The Nebraska State Patrol Light Armored Vehicle LAV 150, one of the hundreds of
armored vehicles the Pentagon has passed along to local and state police agencies.
One of the good things about Rep. Hank Johnson's
Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act is that it wouldn't keep local and state police agencies from receiving all the military-grade equipment the Pentagon has been supplying them with—just most of the weapons and aircraft.
As you can see from NPR's investigation into the data supplied by the Pentagon's Law Enforcement Support Office, the 1033 program, much of what is being provided isn't weaponry at all. Plenty of those items aren't the sort that make local police look (and operate) like an occupying army. In fact, only 3 percent of the total goods the Pentagon provided to local law enforcement since 2006 consists of weapons, NPR found. As I've noted previously, among the items that frequently show up on the list are flat-panel monitors as well as communications and detection gear.
But there are, as the ACLU discovered when putting together its "War Comes Home—The Excessive Militarization of American Policing" plenty of weapons in the giveaway. NPR reports that more than 600 Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles designed to protect soldiers against improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan have been turned over to local cops.
In addition to MRAPs and hundreds of millions of dollars in planes and helicopters, NPR reports, the Pentagon has also distributed:
• 79,288 assault rifles
• 205 grenade launchers
• 11,959 bayonets
• 3,972 combat knives
• $124 million worth of night-vision equipment, including night-vision sniper scopes
• 479 bomb detonator robots
• 50 airplanes, including 27 cargo transport airplanes
• 422 helicopters
Assault rifles? Bayonets? Grenade launchers? As has been reported, one of the rules governing the 1033 program is that the receiving agencies must use what it gets from the Pentagon within one year. No chance at all of that leading to problems, of course.
NPR has reorganized the 1033 data set to make it easier to check out what your local police force may have received in the past seven and a half years.
As noted, Rep. Johnson of Georgia will soon introduce a bill prohibiting the transfer of automatic weapons not suitable for law enforcement purposes, including any that are .50 caliber or greater, MRAPs and tactical and armored vehicles, aircraft, flash-bang or stun grenades and silencers. Please sign the petition.
ExpatGirl has a discussion on this subject going on here.
