Revealed:
How Obama
administration
arms police to
the teeth with
battlefield
weapons
The Office
of Homeland Security and the militarization of the American police is
designed to control us — the domestic population. Why would this be
necessary? We’re “in debt” trillions of dollars and the bankers intend
that we pay. One day they will o\take away our toys. In case that’s a
problem, an Orwellian police state will be in place.
The Pentagon has an awful lot of leftovers,
but luckily for law enforcement agencies across the United States they
aren’t going to waste.
Millions of dollars’ worth of military gear
is distributed to local police forces on an annual basis, and these
regular exchanges are occurring from coast to coast in towns and cities
that are hardly considered epicenters of violent crime, let alone on par
with the foreign warzones where these hand-me-downs — machine guns,
armored cars and other made-for-battle items — were originally intended
to be used.
Over the weekend, the New York Times took
a look at some staggering statistics concerning a Congress-created
military-transfer program in which items in the Department of Defense’s
massive inventory are routinely supplied to small-town police
departments for free.
The program is far from new — it dates back
to the early 90s, the Times acknowledged — and has been investigated by
RT in the past more than once. New data from the Pentagon that has been
provided to the paper offers an updated look, however, revealing the
actual extent to which heavy-duty war supplies are shipped today to
small police departments where one might not normally expect a
camouflaged mine detector or silenced machine gun to be needed.
The militarization of police even began under Reagan
Since 2006, a total of 432 Mine-Resistant
Ambush Protected armored vehicles, or MPRAPs, have been handed out by
the feds to state and local law enforcement agencies in most of the 50
states. Usually costing close to a million dollar apiece, those vehicles
were intended for battle in the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq. With
those operations largely over, though, a surplus of like-new, barely
used MRAPs have been handed out by the hundreds to police departments
desiring an armored multi-ton vehicle equipped to withstand a serious
shelling.
Last November the New York Daily News reported that
165 MRAPs had been handed out to these agencies in less than half a
year, and around 731 more vehicles were requested by police after the
Pentagon ran out. In most reported incidents, the recipient appears to
pay nothing more than the cost of shipping.
“It’s armored. It’s heavy. It’s intimidating. And it’s free,” Albany
County Sheriff Craig Apple — the head of one of five New York county
sheriff’s departments to receive last year’s shipments — told the Daily
News at the time.
Then in January, the Wall Street Journal
reported that the Pentagon has roughly 13,000 mine-resistant,
ambush-protected trucks to part with “because they have outlived their original purpose.”
“We’ve notified our friends and allies that we have MRAPs available and if they want them they can have them,” Alan Estevez, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics, told the Journal.
This outstanding surplus — coupled with the
wants and wishes of police chiefs who feel ill-equipped to handle a
high-intensity standoff — has helped move these made-for-war machines
into towns that far well below the national average with regards to
crime.
Handing MRAPs and other war weapons over to
police departments is one of the more affordable options, as well. RT
reported previously that surplus MRAPs are being sold for scrap in
Afghanistan, but even then it costs around $12,000 to demilitarize each
one. Earlier this year, Defense News reportedthat
the US military were destroying roughly $7 billion worth of material in
Afghanistan, including MRAPs, as US troops were readying their exit.
Used goods from the Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait
and elsewhere aren’t the only sources of these exchanges, though. One
town in Indiana, for example, was supplied a MRAP with only eight miles
on it and a brand new engine, according to the recipient.
A Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Classification One vehicle (Reuters / Larry Downing)
According to the latest report from New York
Times journalist Matt Apuzzo, MRAPs and other military equipment have
been handed down to state and local law enforcement agencies in huge
numbers.
“During the
Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments
have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000
ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision
equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft,” Apuzzo wrote.
Also in that inventory of slightly-used or
good-as-new goods are M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more
— all going to towns many Americans would be hard pressed to find on a
map or globe.
Since 2008, Apuzza reported, nearly 900 MRAPs and other armored vehicles have been handed out by the Pentagon to police agencies, as well as 533 aircraft, 93,763 machine guns and 180,718 magazines.
Six states have received magazines from the
military that can hold a minimum of 100 rounds, he added, and agencies
in 22 states total have even been given land mine detectors. Eight
agencies in just the state of Indiana have been awarded MRAPs, and the
Times noted that law enforcement in 38 states have received silencers
from the Pentagon — including police in Walsh County, North Dakota,
where only roughly 11,000 residents live.
Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press revealed that “a disproportionate share” of $4.2 billion in Pentagon property handed out by the Defense Department military surplus program since 1990 was “obtained by police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas with few officers and little crime.”
“It just seems like ramping up a police department for a problem we don’t have,” one local father told the reporter. “This
is not what I was looking for when I moved here, that my children would
view their local police officer as an M-16-toting, SWAT-apparel-wearing
officer.”
But Neenah Police Chief Kevin E. Wilkinson
and others in his shoes in small towns say that acquiring these items
are meant to bolster safety—the penultimate goal for law enforcement.
“We’re not going to go out there as Officer Friendly with no body armor and just a handgun and say ‘Good enough.’” Wilkinson told the Times.
In many towns, getting these goods from the
Pentagon is the only affordable option. Capt. Vic Wahl of Madison,
Wisconsin told the AP recently that he would have preferred a more
traditional civilian rescue unit for his agency’s arsenal but the
problem, he said, is “they don’t give them away.”
“The price was right for this one,” Wahl
said of a free MRAD his office acquired in lieu of spending a
quarter-of-a-million dollars on a less-militarized BearCat vehicle.
The Office
of Homeland Security and the militarization of the American police is
designed to control us — the domestic population. Why would this be
necessary? We’re “in debt” trillions of dollars and the bankers intend
that we pay. One day they will o\take away our toys. In case that’s a
problem, an Orwellian police state will be in place.
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