Drones, Tanks, and Grenade Launchers: Coming Soon to a Police Department Near You
Rutherford
“The argument for up-armoring is always based on the least likely of terrorist scenarios. Anyone can get a gun and shoot up stuff. No amount of SWAT equipment can stop that.”—Mark Randol, former terrorism expert with the Congressional Research Service
Why does a police department which hasn’t had an officer killed in the
line of duty in over 125 years in a town of less than 20,000 people need
tactical military vests like those used by soldiers in Afghanistan?
For that matter, why does a police department in a city of 35,000
people need a military-grade helicopter? And what possible use could
police at Ohio State University have for acquiring a heavily-armored
vehicle intended to withstand IED blasts?
Why are police departments across the country acquiring heavy-duty
military equipment and weaponry? For the same reason that perfectly good
roads get repaved, perfectly good equipment gets retired and replaced,
and perfectly good employees spend their days twiddling their thumbs—and
all of it at taxpayer expense. It’s called make-work programs, except
in this case, instead of unnecessary busy work to keep people employed,
communities across America are finding themselves “gifted” with drones,
tanks, grenade launchers and other military equipment better suited to
the battlefield. And as I document in my book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,
it’s all being done through federal programs that allow the military to
“gift” battlefield-appropriate weapons, vehicles and equipment to
domestic police departments across the country.
It’s a Trojan Horse, of course, one that is sold to communities as a
benefit, all the while the real purpose is to keep the defense industry
churning out profits, bring police departments in line with the
military, and establish a standing army. As journalists Andrew Becker
and G. W. Schulz report in their insightful piece, “Local Cops Ready for
War With Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons,” federal grants
provided by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have “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.” For example, note
Becker and Schulz:
In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department owns a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone, like those used to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists in the remote tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Augusta, Maine, with fewer than 20,000 people and where an officer hasn’t died from gunfire in the line of duty in more than 125 years, police bought eight $1,500 tactical vests. Police in Des Moines, Iowa, bought two $180,000 bomb-disarming robots, while an Arizona sheriff is now the proud owner of a surplus Army tank.
Small counties and cities throughout the country are now being “gifted”
with 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. MRAPs are
built to withstand IED blasts, a function which seems unnecessary for
any form of domestic policing, yet police in Jefferson County, New York,
Boise and Nampa, Idaho, as well as High Springs, Florida, have all
acquired MRAPs. Police in West Lafayette, Indiana also have an MRAP,
valued at half a million dollars.
Universities are getting in on the program as well. In September 2013,
the Ohio State University Department of Public Safety acquired an MRAP,
which a university spokesperson said will be used for “officer rescue,
hostage scenarios, bomb evaluation,” situations which are not
increasingly common on OSU’s campus. In reality, it will be used for
crowd control at football games.
Almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories
participate in the military “recycling” program, and the share of
equipment and weaponry gifted each year continues to expand. In 2011,
$500 million worth of military equipment was distributed to law
enforcement agencies throughout the country. That number jumped to $546
million in 2012.
Since 1990, $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been
transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies
through the 1033 program, in addition to various other programs
supposedly aimed at fighting the so-called War on Drugs and War on
Terror. For example, the Department of Homeland Security has delivered
roughly $34 billion to police departments throughout the country since
9/11, ostensibly to purchase more gear for their steady growing arsenals
of military weapons and equipment.
While police departments like to frame the acquisition of military
surplus as a money-saving method, in a twisted sort of double jeopardy,
the taxpayer ends up footing a bigger bill. First, taxpayers are forced
to pay millions of dollars for equipment which the Defense Department
purchases from megacorporations only to abandon after a few years. Then
taxpayers find themselves footing the bill to maintain the costly
equipment once it has been acquired by the local police. It didn’t take
the residents of Tupelo, Mississippi, long to discover that nothing
comes free. Although the Tupelo police department was “gifted” with a
free military helicopter, residents quickly learned that it required
“$100,000 worth of upgrades and $20,000 each year in maintenance.”
Police departments are also receiving grants for extensive surveillance
systems in order to create microcosms of the extensive surveillance
systems put in place by the federal government in the years since 9/11.
For example, using a $2.6 million grant from the DHS, police in Seattle
purchased and setup a “mesh network” throughout the city capable of
tracking every Wi-Fi enabled device within range. Police claim it won’t
be used for surveillance, but the devices are capable of determining
“the IP address, device type, downloaded applications, current location,
and historical location of any device that searches for a Wi-Fi
signal.” Police have already been testing the network.
It doesn’t look like this trend towards the militarization of domestic
police forces will be slowing down anytime soon, either. In fact, it
seems to have opened up a new market for military contractors. According
to a December 2011 report, “the homeland security market for state and
local agencies is projected to reach $19.2 billion by 2014, up from an
estimated $15.8 billion in fiscal 2009.”
In addition to being an astounding waste of taxpayer money, this
equipping of police with military-grade equipment and weapons also gives
rise to a dangerous mindset in which police feel compelled to put their
newly high-power toys and weapons to use. The results are deadly, as
can be seen in the growing numbers of unarmed civilians shot by police
during relatively routine encounters and in the use of SWAT teams to
carry out relatively routine tasks. For example, a team of police in
Austin, Texas broke into a home in order to search for a stolen koi
fish. In Florida, over 50 barbershops were raided by police donning
masks and guns in order to enforce barber licensing laws.
Thus, while recycling unused military equipment might sound thrifty and
practical, the ramifications are proving to be far more dangerous and
deadly. This is what happens when you have police not only acquiring the
gear of American soldiers, but also the mindset of an army occupying
hostile territory. In this way, the American citizen is no longer seen
as an employer or master to be served by public servants like police
officers. With police playing the part of soldiers on the battlefield
and the American citizen left to play the part of an enemy combatant,
it’s a pretty safe bet that this particular exercise in the absurd will
not have a happy ending.