Local police departments are outfitting themselves with the latest in military gear they’d never be able to afford themselves. But they aren’t paying a dime for their shiny new and slightly used helicopters and tanks. You are.
According to Pentagon data obtained by the Associated Press, some 16,000 law enforcement agencies obtained more than 380,000 pieces of equipment from military surplus worth $124 million in fiscal 2005. That’s right, free.
You and I have to pay (again) for it, if they will sell it to us at all.
The military equipment cops have received includes run of the mill surplus such as fatigues and binoculars, but some departments have received free ambulances, armored personnel carriers, and even free helicopters. Just pay shipping.
Authorities in Bucks County, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, turned to the Pentagon for two hand-me-down armored vehicles to protect officers in hostage standoffs. Savings to local taxpayers: more than $70,000 apiece. . . .
Detectives on a drug task force in Tippecanoe County, Ind., wear military fatigues for covert surveillance of methamphetamine cooks and cocaine dealers. In Pennsylvania, the state game commission uses a tranquilizer gun in its program to put tracking collars on bears. In Emmett Township’s Department of Public Safety in Michigan, a blue 1986 Chevrolet van is part of the mobile unit to process evidence. . . .
“We’ve gotten unbelievable stuff,” said police Sgt. Jim Forbes in Hampton, Va. “It’s benefiting a whole lot of folks in this business.”
Last year, Forbes’ department obtained 55 patrol rifles and paid only a few hundred dollars for shipping. Over the years, his department has received boats and even a doublewide trailer it uses as a training room on a range. — Associated Press
It would seem that most of this equipment is being used to outfit local SWAT teams.
“Having a bunch of military equipment lying around becomes an excellent motivator to form a paramilitary SWAT team, even if the community the police department serves doesn’t really need one,” says Radley Balko of Reason.
The other problem is that this equipment was designed for warfare — for the killing of foreign enemies. It’s now being used against U.S. citizens. It’s also a further blurring of the important line we draw between the military and domestic policing. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this program was started at the urging of Congress, eager to arm the country’s police officers en route to a greater militarization of the “war” on drugs.
Give police military equipment, train them in military tactics, and tell them they’re fighting a “war,” and it isn’t at all difficult to see how some officers would adopt the “win at all costs” mentality of a soldier, instead of the community servant mentality we expect of police officers. — Reason Hit & Run
The program, run by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, part of the Defense Logistics Agency, has been in operation since 1990, and supplied local police departments with billions of dollars of “free” military surplus — at your expense.
Ordinary citizens can also take advantage of the same military-direct surplus, though only after law enforcement agencies have picked through and taken most of the good stuff.
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January 29, 2007 8:34 am
21 Comments
I think it’s pretty well proven that DoD’s left hand has been buying new items at the same time the right is selling off identical property as surplus. That’s not “Homeland” anything; it’s been a problem for decades. At least first dibs are going to other tax-funded agencies instead of being sold at pennies on the dollar and then re-sold for a profit.
I’m curious what Mr. Balko thinks SWAT teams that aren’t equipped with military surplus weapons use. Marshmallows?
–Po
That’s easy. They just bilk the local taxpayers, instead of everybody.
That’s nothing guys. As a private contractor working on a not to be named Air Force base around 1980, I observed dozers dig a deep pit, the entire contents of an large warehouse hauled in (new equipment), and then covered over the next day. Then I observed tractor loads of the same stuff loaded back into the same warehouse. In discussion with peers, they claimed to have seen the same thing several times in their works there.
I love how our soldiers in Iraq can’t get enough of the equipment they need, yet the military is giving away ’surplus’ to the police.
My cousin has been to Iraq. Some of the soldiers in his unit had to buy their own body armor.
Grab your metal detectors, and lets go diggin’ boys!
I agree with Admiral Justin, however allow me to add some spark; WHAT THE F*CK is up with that?!
I have worked with some of the organizations which receive these “gifts”. Some times I do cringe at the “but we can get it free some we have to come up with a reason we need it mentality”. But in a lot of cases it is in fact very well used.
On the other hand. You are right that a great deal of it is “new”. But it is frequently very old “new”. That is the it is material which ages with time. So while it is more than good enough for the purpose to which the police (or other agency) intend to put it, it would not fair well in a true combat environment. Also some of it is older models.
The a bunch of it is in fact used. It has been used, and has some life left in it, but that life would be completely exhausted very shortly in a combat situation.
Example a radio system one police department got. Will not release the exact details so body can claim I am telling secrets. But this was a radio system which would meet a need of the local police/fire organization. It actually consisted of four separate military lots that someone figured out could be put together to meet this specific need. The power systems for it actually were “brand new” power supplies for a system the military no longer uses and had extra power supplies for. Two of the other units were older models of things in the field. The main unit that made it all possible is the current model of something the military uses. But it has a designated “shelf life” of three years or six months in service. The unit they got was a little over three years old. In original condition it could be used continuously for several days without retuning and should not need an overhaul during its life. But that is as original.
The unit that the police/fire people are using. Will run about 6 hours without retuning. Generally it takes a full time person (who I have had to get out of bed at 2 in the morning to be) to keep it running in the field. It generally needs an overhaul (using parts from additional units acquired from the system) about every time it is used.
I would bet on your tax money paying at least six digits for this system. Certainly the locals could not afford this type of thing. But it literally allows them to save lives. They use it 1-3 times a year for about 4-18 hours at a time. Hopefully you got your tax money’s worth out of it from its standby use by the military. As someone said we didn’t plan to and didn’t win WWII with the last bullet in our supply system. I would say that at my estimated cost it would have been a bad investment of tax money to purchase the equipment for the purpose to which it is current put. But I also would say that it would be a bad investment of our men and women in uniform to send them into the field with equipment which has degraded to the point. So from a military stand point this is useless. But to the children who are now in a school room being annoyed by a teacher instead of a small box six foot under ground it is probably priceless. (Given the nature of what it does generally it is children somewhere in the several state area who “benefit” from its existence)
Interesting, different versions of the same article, amusingly so. The version I read did its best to pass all the equipment given away as old and obsolete, while this one tries to do exactly the opposite. I suppose the truth is somewhere in the middle. The article I read said that the personel carriers were old, pre 70s for example, while the helicopters were not only 70s era, but two were good only for parts, the third is flying, future of the fourth the department got is in the air, but considering that they were looking at an expense of $800,000 each according to the article, this definitely looks like a good deal.
I have no doubt that contractors are getting their hands on near-new stuff (Michael’s covered that plenty of times). However, I’m pretty sure most of what police/fire/EMT/etc is getting their hands on is not items which are of current value to soldiers on the front line.
Other than the fear of creating a military state via our local and state police by arming them with military-grade equpiment, or the possibility of wasting a lot of local taxpayer money by creating SWAT teams that aren’t actually necessary, I don’t see the problem here. Unfortunately many police departments DO need some stronger equipment to deal with organized crime that chooses to engage the police in dangerous manners when asked to cease their illegal activites. I have no problems with giving away useful-but-outdated radio systems or other emergency equipment if it can be of use to a department either. I don’t even really have an issue with letting government agencies pick through it before the general public can. If they really want it, go through a military surplus store. :-)
And let’s face it… Any department that gets the bug up its arse to create a paramilitary SWAT team is going to do so whether or not they get some of the equipment from DoD.
–Po
Before the LEOs have the opportunity to pick through & take the ‘good stuff’, there are other organizations that do the same. All the differenet Fed & local goverment agencies, nonprofit, schools, and the like have a priority as to when they can go and view surplus items that they can go through the process to aquire.
As for ordinary citizens taking “advantage” of the same military-direct surplus, is really more like being taking advantage of by the contractor that handles selling the stuff for DRMO [http://www.govliquidation.com/]. At least the rest of Fed Goverment surplus sales is still done by GSA [http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/gsaauctions/], and is somewhat more just/fair for the common ordinary citizen – depending on if the equipment custodian who is posting the equipment for sale has a clue (normally this is not the case though).
It is a sad state of affairs, when the local military surplus store can not afford to purchase the surplus. :(
That explains why everything I found on the contractor’s site was complete and total crap.
While O was on active duty, I was the “unofficial procurement nco” for my outfit. I was at the local DRMO several times over the years.
I watched (and spoke with) one gentleman who would go inside the building, write a check for a truckload of big brass valve assemblies used on navy boats, take them out, and rework them on the tailgate of his pickup. Then, he would essentially drive across the street, and sell them back to the navy as “overhauled” parts, and get anywhere from three to six times as much as he paid for them. He told me that he could “rebuild” six of them in under eight hours, for a gross return of between eight hundred to one thousand two hundred dollars each.
Heck of a way to make a living.
It would seem you hava a problem with the police, I guess we busted you for smoking weed or something. Lets all use our brain, if the Police Dept bought the equipment who would pay for it? Tax payers. Who pays for this equipment? Tax payers. Why should the government pay money to the government? The local city gov. I work for does not pay highway tax on fuel or property tax on the city hall, why because it does not make sence for taxpayers to pay property tax to themselves, the citys only source of income is taxes of some sort or another, why should the city pay the citeizens money to the state ans county. As for the millitary equipment, you talk your stash now but when some nutjob starts shooting a high powered rifle, and your local police cannot close to withing 25 yard the maxim effective range for a pistol, and he kill twenty or thirty people you will bad mouth us for that too. You make me sick come do my job for a while and see if you can still talk your trash.
Some of you people are so stupid! I know for a fact that the APC’s that the military is giving to the police are well used and out of date. They definitely do not meet the standards of what our troops on the ground would. They are out dated and require a lot of time and effort to restore them for use in the police departments they now serve. Also the rifles that are being handed out to police are worn
out. Again they require major maintenance to get them back into working order, you certainly wouldn’t want our soldiers to use such inept weapons on the battle field, would you? The issuing of these weapons to law enforcement allows them to rebuild the weapons by buying receivers,springs, gas tubes and rings and other such stuff that will save the tax
payers the cost of buying new weapons. As much as you want to criticize the government for this, it’s a good thing for everybody. Weapons do wear out vehicle wear out and become antiquated so instead of dumping them into the ocean as was done at the end of W.W.II I think this a very acceptable alternative.
Just another case of liberals giving out half the facts. The TRUTH is that the surplus items the DOD is supplying to local police departments has been collecting dust in storage for DECADES. In NO CASE, EVER, is it new equipment. It’s always equipment that has either been replaced with something newer and better, or is just so old it has been retired. I was in the Army and am now a police officer. My department received about 200 M-16 patrol rifles through the program. All of them are the old model M-16A1, which the Army completely fazed out in the late 1980s. The ones we have were built, and paid for, in the 1970s. So the local tax payers get their protectors equipped with items that they’ve already paid for decades ago and the national tax payers no longer have to pay to store it. Sounds good to me.
And I think it’s safe to say that Radley Balko is a bona fide fool. “Having a bunch of military equipment lying around becomes an excellent motivator to form a paramilitary SWAT team, even if the community the police department serves doesn’t really need one,†says Radley Balko of Reason. EVERY department needs a SWAT team of some sort. Even the po dunk little town in the middle of no where. No, especially the little nothing town. Where most of the population has a few deer rifles in the closet that’ll reach out to 500 yards easily, and the police have shotguns that’ll reach to MAYBE 50 yards.
The author put a totally left wing spin on the program. I was (and now retired) officer in charge of obtaining equipment for my department. I found very few new items, most everything was used, most very used, and a lot very worn out or broken and very, very old. Other agencies could pick through this equipment and so could school districts and even the boy scouts. Remember the military uses everything from shoes to forks to lumber. As far as weapons the military only released a two types of rifles and only to law enforcement agencies. They were obsolete M16A1’s. I never found new combat equipment our soldiers would need in Iraq. This article is bogus, leftist, dope smoking garbage.
I have to agree with dave. I was with a department that was able to benefit from this program. We did recieve weapons from the military. But, like dave said they were old M16A1s that were obsolete shortly after the Vietnam War. Our rifles had been remanufactured as well so that they could not be used as “automatics”. In order to avoid the scare of “further militarization” of the police, our department put the rifles in a sealed case in the trunk of the patrol units and sealed them with the same metal clips used to seal a tractor trailor door. This provided that the officer would have to explain why it was broken during an inspection. The only reason our department needed these weopans was to be ready for incidents like columbine or the north hollywood shootouts. They were not for everyday patrol.
I don’t see the problem with DOD passing on its surplus equipment to local municipalities. It is the same principal as when that type of equipment gets handed down to the guard or reserve. This deal benefits everyone. If you are complaining that DOD isn’t making a profit off its surplus, would you really rather have them sell it to some of our “allies” like Saudi Arabia. I’d rather they skip the profit taking and not pass good equipment to questionable friends.
That’s the whole point: the military is passing good equipment to questionable friends.
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