The debate on police militarization, rumbling for years, has been thrust into the national spotlight after protests in Ferguson, Missouri were met with heavily armed and armored police forces acting more like combatants than peacekeepers. This approach to policing is made possible by the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which distributes surplus military equipment for free to police departments who request it and simply pay the cost of shipping. 1033 was quietly conducted for over two decades before becoming the subject of scrutiny, but now the Department of Defense has released a huge trove of data on transfers to local departments.
Thankfully, the Marshall Project has organized this data into a simple tool that displays the transfers for each local jurisdiction across the United States. Looking through the Massachusetts data, most police departments involved in the program received a few hundred or few thousand dollars worth of equipment, typically rifles and pistols. Many others received high-dollar items with peaceful uses, such as dump trucks, utility trucks, and snow plows. But buried among these innocuous transfers are some incredibly concerning items that simply don’t belong in a local police department.
One of the most widely criticized excesses of 1033 is its distribution of MRAPs, or mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, and Massachusetts received its fair share. Designed to withstand gunfire and explosions, these heavily armored vehicles weigh about 18 tons. They don’t come with gun emplacements as standard, but they do look like they’ve been plucked right out of a battlefield. They’ have been known to damage roads and their intimidating appearance feeds public fears and flies in the face of community policing. Police departments in Haverhill (population 60,967), New Bedford (pop. 95,072), and Rehoboth (pop. 11,608, just east of Providence) have all recently acquired MRAPs, worth between $658,000 and $689,000.
An MRAP in Hamburg, NY. Photo courtesy Buffalo News
The Norfolk Police Department and the Massachusetts Department of Corrections in Milford didn’t receive MRAPs, but they did get 107mm mortar carriers worth $205,000 each. One previously reported transfer was to West Springfield, where they received two grenade launchers worth a total of $1,440 that nobody in the department is actually trained to use. It’s impossible to tell how a mortar or grenade launcher could be responsibly used by a police department. The wide area of destruction caused by these weapons, useful for fighting armies, would be reckless to employ against even the worst criminals.
What this is all used for is not an academic question — the 1033 program actually requires departments use their equipment within one year or return it. So while they only have to pay the shipping for these military vehicles and weapons, this “use it or lose it” policy pressures police to deploy them in their communities. Driving heavily armored vehicles around town comes with side effects, making the community feel more dangerous than it really is and straining relations between the public and police.
While the situation is dire, the huge amount of activism around this issue inspires hope that change may be possible. Digital Fourth is doing our part. We have drafted a state bill to combat police militarization and restore public trust and respect in law enforcement. The bill would forbid police departments from accepting armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, and certain other types of equipment for free from the federal government, instead requiring them to purchase such items with their own budgets. This will discourage departments from obtaining unnecessary vehicles and weapons, focusing their 1033 applications on more practical items. Once the bill is introduced, we’ll need your help to pass it, so stay tuned!
If you’d like to call the relevant municipalities to ask them why their police departments have obtained this kind of equipment and what they’re planning to use this equipment for, here are the numbers:
Haverhill (Mayor Jim Fiorentini): 978-374-2300
Department of Correction (Thomas E. Dickhaut, Acting Commissioner): 508-422-3300
New Bedford (Mayor Jon Mitchell): 508-979-1410
Norfolk (Board of Selectmen): 508-440-2855
Rehoboth (Jeffrey Ritter, Town Administrator): 508-252-3758 extension 1
This article was originally posted on Digital Fourth’s website, warrantless.org.
I feel like there MUST be a reason for MRAPs to be in Rehoboth. Is there a tax or accounting reason that something valued at almost a million bucks is given to a municipality rather than recycled, put in storage, or something else?
You can’t tell me that the Rehoboth Police Chief can say with a straight face that they need an MRAP. I can actually understand a city like Boston having a couple as like, plan D in a really bad situation we aren’t anticipating, but not cow town.
“For free” in the sense that they’re paid for out of general taxation, rather than out of the Rehoboth police department budget which probably doesn’t run to $689,000 a year.
To me, this is a telling example of how poorly we prioritize in this country. If you’re doing something for “security”, no matter whether the threat is stupid, incredibly remote, or entirely fictitious, then the federal government will shower money on you with no oversight to make it happen. But if you want, say, money for better pay for teachers in the public schools, well, you’re SOL. Hippy.
The difference is, of course, the price of their toys.
While the steroid crazed cop ooo’s and ahhh’s at the power of these weapons systems, it should be remembered that these things are not free. As with the white elephant, there is a cost. Maintenance is a heavy cost. You just don’t bring the thing into a local dealership. Special tools, special parts makes for a lucrative contract with the manufacturer.
(There’s even a special recovery vehicle for the MRAP!)
I wonder how long it will be until someone steals one or a cop drives onto a rickety bridge…
“Fool and your tax dollars are soon parted.” –Old saying
I’m trying not to oversell my internship experiences, and hope I didn’t with the Olympic post, but I also worked at the State Department in the Bureau of Arms Transfers and the DOD routinely rejected our petitions to send MRAPs to Britain for active combat use in Afghanistan. That is our closest ally. But now every Barney Fife in Mayberry can have one? For free? I don’t get it.
Congress pushed the bills that have first allowed and then expanded this so they could practically give away valuable military tech, rewarding friends back home (including the police lobby, local pols), meanwhile the US government pays for brand new replacement items for our military forces, rewarding even more powerful friends, who cut far larger checks (the corporations that build this stuff).
It’s a Win/Win for politicians, the police lobby and, most importantly, the military industrial complex.
I knew it when two former staffers from our division came to a retirement party with their Lockheed badges still on.
…but I do have to say for someone who I think is only in his mid-20’s you do seem to have a lot! You’ve been with for years and you’ve always seemed to have a lot. What’s your secret? (I mean this in all sincerity; I hope it did not come across as mocking.)
Doesn’t come across as mocking at all. If anything, I’m at a phase in my life where I sometimes worry I’m not where I want to be, so being reminded that what I have done is somewhat impressive helps.
I guess my first big break was getting elected as the student rep for the Cambridge school committee-all my best political connections still come from there. It’s also about remembering certain people, a friend I hadn’t seen since 6th grade who I saw on linkedin that he had worked with a Boston politico got me a face to face with a very prominent progressive state senator in Massachusetts. They had to combine positions in the middle of the interview process and I was no longer qualified, but staffers there were willing to pass my resume around Beacon Hill and I’ve gotten two call backs since then. One didn’t go anywhere, the other is in the first phase and hopefully the face to face can happen while I’m in town at the end of the month.
Some of it is luck though. I was shocked I got the State Dept fellowship over friends I thought were more qualified, shocked I got the Mayoral Fellowship after what I thought was a bad interview, and shocked after getting rejected from a lot of schools behind it in the rankings that U Chicago came through.
The campaign experience comes from showing up, I looked on a list of campus chapters in IL for U Chicago for the Obama campaign, ours was vacant, I clicked on it and gave my email, and then someone contacted me asking me if I wanted to found it. I haven’t stopped applying for jobs like that since. Networking matters more than anything else, it’s a cliche, but I always go to bat for people looking for positions I can connect them to and feel like it gets paid forward.
And you gotta run in your district like I said!
In Springfield, MA, there’s an initiative to use counter-insurgency techniques for community policing. Possibly a good idea, possibly some bad side-effects. Here’s a 60 Minutes report:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/counterinsurgency-methods-used-to-fight-gang-crime/
My understanding is that first responders – fire, EMT, and police personnel – tend to serve in the National Guard or the Reserves or be veterans more than the general population. In fact, there is an Obama administration program to bring more vets into the first responder field. Many of these people have been deployed, multiple times now, in war zones and most of them come back home without any real transition from war zone to civilian life.
Ain’t just the MRAPS and Hummers. It’s the mindset and the approach. Militarize police and they become an occupying force with the civilians they are supposed to serve all becoming possible enemies.
I would add that I am glad reservists and veterans are serving in our law enforcement community, and think it’s a good role for them. My best friend from grammar school went on to serve as a MA Guardsmen in Afghanistan and is now a Cambridge Fireman. It’s a good way to get highly skilled people used to that kind of danger, training, and chain of command into a civilian occupation.
But that’s the thing-these are civilian occupations. I definitely agree that we should consider policing, first responders, and even the Reserves and Coast Guard as civilian employees. They are there to directly serve the community in emergency situations, but they should not be considered apart from regular society. Even viewing the military like that is a relatively modern concept, from Rome to the early days of the American republic to my family members in the WWII generation-being a soldier was a temporary occupation during times of great crisis, and something you did because it had to be done-not because you were looking for accolades. My buddy in the guard and fire department feels the same way, won’t even let me buy him a beer to say thanks.
We have been lucky that we are not yet seeing the kind of police response that has led to various killings of innocent people (via the use of flash-bang grenades, no-knock warrants) across the country. We may be close though.
Just yesterday, the “State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Unit, and members of a U.S. Marshals Task Force” were trying to serve a warrant to a man who was charged with domestic assault. The incident was not recent – in other words, there was no immediate threat to a victim.
People in the neighborhood did not know what was going on. It was reported as “heavy police presence”, and people wondered just what was happening, scared due to so many cops around.
Take a look at the pictures. I count at least 11 officers in the first photo. One appears to be carrying a semi-automatic rifle, another appears to be carrying a bazooka (though it may be a tear gas gun, or may be a battering ram).
You can see they have police dogs too, plus an ambulance. For a warrant.
The pictures may not be representative of the initial response because there was apparently a standoff where the person arrested had a knife and wouldn’t drop it. The police showed some restraint in not just killing him for that (which is not unheard of elsewhere).
Steve Urbon covered it recently:
I mean, why not spend $390,000 on something you don’t need just to make you FEEL safer, right? Not like New Bedford has any other more pressing needs.
Why does Lowell need 25 M-14 rifles? These typically see use in police departments only as sniper rifles. They are very effective battlefield weapons, but extremely dangerous in non-battlefield urban settings, because their big, heavy, high-velocity bullets go through things that will stop even an M-16 round. That means that even a brick wall probably won’t keep an M-14 bullet out of your child’s bedroom, even if it passes through a criminal first. Does Lowell have anything like 25 snipers on the force? The M-14 also makes a good hunting rifle, which may be why so many of them given to police departments disappear from their inventories. I’d be interested to know if the Lowell PD can account for all 25 of the things, and just how they’ve complied with the requirement that DOD-provided items are used every year. What did LPD find to shoot with M-14s on 25 occasions last year?
Lowell may be planning to invade Chelmsford, or Billerica, or Littleon, or Westford. None of those towns seem to have gotten any weapons from DOD, and would be seriously outgunned by Lowell’s company of M-14 riflemen.
I think half the population in Dracut is originally from Lowell, so they might be sympathetic. The part closest to Lowell is the Dem side of Dracut as well. There’s a downside as well though, I could see an insurgency based in the more Republican and rural east Dracut.
of the future breakaway republic of New Dracut.
Dracut either thinks it is, or wishes it were, part of NH. They have already lost half the original grant to that state along with Centralville and Pawtucketville to Lowell, the latter in part because Lowell threatened to cut the water supply.
unless it’s a black tip. Do the police have access to those? I’m sure. But probably not a standard load. Good question to ask the police though!
25 is a pretty ridiculous number for Lowell, but that round is very useful in the right situation. Hostage situations where shooting through a window, windshield, or even a thin wall, something like that.
I feel like the question with these isn’t so much “do we need this?” as much as “do we need 25 [of this]”.
I’d like to know how many actual hostage situations took place in MA in the past decade. How were they handled?
I’d like our CIVILIAN law enforcement strategy to be based on facts and reality, not hysterical imagination.
of those hostage situations, how many led to better outcomes when military grade weapons were used compared to someone trained in conflict resolution who’s aim is to use minimal force whenever possible.
To talk around with baseball bats and fuzzy handcuffs. So having trained professionals and 1-2 DMR’s, for exceptional circumstances, will have to be our happy medium.
They can be brought in if absolutely necessary, but not as the first thing a local department thinks to use.
I said “I’d like to know how many actual hostage situations took place in MA in the past decade. How were they handled?”
There’s nothing there about baseball bats or fuzzy handcuffs.
You leave the impression that you fear looking what ACTUALLY HAPPENS and aligning our CIVILIAN law enforcement agencies to align with that.
Why do you (and so many other like you) fear letting reality guide our strategy?
and part of that means comprehensive plans to respond to whatever gets thrown our way. What actually happens is that events occur once in a decade where a police sniper might actually need to shoot someone through a window to save a hostage. Why wouldn’t you be prepared for that situation by having a DMR and an officer who is rated to use it?
Reality isn’t this objective thing. Take for instance recent events. Your reality may state that police are brutal and racist and need to be held accountable for said brutality and racism. My reality may say differently (for the sake of not having the topic change, I’ll not get into it).
Your reality: this event doesn’t happen. We don’t need DMR’s in local law enforcement.
My reality: these events could happen, local law enforcement should have a level of preparedness for them including a DMR.
The point being that really awful things happen and a DMR is a low impact (financially, upkeep, space constraints) way to respond to rare situations. something like an MRAP has no CONCEIVABLE utility to local law enforcement on top of being expensive to maintain, house, etc. which makes them a horse of a different color in this context.
My comment about the handcuffs is that I feel like you have an extremely low opinion of the police and therefore would like to neuter them regardless of the practicality of their deployment of certain arms. If I am wrong and you do not have a low opinion of police, then I apologize for that.
Current reality: cops are given military hardware free, on condition that they use it annually. This prompts them to break out the war toys on the slightest excuse, and remain geared-up to use them all the time. That’s how we get SWAT teams serving warrants and cops geared up like soldiers responding to peaceful demonstrations.
I wonder if the reason you don’t want to state your thinking about police brutality and racism is that you don’t want to defend that thinking. If that’s the case, why mention it at all?
Make the look-back period be as long as you like. How times in the last TWO DECADES has “a police sniper might actually need to shoot someone through a window to save a hostage” and been unable to because of a lack of this absurd hardware? How about THREE DECADES? When WAS the last time it happened in Massachusetts?
The answer is NONE. ZERO. NADA.
It is worse than just “we don’t need them”. The reality, as we saw in Fergusen and — for that matter — in Watertown, is that when we flood our police departments with this paraphernalia, they USE THEM. This program worsens tensions in areas where they are already high (like Ferguson) and creates them in relatively quiet areas (like Watertown).
My opinion of police is irrelevant to a discussion of what material are needed by police, as is yours. What IS relevant is some sense of rationality about how likely an event is, how expensive (in terms of social impact) the impact is if it happens, how costly (in terms of social impact) the alleged “cure” is, and how effective the alleged cure is.
Here is what I think the answers are:
– The likelihood is vanishingly small (as in hasn’t happened here for decades)
– The impact of a hostage event is modest, unless there is an ENORMOUS police over-reaction as in Watertown. It affects at most a neighborhood. If it ends badly, then a single-digit number of civilian and law-enforcement lives are lost. I don’t mean to sound callous, but we’re not talking about 9/11 here.
– The cost is ENORMOUS — we turn ourselves into a militarized state, with our once-civilian police as an occupying army. Surely the CIA report demonstrates the importance of erring on the side of caution when being asked to “trust” the government in such matters.
– The programs we are discussing show every indication of worsening, rather than helping, the situations they are intended to prevent. Heavily armed police are more, rather than less, likely to shoot. Heavily armed police provoke more, rather than less, extreme behavior from already unruly crowds.
I think you know yourself that these are the questions and these are the answers, and that’s why I think you’d rather divert the discussion to something — anything — else.
Though they are unnecessary I can’t get too worked up about vehicles.
It’s not a bad idea for city PD’s to have a bulletproof van/suv-type of vehicle. As for the AR-15/M-14, every officer should have one in his or her cruiser. The light-but-fast 5.56 bullet that assault/patrol rifles are chambered in is much safer for use in heavily populated areas:
“The most popular patrol rifle round, the 5.56 NATO (.223 Remington) will penetrate fewer walls than service pistol rounds or 12 gauge slugs.” (p. 3)
http://www.mlefiaa.org/files/MPTC_NEWS/Patrol_Rifle_Student_Manual_2010.pdf
Of course, it’s not safer if the 30-round magazines are encouraging officers to shoot thousands of rounds at an unarmed jihadi bleeding in a boat. But the problem here is with training and procedure (or lack thereof), not the equipment.
Same with serving warrants — the assault (ahem… patrol) rifles make the situation safer for everyone involved. But do they give everyone a fair chance to file out of the house? Or do they immediate bust open the door, subjecting the occupants to the most terrifying and violent experience of their lives?
M14 fires what is closer to a .300 winchester mag (7.62×51). The round weighs (off the top of my head) almost 3 times more than a 5.56. Apples and oranges.
I meant to say m16. The m16/m4 have a cambering that’s comparable to the civilian ar15 — Small, fast rounds that are less likely to penetrate buildings and harm innocents.
You’re right, an m14 would be a whole different ballgame.
5.56 has pretty good penetration. That’s one of the reasons they are not recommended for home defense (i.e. a robbery). That round will go right through a wall or a door without a problem. That’s why the Remington 870 / Mossberg 500 is so popular for HD. 12 gauge shell with bird shot will take care of an intruder and get held up comparatively well by a door or wall.
That’s also why self-defense rounds are typically hollow points. While it’s true they do more internal damage to the target, they also tend to shatter rather than penetrate when hitting cover.
You may be right about birdshot. The police document I reference seems to assume that they use slugs — which makes sense, since shot sprays all over the place, potentially hitting unintended targets.
Hollow point handgun bullets mushroom when they hit flesh. Hitting other things, like drywall, hollow point bullets behave the same as any other bullets. (If there are handgun rounds that are proven to do otherwise, I’d be interested to know.)
The ar15 shoots a round that’s intrinsically different, in that it is much faster and also much lighter. So the bullet is unstable, which makes it bad for hunting in brush and good for not shooting through people’s homes. It’s still very capable of doing so, of course. There’s no such thing as a “wall-safe” defensive firearm.
Just giving police rifles with 30 round mags, without enough training or procedures for mass shooting events, may be an invitation for lots of bullets being fired. After what happened in Boston, I’m surprised by how little discussion there has been of lessening accidental harm in those kinds of situations.
My initial point was not just that these tools are useful, but also that I don’t think taking the tools and trappings of police militarization will change anything. It doesn’t take much to club a protestor or kick down a door.
Rand Paul.
Perhaps the Liberals and Neo-conservatives reign could be overthrown.
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower
And COIN strategies have already been infecting police forces, and some were even implemented for crowd control in Ferguson. Time to treat disgruntled citizens as that-citizens. Members of your community that need to be treated with respect, protecting their lives should matter more than protecting property. I don’t expect the police to protest, I do expect them to treat non violent protesters non violently. I don’t see how these vehicles encourage that, they seem to invite more trouble than the solve.
on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which has been looking into the DOD 1033 program. She testified before her own committee and issued a press release on the subject one month ago.
http://tsongas.house.gov/press-releases/tsongas-opening-statement-during-hearing-on-implementation-of-dod-1033-program/
I wrote to her at the time but her web page indicates, understandably, that her office does not have the resources to answer people from outside her district. My plea to her was a bit complicated. I urged a much higher degree of consideration be given to the distribution of weapons to domestic police agencies and offered an alternative.
Since I believe that the Crimea and Ukraine violence was inspired and financed by Russia, and think the next flash point will be similar Russian financed operations in the Baltics or Poland, it is important that these NATO allies have the capacity to respond to these manufactured insurrections. Many of the weapons that are misplaced in the hands of some small local police forces but would be useful to our NATO allies. I urged that more consideration be given to distributing these surplus weapons to NATO front line countries.
Sure it is a pretty simple answer to a bunch of complicated problems but it beats current policy.
Residents of Tsongas’ district can weigh in with her about their feelings on the 1033 program regardless of their take on the issue. I am guessing she did not get a lot of feedback from the voters she represents and she is in an important place in the review process.
I forget where I saw videos of small town police leaders talking about why they need advanced weapons but there are a lot on the web. Some, like the conversion of grenade launchers into tear gas launchers, seem like they could be justified. Others left me incredulous at their audacity. Last month the NYTimes had an extensive graphic on the distribution of 1033 weapons
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/us/surplus-military-equipment-map.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A9%22%7D&_r=0