zlacker

>>miles+(OP)
I don’t think the police need MRAPs. That’s a bit over the top. However, it does seem they need some sort of up-armored police cars given how many of them have been destroyed in the rioting. SWAT maybe has some use for military equipment, but only for bona-fide SWAT situations (hostages/bombs/active shooter.) But rolling out MRAPs for general policing is a bad policy. It’s one step removed from deploying tanks and it’s a bad look and probably counterproductive.

>>briand+Ra
Sure, maybe there is limited use in some of this equipment. But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. There are only 700 officers including things like traffic enforcement.

Of course the police union lobbied for more.

They have armored trucks and undercover vehicles. They have mobile towers to survey. They have closed circuit cameras at every major intersection. They have Stingrays. They have purchased LRADs which can permanently deafen. They have helicopters, tear gas cannons for hundreds of officers, batons.

And they trot it out for peaceful protests. The police did not come equipped to protect, they came equipped to escalate and occupy.

Hell, they even manage to bust a lot of the equipment out at concerts and festivals. I stopped going to a local outdoor concert series when they decided to gate a park off and start pat downs and metal detecting everyone who entered.

>>dashun+9e
This sounds like an excellent case for equipment limitations. At the very least making departments pay 'retail' for gear instead of getting effectively donated surplus.

>>zentig+af
Why should taxpayers who fund the police have to artificially pay more markup, making someone else rich, just so the police have less equipment?

>>core-q+xg
(Disclosure: proud US submariner '94 - '00)

We're talking about them paying for military surplus like vehicles, machineguns and other items that 95% of departments don't need.

If the DoD weren't spreading surplus Army gear out like candy to babies who don't know how to use it, there would be a lot fewer opportunities for the not so stable elements of police departments to escalate otherwise normal situations just so they can play with big boy toys/get that "underfire" adrenaline hit again/get that power trip high that they craved from high school/soothe that sociopathic itch to dominate others.

We can put our voices together and force the DoD to stop this bullshit surplus program and acjnowledge that they built and bought too much and get egg on their faces as they destroy old gear and vehicles.