NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub | Hacker News Reader

NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

github.com

I was surprised to see a number of mine-resistant vehicles associated with very rural counties in Washington State. Not being completely sure whether a mine-resistant vehicle was a tank or not, I googled the term and came across this article:

http://news.yahoo.com/as-wars-wind-down--small-town-cops-inh...

Choice quote from the article:

“Here’s the thing,” Shellmyer says. “Washington, Iowa, has 8,000 people. We have an MRAP now. We have a SWAT team. We have [police] dogs, and we have a SWAT team transportation vehicle that’s not armored.

The city councilman began to think: “Goodness, this is overkill.”

If we're lucky, those massive armored vehicles will be parked behind the station, and left to deteriorate. They're so expensive to operate, small departments are loathe to actually use them. If we're unlucky, we get the events in Ferguson, MO.

Some years back I was in the position of managing a few systems for a nonprofit. It had been awarded equipment through a donation program. Some of this was usable. Some ... was not. One particular item turned out to be such a white elephant that it was literally more sensible to try to sell it and replace it with something more economical. Which other branches of the nonprofit were doing, though I never convinced the GM of ours to do.

Equipment that's not actually usable isn't an asset.

(And yes, I'm keeping this all pretty intentionally vague.)

Let me guess. Was it actually a white elephant?

Despite certain outward similarities, no.

A white elephant would have been more useful.

Yup. Nonprofits are not often not very sophisticated about technology and it often takes them a long time to learn that some donations are just not worth the trouble.

I once worked for a non-profit with a video production program for teenagers. They accepted some 1970s film editing consoles that were donated by a local college. The executive director did not realize just how impractical and cost-prohibitive it is to teach kids how to edit movies on 16mm film. I was pretty proud of myself when I found someone to take those editing consoles.

I live in Puyallup, Washington and we've received (what I believe to be) an MRAP. (It looks like one, but I've yet to see it outside of the building so I haven't gotten a very good look at it.) It's housed in the police/fire station downtown.

Puyallup is a "city" of just under 40,000. Our crime isn't even too horrible (http://www.piercecountycrimedata.org/NeighborhoodCrime/index...)

But we have an MRAP. It might be Pierce County's MRAP, housed in our building, but even then compared to the rest of Washington state, Pierce County is pretty tame.

Although, we do rank #9 in the U.S. for meth labs. So there's that. http://www.kplu.org/post/pierce-county-among-top-10-us-numbe...

Maybe the MRAP was requested in the event that the Puyallup Fair (the WA state fair for the uninitiated) gets totally out of control.

RE: the meth labs, etc. it would be interesting to see usage data for the equipment. Who knows...if an occupied meth lab is raided every week, the vehicle could make sense (not that I have any tactical expertise in the slightest).

Haha, you actually made me laugh by saying Puyallup fair. It will never be the Washington state fair in my eyes!

Anyway, good point about the fair. It's a big event... much bigger than the pumpkin festival that Keene, NH got its MRAP for.

I wonder if there's a way to get that information. I'd like to see how the gear's being used. Judgements aside, I think it'd be interesting to see.

I organized Washington's results, if anybody's interested: http://www.ericlagergren.com/blog/washington-military-surplu...

I live in Walla Walla and I don't see our MRAP in the NYT spreadsheet, but here's the article: http://union-bulletin.com/news/2014/apr/16/walla-walla-swat-.... Absolute madness.

Apparently Walla Walla received two "mine resistant vehicles"

I organized the list here: http://www.ericlagergren.com/blog/washington-military-surplu...

(pardon the link to my own blog!)

Y'know, there was a SWAT callout to Burbank in the last month or so for a guy who surrendered by the time they were entering the area. I distinctly heard one of the WWPD officers mention getting "the vehicle" just after they started acknowledging the pages.

Someone should ask if they actually drove that thing all the way to Burbank and back.

Hey, I'm a reporter at the U-B and I was actually talking to the NYT reporter who got that data yesterday. The NYT's request was granted in May 2014, and we got our MRAP in April, so he said it's most likely we were just after the cutoff for the Pentagon's dataset when the request was filled. The mine-resistant vehicles are separate things, as far as I know, because other MRAPs were listed as such on the spreadsheet.

Operational costs will prevent most of the MRAPs from seeing any use. 6MPG is horrible, and fuel costs are a big budgetary item for most public safety departments.

> Operational costs will prevent most of the MRAPs from seeing any use.

Or, alternatively, MRAPs will provide the justification for greater budget demands.

Does the federal government not provide funding for their operation as well?

From your article: "The supply of extra MRAPs is likely to only increase — the government spent $50 billion to produce 27,000 of them in 2007."

Can someone explain the math to me? It sounds like each vehicle costs $2 million.

Quick question, is the apache license really the most relevant for a dataset? Does that license apply?

I ask only because I'm planning on doing something similar.

If the dataset comes from the Gov't (e.g., Freedom of Info Act), one might argue that its public domain data. If its public domain, then slapping a license on it doesn't change anything.

If its not public domain, and you want people to use it fairly freely, Apache seems like a good license.

Disclaimer: i haven't thought about this very carefully before posting. Could be wrong.

One thing I do know is that @copiesofcopies is a former EFF guy that knows open source licensing. Ask him!

Yeah, I would tend to agree with this. These data are derived from work originally done by the U.S. federal government. If they had chosen to make it freely available without a FOIA, public domain would have applied. I don't think having it being a result of a FOIA changes anything.

Correct. If it comes from the government it's automatically public domain, and according to the repo description the NYT is just sharing what the government provided. NYT is getting very good at the digital journalism approach, I'm pleasantly surprised to see them using Github for this.

Roughly (I'm not a lawyer) data by itself is not copyright-able, but the organization and selection of data is, so most datasets do, in fact, have to come with a license to be usable.

Apache is probably okay for data, but I would recommend Open Data Commons or Creative Commons licenses.

http://opendefinition.org/licenses/

IANAL, but I'm not actually sure datasets like these CAN be copyrighted. Copyright rewards "original creative expression", (Feist v. Rural Telephone Service) not just effort, and I know things like phone books and other databases aren't protected by copyright. Generally, compilation protection is limited to things like charts and graphs, were the author has actually shown creative input into how the data is presented or displayed.

EDIT: But just to be sure, I would recommend something is well understood and is aimed towards a general usage, such as a Creative Commons license of your choice http://creativecommons.org/choose/

The leading case on this is Feist, a telephone book case. http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm As an interesting note, the phone company had been introducing fake listings: "Four of these were fictitious listings that Rural had inserted into its directory to detect copying." For copyright, originality is a constitutional requirement and copyright cannot attach to a bare compilation of known facts. However, "if the compilation author clothes facts with an original collocation of words, he or she may be able to claim a copyright in this written expression."

The court held that "the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist were not original to Rural and therefore were not protected by the copyright in Rural's combined white and yellow pages directory. As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity."

I wonder where the de minimis line gets drawn. I suppose it's like pornography, "I know it when I see it" kind of thing.

Couple of random observations after looking at the data:

1) Looks like a contest where the winners are folks who are able to pull the biggest political strings in DC. It has nothing to do with forces needing anything. This was a free-for-all giveaway. It's all political.

2) In defense of DoD, once you build this crap, it's gotta go somewhere. Maybe some of these MRAPs could only be used for local parades. Local PDs do not need this junk, but the rest of the country doesn't need it either. Better dumping it on Deputy Joe than letting it rot. As long as Joe doesn't start getting delusions of terrorism.

3) A lot of the local rural counties where I live got M16s. I guess that seems useful. The M16 is a fine rifle, and if you could get every one of your cops a proven rifle it sure beats trying to get the poor local governments to pay for them. The cities are a different story: much better connected and with more resources (and ambition?) to screw as much out of the system as possible. The nearest city to me is getting all kinds of idiotic stuff. Do we really need 20 $4k night vision sniper scopes? Perhaps if the city were attacked by protesting vampires such a purchase would be useful. But I guess guys gotta play with their toys.

The distribution alone is not worth ranting about. The problem is what happens once all this junk is distributed. If you own a bear gun, you have a tendency to go out into the woods hunting bears. You also see evidence of bears where others do not. That's the real problem.

> Better dumping it on Deputy Joe than letting it rot.

This is a central assumption the DoD/Government has been making, that is turning out to be misguided if not flat-out wrong. The police in this country are not properly trained as to when to deploy this equipment, and when it's deployed, how to use it.

Just as spreading weapons of war to all parts of the middle east hasn't exactly lead to peace there, spreading weapons of war all across America will hardly lead to an orderly society. It seems like if you give men weapons, they itch to use them, or the power it gives them.

Yeah,

> As long as Joe doesn't start getting delusions of terrorism.

...seems to be the real problem.

I can only imagine this is an error, but apparently Brevard County, FL has received at least 61 helicopters... 8 of them worth $18m a piece.

Someone tell me this is misreported? There is no way a county of ~500k people could need 61 helicopters, rght?

Imagine, or hope?

You don't think they 'actually spend $20k on a hammer, $30k on a toilet seat, do you'[1]? If this is not an error, I think we just found the best justification I've seen for making all budgets/purchases etc. in government publicly available via API, as this and the ones below are amazing finds.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes?item=qt1534129

I can't find the 20k hammer or the toilet seat.

It's a quote from "Independance Day" explaining how the us govt was able to keep the funding of area 51 secret.

I think the quote is not the main thrust of the GP point - but it's pretty hard to make any sensible comments with billions in hardware being given away.

Jefferson county in WV did pay $189 per a latrine though...

Not to excuse it all, because I'm sure there's plenty of waste and fraud, but sometimes militaries/governments need things that are more robust than the seemingly just-as-good civilian alternatives.

Why doesn't Curiosity run on a Dell Inspiron? Why can't the President drive a used Honda Civic? Why can't the drone programs just retrofit toy helicopters?

(Hint: there are good answers to all of these questions.)

I've always found this West Wing clip interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9kH_HOUXM

As another point, the book Burning Money from the Chairman of Reagan's Committee on Cost Control, J. Peter Grace:

"The Federal government is Burning Money and it is your money. An actual case. One day the US Navy decided to buy a hammer, the kind you buy for $7 at the corner hardware store. To the $7 cost of the hammer, add: $41 to order the hammer and figure out how to use it. $93 to make sure the hammer worked. $102 for "manufacturing overhead. " $37 to make sure there were spare parts for the hammer. $3 for packing the hammer for shipment. $90 for the contractor's general administrative costs. $56 for the finder's fee. $7 for the capital cost of money. The U.S. Navy ended up buying a $7 hammer for $436, and who paid for it? You."

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Burning-Money-Waste-J-Peter-Gra...

Patrick Air Force Base is in Brevard County.

"Headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, the 920th Rescue Wing is the Air Force Reserve Command's premier combat search and rescue (CSAR) unit. The wing consists of over 1,500 Airmen, trained and equipped to locate and recover U.S. Armed Forces personnel during both peacetime and wartime military operations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/920th_Rescue_Wing

Well,they needed 3 Kiowa(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_OH-58_Kiowa) & a lot(54) of Bell UH1-H's.....How do they afford to maintain a fleet that big?

> There is no way a county of ~500k people could need 61 helicopters, rght?

Need has nothing to do with it.

The DOD gives this shit away (to our rural towns and cities) so they can consider it in use and order more from contractors, which gives more cash to the lobbyists and contractors. Rinse and repeat. It's very straightforward.

On MRAP front the military is getting rid of them for a good reason. They ordered the initial batch very quickly and ended up several different platforms [0]. None of them fit the bill perfectly and having several variants made logistics and vehicle operations difficult. They then did a real procurement program and ended up purchasing several thousand M-ATVs. The surplus MRAPs went into this law enforcement give away system [1].

0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP#MRAP_deployment

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP#Post-war_reductions

It's lucky crime rates have dropped so low. You wouldn't want this kind of hardware lying around if there was any chance the wrong king of person could get their hands on it.

It would make a great movie or game premise though.

It's called saints row. (Although more of a comical than a dystopian twist, but the latter is certainly hinted at.) One of their primary plotlines is taking down an overmilitarized police force with their own gear.

Yikes:

AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12

There's 84 total grenade launchers in the data set, if you are curious. Florida took twice as many as CA (36 to 18) and the rest of the states with them are under 10. Why Florida needs so many is another question...

Also interestingly, Montgomery got all 9 of AL's grenade launchers, more than Sacramento or LA took.

edit: actually, this data is wrong because I only used the first page, didn't even see the other 3....

There was a big thing made about it in Bergen County, NJ when it was first reported that they had received one. The police basically said they had no use for it and couldn't even image a reason to use it.

Why does any police force need a grenade launcher? Unless these are used for tear gas or something.

The grenade launchers are M79's, and can be used for tear gas and other non-lethal rounds. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M79_grenade_launcher#Ammunition

Now about the quantity some PD's ordered... that's a different story.

When you have a hammer ...

Rise of the warrior cop was very interesting read. With the gear comes the cop attitude. If you want that kind of toys in you state, you shouldn't be allowed to have them.

Presumably for tear gas / smoke rounds?

Probably not t-shirts at Gators games.

One county on the map has ~16k population and 640 military surplus assault rifles. If they're equipped with 30 round magazines, they can shoot everyone in the county without reloading once.

No, they couldn't shoot more than a few people before thousands of armed citizens made them stop.

To help clarify things: the city of LA has 10,000 police officers and 1,000,000+ armed citizens.

Disorganized pseudo-infantry (i.e. pissed off individuals with guns) will always be inferior to organized paramilitary forces with armor.

Not with popular support it's not. For proof that the opposite is actually true see Vietnam/Iraq/Syria/Gaza/Egypt, etc.

No, please stop spreading this ignorant nonsense.

Most countries in the Middle East have mandatory military service. If they get invaded by a foreign force, they can raise local militias very quickly from people who not only already own guns, but also have received significant training in their usage and can get organized quickly due to the time they spent in military.

In contrast, most Americans don't know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. And even those who are serious about guns have not actually been part of any military, or even a militia. Frankly, they would get mowed down by any sort of organized force in very quick order.

How ignorant can you be not to know that there are 21+ million U.S. military veterans? More (better trained) soldiers than there are males in Iraq.

The claim that Americans don't know how to use guns is in the laughable category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...

There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides.

Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64.

This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming that most veterans are in the households that have guns, up to an eighth of them trained to a high standard.

Now this, if it rose up and could be commanded as a single force, would be the largest military in the world, in terms of forces. However the only circumstance that I could see that even partially happening would be in response to an external military invasion.

What is far more likely a scenario if the US becomes unstable is a complicated civil war started by a state attempting to secede, the federal government reacting, then more states getting involved. In that case you never get one big force, just lots of smaller state forces with the military not wanting to get involved at all, but at most trying to act in a peacekeeping role and making sure that the big guns stay locked up.

One thing to keep an eye out for, as I have said elsewhere, is that the military equipment given out is partly going to pro-secessionists in local and state police forces and it may be worth considering that the police in Missouri may not be merely incompetent in the way they are currently reacting to events.

I am from the UK, and the fact that lines like, "You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64" are bandied round so readily is completely terrifying.

the Atlantic Ocean is our friend.

Sure is. It conveyed many brave Americans over to fight and die rescuing the UK from enslavement. They did it with guns.

To be fair, you also helped fund the other side first. - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworld...

Some individual Americans supported Hitler early on. The men that fought and died never did.

Have you thought about why you have this irrational fear or does the fact that it's commonly shared among your society lead you to believe its not irrational?

Yeah, that worked really well in Ludlow. I can't think of any other cases in the US where armed civilians were up against automatic weapons. I'd be delighted to see some more examples.

There are more than enough examples around the world if you are actually interested in learning that you're wrong.

How is it wrong?

How is it right?

You already have the National Guard out in Missouri, and they have Blackhawk helicopters which have chain guns as their standard armament.

The idea that in the US civil militias could really hold their own against the state is an absurd fiction.

Unless significant portions of the armed forces defected to join an uprising and managed to take their equipment with them, then it would be very one sided.

The militias will have hand guns and rifles, the state has everything up to and including nukes.

There is a probably apocryphal quote attributed to Isoroku Yamamoto, that if you tried to invade the mainland US, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass. Isoroku Yamamoto was born in 1884.

War has progressed since then.

Satellites can look behind every blade of grass and let you know where the rifles are, then you can send in the drones while you sit back in your bunker and sip tea.

I just have to say, for a long time, I have read sentiments like yours. Namely that, because the government has the big arms, they can win a fight against a civil militia. I would argue that we need to look no further than the middle east and how intense urban warfare really is to see that big weapons don't help. When you can't reliably root out the enemy force from the civilian force it is very hard to apply your big weapons. When the enemy eschews the Internet and uses traditional couriers (like the ISIS leader), they can be very hard targets. All that technology and weaponry, but you still need somewhere to aim it. Look how long it took to get OBL. It would be a brutal civil war. Brother against brother again, if it ever happened at scale in the US.

Sometimes it goes down that way, if the military feels it needs to hold back and win the narrative, not just the ground.

On home soil it may well do this, but equally it may go completely nuts if it feels subject to a genuine existential threat.

Look to the end of the Tamil Tigers for an example of what a modern military is capable of against insurgents when it pulls out all the stops. - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-ti...

And remember that the Tamil Tigers were one of the most experienced of the various guerrilla groups around the world.

Comparing the Tamil Tigers and a popular uprising of 200 million armed Americans is laughable.

Your mistaken notion that a rebellion can't fight a sophisticated military has been decisively disproved over the last decade in the middle east. Plausibly debated 15 years ago but now we know you're wrong.

ISIS took control of a large part of Iraq and Syria and they started with small arms. They took over army bases and stole gear (didn't think of that?). IDF has been throwing the best technology in the world at Hamas for decades. They're stronger than ever because they have popular support.

Suggesting that the U.S. military would fight against a popular uprising is beyond crazy and entirely ignorant. You can't know how our military works, or who it's made up of, and think that. This is crazier than any common conspiracy theory you can think of.

If there is ever a simple uprising in the US, I would completely agree with you, it would be next to impossible to get the armed forces in the USA to fight against a general popular uprising.

If it is more fragmented then it gets more complex as national solidarity breaks down at that point. Sure the army won't shoot Americans, but propaganda can start to redefine who counts as American.

ISIS did take over well equipped army bases with AK-47s, however only because the people with the equipment were not trained and ran away instead of using it.

And the IDF has only ever been in limited engagements against Hamas. They have never tried to completely destroy them militarily.

My point with the LTTE was never that a rebellion cannot fight a sophisticated military, just that if a sophisticated military uses total war tactics, they can utterly annihilate a foe.

What stops armies from doing this against a weaker enemy is not capability, but politics. The US could have nuked Vietnam for instance, but politically it would have been unjustifiable.

Ultimately, it is the attitude and makeup of your military that protects you from them, far more than the personal ownership of guns.

Edit - Regarding common conspiracies. My personal bet at the moment, ignorant and uninformed as I may be, is that there are a bunch of secessionists with power in Missouri and that this explains the bewildering actions of the Ferguson police.

It would seem a very good explanation for the actions of many of the authorities involved in the situation. Though, then again, so would complete incompetence, so in truth I am 50/50 on this.

> ISIS took control of a large part of Iraq and Syria and they started with small arms.

And two days of American airstrikes was all it took to let the Kurdish militia make good headway into taking critical areas back.

> IDF has been throwing the best technology in the world at Hamas for decades. They're stronger than ever because they have popular support.

With Iron Dome, border fences, etc. their power to actually do anything to Israel has steadily decreased.

The peshmergas are an example of armed citizens rising up to defend themselves. Not a counter example. There have been many of much smaller militias in Iraq run by reasonable people protecting their communities.

The PKK in Turkey is another example. Kurdish militia that had support of the local population, but was no match for the Turkish military. If the entirety of a country revolts, that's difficult to do anything about, not least because in that case the military is likely to defect anyway, making the question of a military vs. militia fight moot. But in most realistic scenarios a militia uprising is only by part of the population, which is a lot easier to defeat.

i might just move there. sounds like better odds than most places during zombie apocalypse.

Sorted from most greedy to least, wow, look at Florida:

State Amount FL $252,801,365.49 AL $117,321,970.75 TX $93,960,116.66 CA $92,199,594.55 TN $88,036,810.05 GA $74,258,127.54 IL $63,856,929.46 SC $49,446,894.25 MI $43,557,552.29 IN $43,153,872.84 OH $41,066,993.83 KY $38,672,666.63 PR $37,712,132.94 AZ $37,173,754.35 OK $26,113,459.50 NM $25,077,905.94 NY $24,920,353.44 VA $24,257,646.82 NJ $24,075,459.47 WA $23,543,976.61 AR $21,806,380.46 DC $21,741,478.09 LA $20,327,539.50 CO $17,701,285.74 MO $17,481,149.80 NC $17,296,016.90 DE $12,483,178.35 ME $12,048,389.87 MA $11,878,711.88 WI $10,122,693.61 WV $8,970,650.95 MT $8,943,135.43 NH $8,806,115.87 MN $8,580,400.72 CT $7,920,540.33 IA $7,493,026.26 ID $7,491,468.74 MD $7,049,130.61 OR $6,891,336.22 PA $5,942,289.17 NV $5,836,317.88 GU $5,466,524.59 NE $5,430,787.55 RI $4,812,144.16 WY $4,575,149.39 KS $4,009,658.36 ND $3,871,164.59 UT $2,264,747.07 MS $1,791,294.53 SD $1,771,105.98 VT $1,609,630.11 AK $706,554.76 HI $521,054.41 VI $228,504.00

That's a meaningless comparison unless you account for population differences. Per capita would be useful to show.

Do you really think per capita works in this situation? It's not like your average citizen can pick up a surplus grenade launcher. Breaking down geo-politically would be more useful.

But grabbing per capita values from bjterry and going by party...

Senator Avg per Capita

Democrat $4.14 External (VI, PR, ..) $33.19 Independent $9.07 Republican $7.21

Here it is per capita: https://gist.github.com/BJTerry/d9392dc1d494cad052ef

I think what might make more sense is to account for the location of large military bases.

A contributor just uploaded the data in CSV format as well.

NPR covered this military surplus program. The most frightening fact was the typical local law enforcement agencies must agree to "use it or lose it" with the acceptance of the gear. This sets up a perverse incentive and encourages local PD to misuse military hardware or forfeit it back to the federal government.

This is awesome. Not really sure why they chose to release it as an XLSX document on GitHub, but it'll work!

I'd assume it's an XLSX simply because that's the format they received it in from the Defense Department.

Yes, the file is 1033-program-foia-may-2014.xlsx - just the fact that 'FOIA' is in there suggests that it's the original format.

Looking further at the metadata, the author is "Williams, John A DLA CIV DISPOSITION SERVICES" and the company is "Defense Logistics Agency"

There is a CSV uploaded as an update.

Maybe they are hoping that it will attract more attention from hackers who might do something cool with the data. I'd like to make an app that plots all of the purchases on a map, or finds all the military gear ordered near you. But I don't have the time.

Is interesting that this has made itself on here and not been flagged yet.

I have noticed that HN normally has an aversion to issues that are directly to do with contemporary politics outside the realm of telecoms, patents and copyright and I wonder if this seems more of an acceptable discussion for the site, given the wider issues raised, purely because the material being discussed is up on Github.

There were similar substantial discussions a couple times in the last year or so:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=police%20milit#!/story/sort_by_dat...

(the articles from the New Yorker, Salon and the Economist)

How long before state police start pointing these back upward? I mean, in some areas it is basically handing military gear to secessionists, which does not seem all that bright. I certainly wouldn't like to be the federal official charged with the job of asking for any of them back.

Imported it into Google docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AXPtmdbZ6zJph9Nly6_3...

(throwaway account)

Might just be the parts I looked at, but some of the data is bad. e.g. Repeated orders, orders with 0 cost, but then the cost is calculated into another line, etc.

Also why does the Florida Police (or anyone) need a 800k Mine Resistant Vehicle??

From the Article[1]: "The Times is now posting the raw data to GitHub here. With this data, which is being posted as it was received,"

The data they got was bad in general. Their original article[2] also discusses the lack of information out there.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/data-on-transfer-of...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic...

Ah, I didn't really read the articles, just dove straight into a python interpreter to start checking out the data. I figured it wasn't the Times' fault, but just a warning.

Note that Washington, DC seems to have received 17 military cargo planes despite not having an airport (also shows up on nytimes.com piece). Is it possible that this is a mistake?

No matter who was doing the acquiring, the "acquisition costs" of firearms are impressively low. Who buys a military-grade .45 pistol for $60?

I can't think of any others, but a $60 Colt M1911 is indeed a hell of a bargain. Unless it's in a dire state of disrepair, I'd say that price is about $800-900 cheaper than expected.

I see places where the prices change year to year based on when it was acquired. I wonder if it's a depreciated cost based on how old it is.

Those are probably not the actual acquisition costs the government paid. The way the surplussing process works is the people doing the surplussing just make a random guess at the acquisition value if the exact information isn't available. For most things that number isn't readily available to the person filling out the surplus paperwork.

What's an "extreme mitten" ?

Mittens intended for extremely cold weather, like San Francisco in the summer.

Extreme cold weather mittens.

you can handle the Bhut Jolokia pepper with it.

I presume this is an obvious leap, but in Ferguson the BBC reporter just commented on the tensions between the Black population and "the security forces".

I used to scoff at the "militarisation of the police" stories on HN. I assume this is the same mental leap everyone else is having?

Disappointed but I guess not surprised to see the small number of helicopters, armored vehicles and assault rifles provided to southern border states. Federal government appears happy to distribute heavy weapons anywhere except where they are needed most as evidenced by actual incidents.

You realize the Mexican War is over?

As a resident of Arizona, I can tell you that however inefficient and/or incompetent you think the federal government's border agencies are, most of the state and county agencies in this state are far worse. I'd prefer some of them have nothing more deadly than a water pistol (especially the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office - headed by the country's most corrupt un-indicted law enforcement official). Local law enforcement officials are generally competent and savvy enough to want nothing to do with the kind of work you seem to imply they should be doing.

The equipment is distributed in response to requests from police departments. (source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic...) I'm afraid you'll have to blame the locals, not the feds, for being soft on those sinister Mexicans.

What in the world do police need parachutes for?

Monroe, Kentucky's refrigerator was a steal for only $2,394,800.0

Morgue?

BASE jumping?

You certainly aren't BASE jumping with military parachutes. At least not more than once.

Airborne...good to the last drop!

The same world where just these departments have a combined MRAP value of over $56 million.

edit: jk, thats just the first page.

Don't give them any ideas!

What I don't get about this is, this is a non-hacking topic. An outside discussion. So why is my post, obviously in jest, inappropriate?

See? No one can answer me as to where I went wrong. Just down votes. I am seriously confused. I could say the same exact comment on another thread and get voted up. Please, TELL ME, what I said wrong. Don't just down vote.

Their Github has some other repos w/ data, and a few w/ code (to process the data etc)

I see 205 of "Launcher, Grenade" followed by only 1 of "Laundry, Cleaner"

As a European which don't follow the subject of US police, my TV habits are not crime dramas, I just have to ask:

WTF are police going to do with grenade launchers?! (Do they have 155 mm artillery too? :-) )

Are those for tear gas? I just don't believe even US gangs are doing Taliban style insurrections or Intifadas?

(Being Swedish with our really open borders for refugees from the Middle East, I should just wait a few years and find out why police need heavy weaponry? :-) :-( )

Edit: Other commenters seem to say (a) These really aren't needed by police, (b) there are lots of surplus weapons from Iraq/Afghanistan. Why aren't those extra weapons just sold/donated to countries which need them? Like most neighbors of Russia, they ought to be starting with big defense investments right now (except for the complete crazies, see Swedish politicians.)

>Are those for tear gas?

Almost definitely. There are a variety of less than lethal projectiles that can be fired from a 40mm grenade launcher. Everything from tear gas canisters to rubber projectiles.

Even the most overzealous SWAT team wouldn't use a grenade launcher with real fragmentation grenades in a populated area. Fragmentation grenades kill by producing shrapnel, which is just too indiscriminate for police use.

That being said, I do remember a story about a SWAT team attempting to drop a homemade bomb out of a helicopter, so you can't be 100% sure.

Edit: Found a link to the police helicopter bombing story. The improvised bomb caused a fire that spread to 50 or 60 other houses. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/14/us/police-drop-bomb-on-rad...

AL,CHEROKEE,4930-01-442-9106,"DRUM,HOSE REEL",1,Each,1630.97,2013-06-20

AL,CHEROKEE,5120-00-222-2220,"MALLET,RAWHIDE ",3,Each,50.31,20120518

CA,LOS ANGELES,3530-DS-SEW-ING0,"INDUSTRIAL SEWING MACH, MOBILE TEXTILE",2,Each,0,2014-02-19

Stop this madness.

Really? The dataset contains a record of tiny towns receiving MRAPs, but for some reason your biggest concern is LA getting a sewing machine? Why is this a problem?

It was sarcastic, I thought that was pretty obvious?

In .xlsx format.

https://github.com/DataGarage/node-xlsx-json

Node module to convert xlsx to JSON.

Where's the D3 vis of it? :D or iPython notebook on it? ;)

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