Medea Benjamin — Police Departments Shouldn't Become Dumping Grounds for Weapons Makers

Public good, or pork barrel for the defense industry? File under WTF?!

Your head will spin if you take a look at this map the New York Times published on August 21. It lists the counties that have received military surplus and the supplies they’ve received. The acquisitions under the Department of Defense (DOD) program since its inception in 1991 are valued at $5.1 billion, with $449.3 million given out in fiscal year 2013 alone. In just the past 5 years, as part of Section 1033 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997, the Pentagon has given away “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft” to counties in every state throughout the country.

While attention is now focused on the DOD’s program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a program that is three times the size. This year alone, DHS plans to give away $1.6 billion worth of military equipment for counterterrorism, border security and disaster preparedness. Thanks to DHS, every squad car in Fargo, North Dakota, has assault rifles and kevlar helmets and 1,500 beat cops in Philadelphia are trained to use AR-15s.

DHS is also giving out money for a few dozen police departments to experiment with drones. When the Federal Aviation Administration opens US airspace to drones in the coming years, civil liberty advocates fear that the nation’s 18,000 police departments will be lining up for DHS grants to get their latest toy--a toy that has the capacity to spy, stun, maim and kill.

This is already starting. In May 2012, DHS began distributing $4 million in experimental grants to help local law enforcement agencies buy their own small drones, opening a new market for politically connected drone makers as the wars overseas shrink. The sheriff’s department in Montgomery County, Texas received a $250,000 grant to buy a drone, which in April 2014 crashed into Lake Conroe and was destroyed. In 2013, citizens of Seattle pressured police into returning two drones they had received from DHS grants for $82,000. The drones were then pawned off on the LA Police Department, which is now facing a citizen backlash to get rid of them.

In the past, Congress has done nothing to rollback the handouts. When Congressman Alan Grayson introduced legislation in June to limit funding to the 1033 program, it was quashed by an overwhelming vote of 355-62, including 35 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who voted against it.….

Worse than traffic cameras for revenue generation as a replacement for taxation.

AlterNet

Police Departments Shouldn't Become Dumping Grounds for Weapons Makers
Medea Benjamin

See also, Steve Holland and Andrea Shalal, Obama orders review of U.S. police use of military hardware, Reuters

Key concerns include a clause in the program that requires police to use the equipment within a year, something the American Civil Liberties Union argues may give police forces an incentive to use the equipment in inappropriate situations. The program also does not mandate training for crowd control or other uses.…

U.S. weapons makers have been eyeing what they call "adjacent" markets for years, keen to drum up fresh demand for products initially developed for the military, and recently, to offset declines in U.S. and European military spending. 

Faced with a dwindling number of big-ticket military contracts, even the Pentagon's largest suppliers such as Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N) are competing for increasingly smaller contracts in commercial or non-military markets, analysts and industry executives said. 

Among the products marketed to state and local officials are military-grade communications equipment, radios, night-vision goggles, drones and other surveillance equipment.…