By John W. Whitehead ——Bio and Archives--January 3, 2012
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready. In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret.Moreover:
No one can say exactly what has been purchased in total across the country or how it’s being used, because the federal government doesn’t keep close track. State and local governments don’t maintain uniform records. But a review of records from 41 states obtained through open-government requests, and interviews with more than two-dozen current and former police officials and terrorism experts, shows police departments around the U.S. have transformed into small army-like forces.For example:
In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department owns a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone. In Garland County, Ark., known for its pleasant hot springs, a local law enforcement agency acquired four handheld bulletproof protective shields costing $600 each. In East Baton Rouge, La., it was $400 ballistic helmets. 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. And for police in Des Moines, Iowa, it was two $180,000 bomb robots.The purchases get even more extravagant the deeper you go. For instance, police in Cobb County, Ga., have an amphibious tank and Richland County, S.C., police have a machine-gun-equipped armored personnel carrier called “The Peacemaker” the likes of which had previously only been seen in war zones. The 50-person police department in Oxford, Ala., has acquired $2-3 million worth of equipment in recent years, including M-16s and remote-controlled robots. One popular piece of equipment, the BearCat, a “16,000-pound bulletproof truck equipped with battering rams, gun ports, tear-gas dispensers and radiation detectors” which costs $237,000, has been sold to over 500 local agencies. Police in Hanceville, Ala., (population 3,000) have acquired $250,000 worth of equipment. While these so-called “free” surplus military weapons may seem like a windfall for cash-strapped communities, the maintenance costs for such extraneous equipment can quickly skyrocket. For example, police in Tupelo, Miss., spent about $274,000 over five years servicing a helicopter that flew an average of ten missions per year. In addition to the military equipment acquired by police departments via the 1033 Program, police agencies are also beginning to use drones—pilotless, remote-controlled aircraft that have been used extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan—domestically. The Federal Aviation Administration has already issued 266 testing permits to local police agencies seeking to employ drone technology. AeroVironment Inc., a manufacturer of drones, intends to sell 18,000 5-pound drones controlled via tablet computer to police departments throughout the country. They are also touting the “Switchblade,” a small, one-use drone, that has the ability to track a person from the air and then fly down to their level and explode. Moreover, some police officials are already discussing outfitting these spy drones with “nonlethal” weapons. Most recently, police in North Dakota arrested a family of farmers using information acquired by a spy drone. With violent crime nationwide at a 40-year low, most of this equipment is not only largely unnecessary but is completely incongruous with the security needs of smaller communities. Yet whether or not the use of such sophisticated and overblown militarized equipment is justified, many local police units still feel compelled to put it to use. Hence, the widespread misuse of military equipment by law enforcement is a growing and well-documented problem that has resulted in the deaths of innocent people, nonviolent offenders and police officers. A perfect example of this is the tendency on the part of many communities to employ heavily armed SWAT teams to carry out routine police procedures such as routine search warrants. Consequently, SWAT team raids, which once numbered a few thousand per year in the 1980s, have grown to over 50,000 per year in the 2000s. As Paul Craig Roberts makes clear in his article, “The Empire Turns Its Guns on the Citizenry,” the government—local law enforcement now being extensions of the federal government—has trained its sights on the American people. We have become the enemy. And if it is true, as the military asserts, that the key to defeating an enemy is having the technological advantage, then “we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.
View Comments
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online at amazon.com. The Rutherford Institute is available at rutherford.org