaints, including unnecessarily maintaining defense industry profits, lack of public oversight, militarization of law enforcement, and contributing to the growth of SWAT and military technology.
The backlash against police militarization has taken the form of legislation in New Hampshire–a
state in which there are already 11 communities with armored vehicles–where a bill was introduced in February in response to the Concord City Council accepting a $258,000 federal grant to buy a BearCat. The council voted in favor of the grant despite intense opposition from their citizens, who submitted a 1,500-signature petition and staged a rally outside City Hall in protest. The bill would ban municipalities from accepting military vehicles without voter approval.
The backlash against government waste has cited the most recent figures available for funding of the vehicles, which dates back to 2010. Of the nearly $1 bn Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants in 2010 to fund protection against potential terrorist attacks, six million of that went to armored vehicles. Opposition politicians have complained that over $34 bn has been spent since 911. $4.2 bn worth of equipment went to domestic police through the DOD’s 1033 excess property program and other programs aimed at fighting the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.
The military “recycling” program for unneeded equipment has 13,000 participating agencies in all 50 US states. The amount of equipment given out each year is expanding. In 2012, $546 million worth of military equipment was handed out.
The tanks–and therefore the spending, some argue–are not needed. Last year a Keene (pop. 23,409 with a violent crime rate almost half the national average), New Hampshire City Councilmember admitted to ACLU that the city lied to DHS on its application money to buy a BearCat. The police used the word “terrorism” on the federal funding application, but the council member stated, “Our application talked about the danger of domestic terrorism, but that’s just something you put in the grant application to get the money.” He continued, “What red-blooded American cop isn’t going to be excited about getting a toy like this? That’s what it comes down to.”
The defense industry’s sales to local agencies was projected to reach $19.2 bn for the 2014 year, according to a report by the Homeland Security Research Corp.
Last year, the ACLU launched a nationwide investigation into the police use of military technology and tactics, stating, “Equipping state and local law enforcement with military weapons and vehicles, military tactical training, and actual military assistance to conduct traditional law enforcement erodes civil liberties and encourages increasingly aggressive policing, particularly in poor neighborhoods and communities of color. We’ve seen examples of this in several localities, but we don’t know the dimensions of the problem.”
The ACLU filed 225 public records requests in 23 states to question the nature of the military weapons, the training provided, the funding sources, the oversight mechanisms, and the legal protections in place before use is allowed for military weaponry, equipment and vehicles, and drones, as well as whether there existed and cooperative agreements between police and the National Guard counter-drug program.
The potential effects of militarizing police forces has also been criticized. The “transformed local police departments into small, army-like forces, and put intimidating equipment into the hands of civilian officers. And that is raising questions about whether the strategy has gone too far, creating a culture and capability that jeopardizes public safety and civil rights while creating an expensive false sense of security.” noted journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, who reported on the issue in 2011.