Pentagon funnels $7.4B in surplus military gear to police | Hacker News Reader

Pentagon funnels $7.4B in surplus military gear to police

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59 pointsseigando76 comments

My Sheriff’s Department does not need an MRAP.

My town’s police officers do not need to wear IOTVs.

I prefer my local police forces to look like peace officers, not like they’re about to invade Grenada. The federal funding of municipality's law enforcement is just a kickback to the military-industrial-intelligence axis. The funneling of my tax dollars to purchase weapons of war to be used against the citizens.

This equipment is deployed for SWAT teams and the like. European police have this gear too: http://mark.benedict.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/German-Sw...

Do the security/police of European universities and colleges have MRAPs?

* https://reason.com/2013/09/19/ohio-state-university-gets-arm...

* https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ohio-state-university-ar...

Do European towns, with populations of 9000, have EUR/USD 1'000'000 vehicles that can stop 50-caliber rounds of ammunition?

* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/police-tan...

Larger municipalities having specialized units (marine, SWAT) is one thing; the question is why is having vehicles that can handle IEDs necessary, especially if they're smaller communities.

Also: why do some officers (in the US) go out on patrol in camouflage patterns? What kind of department allows that? What kind of mindset does a person have to be in to do that versus the 'traditional' all-blue that many people identify with police uniforms?

The idea of a “uniform” has been lost on the police and sheriff departments of the communities I live around. Two officers in the patrol car together will wear completely different outfits. One will be in the traditional blue uniform, wearing a tactical vest with plates on the outside, while the other will be dressed half plainclothes. Khakis with a polo embroidered with a badge and a ball cap.

The brewery where I used to brew was better at coordinating the daily uniform.

Since you posted a picture of a German team I think it’s worth pointing out some differences:

- With very few exceptions (AFAIK only Stuttgart and Frankfurt) all armed police is only provided by the state and not municipalities

- This means special units, including technical units but also SWAT teams, serve a wide area. Often a whole state, in bigger state sizable portion of it

- The idea of a small town - or a college - police having their own SWAT team is completely foreign

- Normal police is already much more intensively trained than in the US. SWAT adds to this. SWAT is treated as expensive specialists, not a part time duty a cop can do on the side

As an example, I studied in Aachen. Aachen has no SWAT team. When one was needed it would come from Cologne (usually) or Düsseldorf. Both an hour drive away.

Now there are many structural differences between the US and Germany that you can‘t lift-and-ship the German approach to policing to the US but it’s disingenuous to imply German police is as militarized as American police because it also have SWAT teams.

US police need more funding and more training. Much more training. Even if some of their social service responsibilities are moved to civilian agencies, the police would still need more funding for training.

US Army Rangers which are only responsible for a fraction of what civilian police are responsible for usually deploy 3 months and train 9 months out of a year. When they don't deploy, they train 12 months out of the year.

In contrast, even though they have more duties than Army Rangers, US police hardly train at all after they leave their law enforcement academy and yet we demand perfection from them in all of their responsibilities.

The use of military surplus material could be restricted to SWAT or other special circumstances. But then the police departments would have to buy expensive purpose-built equipment rather than use cheaper/free milspec equipment.

Continuing to underfund the police will force them to cut training, seek low-cost sources of equipment (military surplus), and reduce their ability to investigate crimes.

It would be interesting to hear the benefits of the 1033 program to the military, and how the tax payer is really bearing the pain here. Is the equipment being sold at a massive discount to market, it seems so, but to what degree? Why does the Pentagon do it then, does it boost military funding? Is this program effectively a mechanism to get updated equipment into the military? Are there line items on budget reports that say “we donated $1mm to local law enforcement so we need to be made whole”?

> Why does the Pentagon do it then

According to this [1] it was founded because of the war on drugs. It's purpose was very much to have militarized units that respond to drug offenses.

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/new-documents-r...

Yeah this is terrible. Cops no longer look like cops, the way cops look is like soldiers. Soldier-cops.

Without any of the training, discipline or legal responsibility actual soldiers have.

With looser rules of engagement than I had (USMC) in Afghanistan.

Bout to say the same thing. It's mind blowing how little restriction there is for them.

Good point : ).

I'm surprised this is downvoted.

Cops have been militarized pretty heavily, in the US

This is not the case. Where I live and across the US, cops are wearing the same uniform they've been wearing for 40 years, driving the same cars they have for 40 years, and are armed with the same guns they've been wielding for 40 years. I haven't seen a single cop dressed like a marine in my entire life.

I think you may be thinking of SWAT teams, but those teams are only deployed in situations like bank robberies, hostage situations, school shootings, etc and they do not regularly patrol, do proactive surveillance.

You must be living in Brigadoon or you live in a jurisdiction driving very old cop cars. Ford hasn't made the police Crown Vic in almost a decade, every force in metro Chicago now drives around in midsize SUVs. I don't see military style uniforms anywhere, but the Taser is now standard equipment in most departments so cops all sport those along with their service weapon.

My municipality got M16s from this Pentagon program some years ago, and at least some of the officers were actually pissed because it replaced the shotgun they used to carry and which was actually useful because it could load breaching shells to blow open doors, which was its most common use.

I live in Anne Arundel county MD, an hour outside DC. I’ve never seen police with military gear around here. They drive Ford explorers, but otherwise have a standard uniform and a sidearm.

ah yes, the Taser, a famous weapon of war

I see police in military uniforms in downtown Chicago all the time.

Got pulled over by a cop wearing an upside down “thin blue line” flag in Willow Springs. He was wearing a plate carrier and rocking an m4 for the traffic stop in the forest preserve.

Oh, that's a thing I've noticed a lot lately in Cook County --- squad SUVs with the silhouette of a tactical rifle behind the front cabin. I think they might be standard issue now?

By military uniforms, I mean, like, fatigues? Drab green, no colors. CPD insignia.

> but those teams are only deployed in situations like bank robberies, hostage situations, school shootings, etc

That's not true and is the reason people are upset. Nobody disagrees with the use of SWAT teams for school shooting and the like. However, that isn't how militarized units are used in real life. There simply isn't enough violent crime in most areas to justify a full time force dedicated to it. Instead, SWAT is used to target drug offenses (often times w/o an indication that there will be violence). In fact, the federal 1033 program (which funnels military hardware to the police) was founded to help fight the war on drugs.

The other big use of SWAT is for search warrants where they have replaced patrol officers in 80% of cases, the vast majority of which don't involve any suspicion that things will get violent.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/new-documents-r...

Forty years ago, body armor wasn’t ubiquitous and most cops still carried .38 revolvers.

Today, vests and semi autos are by far the norm.

I've never seen a cop walk around with a semi auto.

Literally every modern pistol, including Glocks are semi-automatic.

a Glock is militarization? A glock is not militarization. By semi auto I understood they meant a military style semi automatic rifle because of the context of the conversation. Police may carry these in their trunk, but I've never seen them carrying one around.

I never said a Glock is militarization - I was directly refuting your assertion that (among other things) that officers’ uniforms and the guns they carry hadn’t changed in forty years.

awfully pedantic to see going from a revolver to a glock as a slam dunk.

Police rarely use revolvers these days for numerous reasons (e.g., safety, training difficulty, efficacy, and so on).

"NBC 5 checked with more than 114 police departments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Out of 79 responses, it was discovered only one Plano officer still carried a revolver."

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/last-revolvers-retired-as-...

I've never seen a cop in the US without a semi auto handgun.

> There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

- Commander Adama

The American population is heavily armed so that comparison is not valid. You need police to be well equipped to handle a 300lb man in body armour and fielding an AR-15 style rifle.

See the North Hollywood Shootout for a good example of what happens if the cops are outgunned.

Yes, and that has happened... One time. N=1. The police need less gear, and if confronted with a crazy dude in Level 4 body armor with an automatic, their job is to call SWAT, then clear all civilians out of the area.

I think this is begging the question a bit.

We assume a lot of inevitables in this case, specifically that an interaction with law enforcement will likely end in conflict

So your solution is to just keep escalating?

When there is an active shooter in body armor wielding a high powered weapon you’re deescalating and saving lives.

Terrorists don’t wear body armors, and “power” of guns don’t matter as well.

In fact, it gets weaker and weaker as guns improve because the required amount to “stop” a human had been grossly overestimated.

.308 hunting rifle cartridge, still deemed necessary to stop charging wild animals, has muzzle kinetic energy of 3.5kJ. .223Rem for AR-15, used in wars against humans, is 1.8kJ, 9mmx19 used in latest “tactical self defense” PCCs is just 0.5kJ.

Bullets are all deadly if it hits and when it hits.

Do you have a choice? Either water down the second amendment and disarm the population or give the police what they need. I am not taking a side, simply stating the dilemna of law enforcement.

Watering down the second amendment would work to the extent that people wielding the guns were behaving lawfully in the first place, which is not relevant when we’re taking about armed confrontations with police.

I have yet to see any statistics showing that militarizing the police makes them any more effective or safe.

The obvious solution is to tax ammo proportinal to its military use. You want military grade armor piercing rounds to shoot tin cans at your birthday party? Fine, that's taxed 1000%. Normal 9 mm rounds suitable for handguns should obviously be taxed lower. It doesn't ban firearms, it just creates a supply problem for nutcakes and preppers buiding arsenals. Security companies and firing ranges could recover their ammo tax at the end of the fiscal year. Hobbists could shoot assault rifles at firing ranges, as opposed to their back yard. The police won't need surplus military gear then. Your neighbour won't be wounded from a stray bullet shot from an assault rifle ten buildings away.

I think you guys have laws forbid civilian possession of military AP rounds in the US.

> Either water down the second amendment ... or give the police what they need

That's a false dichotomy and misses the main point of the argument to reduce police militarization.

Nobody is upset when SWAT responds to a school shooting or a terrorist act. The problem (I suppose a really good problem to have after all) is that those things almost never happen, even though they are the ones we see on the news and can quickly retrieve in our minds. You're more likely to die in a plane crash than in a terrorist act in the US.

That begs the question: if militarized units don't have enough violent crime to respond to, but are still a full time unit then what do they respond to? The answer is why people are upset and it's because we are sending them to respond to drug offenses and to execute search warrants instead. Situations thay they inevitably end up escalating (on average) and killing people in.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680177128...

New Zealand just went through an interesting experiment; they armed some of their police as a trial run, then got feedback from the community that that armed unit served. The majority response was that while people understood WHY the police were armed, they didn't want armed police doing things like traffic stops, responding to domestic disputes, etc.., because their mere presence was threatening.

Yes, there's a choice. Again, the police don't need military gear. You keep talking about what everyone "needs" in your posts; what the police "need" is fewer opportunities to be assholes.

The police need to be trained in how to de-escalate; they need to be trained not to "dominate" every situation they're involved in. The need to be demilitarized, and SWAT units need to be expanded slightly to deal with the small number of cases every year that demand real firepower.

That's not true in the 80% use case of SWAT teams which is drug offenses and executing search warrants. This is the core argument for demilitarization, not the straw man of "I don't want police to have the equipment needed to respond to school shooters." Showing up with militarized teams to mostly non-violent situations just causes escalation after escalation and is why militarized units kill at a far higher rate than just the police alone.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680177128...

> You need police to be well equipped

No; no I don't. I need police to be better equipped upstairs, maybe take some queues from the British or German police.

A slim portion of the American population is heavily armed, and police don't deal with armed suspects in something like 99% percent of 911 calls. In that <1% of cases, we can call SWAT. That's why SWAT exists, to be a highly trained, militarized version of the police.

>I need police to be better equipped upstairs, maybe take some queues from the British or German police.

British Police

When they are not arresting mothers or 80 year olds for not wearing a mask or holding a sign.

https://www.dumpert.nl/?selectedId=7998859_cd38b070

German Police

They actually called in Jet Fighters, Helicopters and a few thousand active military. After have at least 1000 police looking too. In total over 5000 personal to find one guy in a forest. Seems excessive.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/german-police-...

Oh good, I love a good cherry picking competition! As a Portlander, I can tell you first hand our police are regularly doing much worse than "arresting" mothers and grandmothers, they're first shooting them with tear-gas, impact munitions, then batoning and pepper spraying them on the ground. Watched it, first hand, just a few days ago.

As a former Marine, until watching our cops in action this year, I was all about them. Now I'm disgusted with them, and will do everything I can to take the toys away from these children. Until you've seen them first hand (or you are one... Just quit and live a better life), it's actually really hard to believe just how awful they are. Are cops are the "war on drugs" cops who bend or disregard every rule so they can "come down hard" and "make an example". That's the attitude. And if you think that's okay... Wait till your kid gets pulled over, or stopped for riding a bike through the wrong part of town. These people are thugs, and operate where no laws will touch them.

I don't dispute there is a problem with law enforcement in the US.

Good, we have a consensus then; now as for your original cherry picking comment, let's look at something more substantive[1]:

"In Germany, for example, police recruits are required to spend two and a half to four years in basic training to become an officer, with the option to pursue the equivalent of a bachelor’s or master’s degree in policing. Basic training in the U.S., by comparison, can take as little as 21 weeks (or 33.5 weeks, with field training). The less time recruits have to train, the less time is afforded for guidance on crisis intervention or de-escalation."

This isn't a single cherry picked event; it is the minimum required standard. I think that perhaps our police are just poorly trained thugs compared to the Germans; the British police force has a more comparable training to ours (36 weeks I believe), but they ARE NOT ARMED. In order to carry a firearm, they need higher rank, more years of experience, and additional training in order to carry a firearm.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/am...

Our police is not armed because we don't keep shooting each other at protests which seems to become a norm over there. American societies, in general, is much more violent.

> American societies, in general, is much more violent.

I disagree with this assertion. It's very hard to generalize this type of property; really the only way is to use some type of normalized data, and that faces the problem which plagues all generalization, in that it doesn't apply to large swaths of what is being generalized across. I think that Detroit is a violent place, and if you generalize across all of Michigan, you'll see Detroit isn't representational.

There are some places in the US, mostly in dense urban areas, where gang and organized criminal violence is a problem. These places need to have well armed violent response units. Cops should not be engaging every situation in these places as if they are all extreme violence situations, but in the case that there are people shooting at other people, call on those violent response units.

You went from one extreme position to the other.

I don't understand the position ACAB or NCAB (N = No). Clearly, some cops are bastards.

In The Netherlands my experiences with the Dutch police have been good or at worst neutral. I have been surprised numerous times how downright friendly and relaxed cops here can be. Even at the few demonstrations I been to (most notably two anti war in Iraq demos) no trouble whatsoever.

Even if you speak for US only I have a hard time believing the entire police force of US is rotten.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745471

I'm starting to think it was more than just sitcoms

Mostly non-militarized police are the answer to the mostly peaceful protest.

Less-militarized, better-trained police are the answer to pretty much all of the police problems in this country.

Along with accountability, I think you’re right.

Yeah, and doing away with qualified immunity.

The existence of the state is only possible because it controls a monopoly on violence. How else would it enforce laws? Do people think others will pay taxes out of good will? scoff

I don’t see a problem with cops getting better equipment. I see a problem with cops being untrained to leverage the equipment and understanding which situations call for it.

No knock warrants in swat gear to handle local criminals might be a no no.

Can someone please link the bank robbery where some dude showed up in a bullet proof vest and. Ak47, where the cops literally lacked the equipment to handle the perp?

https://youtu.be/I_1IvZFwj0M

The problem with "better equipment" is it needs to continuously be justified. That means it needs to be used.

Armored and heavily equipped cops are not what’s causing police brutality by and large. It’s your run of the mill guy with a simple handgun racially profiling and using deceptive tactics to drum up charges. We can keep our focus exactly where the issue is (for once we identified it exactly), or we can emotionally extrapolate it into the larger narrative.

Armored cops are a much bigger deal in China where the CCP uses them in places like Hong Kong to enact quasi martial law.

> Armored and heavily equipped cops are not what’s causing police brutality by and large.

I agree with this, but wonder if it's more a law of averages than anything. The guy driving the local PD tank does not have nearly as many interactions as the beat cop or the traffic cop.

The classic example here is Arlo Guthrie's song/story "Alice's Restaurant". For those who haven't heard it, the protagonists are guilty of littering, and the local cops wind up using dogs, tire-track analysis, and even aerial photography to make their case. As the song puts it, "They was usin' up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hangin' around the police officer station".

Recommended if you haven't heard it, or even if you haven't heard it for a while.

It's not about training. A chainsaw isn't "better" equipment for surgeons. A tank isn't "better" equipment for police.

Under what circumstances would a police department require an armored personnel carrier? Especially in a country that's spanning half a continent, with allies on both sides. And a potentially-soon-to-be has-been world superpower? Even if it turns out to be necessary or practical, it certainly won't be the solution to the problem that necessitates having an APC.

A situation where 10 white nationalist militia members kidnap the mayor with stock bumped ar-15s.

Or when someone blows the window out of a Casino hotel and lays fire to a festival.

Or when the kids go nuts and shoot up the school.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but America has a unique mass shooting issue.

Running alongside an APC would at least give you cover in the Vegas shooting. I guess my point is, you cannot demilitarize one side one when the other side already militarized, that ship has sailed in America.

Edit: I’m getting downvoted on this, but I’d like to hear some counter points for these exact scenarios that happened (or almost happened) in the last 4 years.

99.9% of policing is non-violent, simple things. Just because you can come up with a few exceptions doesn't prove most cops need such things: It more proves that cops might need a special force that can come in if things get bad.

I'm not convinced any situation you bring up would have been helped by the immediate availability of gear. Some of these could be better with better training: Some things could be somewhat prevented if we did things like make sure there was mental and physical health care, a safety net so folks didn't get so far down, and had reasonable gun laws.

oh, and not have cops posing as oppressors with military equipment. We are the picture of oppression right now, and if it were happening in one of "America's Enemies", we'd bemoan them for not being free enough or use it as the ills of socialism or communism.

The gear is not for 99% of situations. Neither are guns. But we give every single one of them a gun, don’t we?

You get the gear so you can handle all possible scenarios. That isn’t the issue. The issue is something else. We can debate the real issue or muddle the pool and avert it.

“Dressing up as oppressors” - you know, narrative building has no bounds. This is a new one. That’s all subjective, I don’t see it as oppression theater as you do.

You don't actually have to have all police have all the things. You just need some specially trained forces to have training for the 1% of situations.

I don't think cops should carry guns on their person as a rule, either: I think they should stay locked in their cars, with paperwork to be filled out every time they unlock that lock. I think cops should be respectful of the public when possible, even if the public isn't. We expect this out of retail employees, after all. There should be thought behind every single time a cop takes out a gun, before they grab it.

I've seen MRAPs/APCs deployed a few times, it's always during a protest, blockade, or occupation under attack. They may use them to drive over a barricade or into a crowd to force them to disperse, or just idle and crawl behind a line of cops with a sniper in the roof turret.

It’s to disperse the crowd. I went to inner city public school where when fights broke out, it became a riot. The cops would show up with horses because it always made the crowds disperse. Yeah, horses, in the middle of Queens.

Sometimes they are used to breach walls of buildings to provide alternative entry points. They also are useful for providing bulletproof cover when a SWAT breaching/entry team is approach a building.

Though a department doesn't need many. And, they could be shared within a county or metro area rather than every department having their own.

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