$4.2 Billion in Military Hardware Donations Fuels Militarization of U.S. Police Forces

From major metropolises to small towns, America’s police forces increasingly resemble military units, thanks in part to billions of dollars in free equipment from the Pentagon.

The giveaways to date are valued at $ 4.2 billion, which the Department of Defense began distributing after Congress adopted legislation in 1997 authorizing the little-known 1033 Program. It appeared in fine print buried inside the National Defense Authorization Act (pdf). 

In 2012 alone, the Pentagon gave away a record $ 546 million in surplus military hardware to municipal law enforcement agencies.

The program’s expansion in recent years has been attributed to sequestration budget cuts, post-9/11 fears, and excess equipment after winding down two wars.

Police have received not only assault rifles and grenade launchers for use by SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams, but also armored vehicles and even tanks. Many of the weapon donations far exceed law enforcement needs in towns with relatively small populations. 

In South Carolina, the sheriff of Richland County acquired a tank (dubbed “the Peacemaker) with 360-degree rotating machine gun turrets.

In Jefferson County in upstate New York, the sheriff’s department guarding a community of about 120,000 people now has a 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, which was developed for the U.S. military to survive roadside bomb attacks. It was given to the county sheriff by the Pentagon. 

The billion-dollar donations don’t include the $ 34 billion in “terrorism grants” that the Department of Homeland Security has handed out to local polices forces to arm themselves with high-powered weaponry.

Some of this military equipment has been on display by police during the recent Boston post-bombing lockdown and operations against Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. 

In 2012, scandal disrupted the program when an investigation conducted by the Arizona Republic found that the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department had not maintained control of the military weaponry it had acquired from the Pentagon. Evidence surfaced that the Sheriff’s office had given some of the equipment to non-police agencies and was planning to sell other military gear at auction.

The Pentagon responded by temporarily shutting down the program and requesting that all law enforcement agencies that had received donations provide an accounting of their holdings.

The 1033 program has no oversight and has never been audited, according to several media reports.

-Danny Biederman, Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

America’s Police are Looking More and More Like the Military (by Michael Shank and Elizabeth Beavers, The Guardian)

Little Restraint In Military Giveaways (by Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press)

Pinal County Policies Spur Pentagon to Order Military-Gear Crackdown (by Dennis Wagner, Arizona Republic)

U.S. Dumps Excess Equipment on Police Departments that Don’t Need It (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)          

The Militarization of Your Local Police (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

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$4.2 Billion in Military Hardware Donations Fuels Militarization of U.S. Police Forces

Unannounced Israel-U.S. missile test fuels jitters over Syria

MOSCOW | Tue Sep 3, 2013 5:19am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian radar detected the launch of two ballistic “objects” towards the eastern Mediterranean from the central part of the sea on Tuesday, Russian news agencies quoted the Defence Ministry as saying.

Interfax news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying the launch was detected at 10:16 am Moscow time (2.16 a.m. ET) by an early warning radar station at Armavir, near the Black Sea, which is designed to detect missiles from Europe and Iran.

The agencies did not say who had carried out the launch and whether any impact had been detected. The ministry declined comment to Reuters.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had informed President Vladimir Putin of the launch.

“The trajectory of these objects goes from the central part of the Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern part of the Mediterranean coast,” Interfax quoted the spokesman as saying.

A ministry official had earlier criticized the United States for deploying warships in the Mediterranean close to Syria.

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Unannounced Israel-U.S. missile test fuels jitters over Syria

SF Bay Area building demolition fuels quake study

Workers walk away from Warren Hall on the California State University, East Bay Hayward Campus Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013, in Hayward, Calif. The 13-story Warren Hall, which opened in 1971, was determined by the California State University Seismic Review Board to be the most vulnerable building in the CSU system, and will be demolished on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Workers walk away from Warren Hall on the California State University, East Bay Hayward Campus Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013, in Hayward, Calif. The 13-story Warren Hall, which opened in 1971, was determined by the California State University Seismic Review Board to be the most vulnerable building in the CSU system, and will be demolished on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) — Every time the ground trembles in the San Francisco Bay Area, people ask themselves: Could this be the big one?

For years now, the region has been bracing for a major earthquake that many worry could level vulnerable schools, hospitals and apartment buildings and unleash near-apocalyptic chaos. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there is a 63 percent chance of a major earthquake in the region within the next three decades.

On Saturday, scientists hope to get one-up on the looming temblor, courtesy of the demolition of a university building.

Workers plan to implode the 13-story Warren Hall, a fixture of the East Bay hillside and of Cal State East Bay, which was built about 2000 feet from what researchers call one of the most dangerous fault lines in the country: the Hayward fault.

The building is expected to crumple into 12,500 tons of concrete and steel, which will slam against the ground sending out shockwaves similar to a magnitude-2.0 earthquake. Scientists have placed more than 600 seismographs in concentric circles within a mile of the building to pick up the vibrations.

USGS scientists hope the unique experiment will help map out where the ground might shake the most when the big one hits.

“We’re just getting an idea of the distribution of the shaking,” said Rufus Catchings, the lead USGS scientist on the project.

Many vividly remember the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 that killed 63 people, injured almost 3,800, caused up to $ 10 billion damage, including a collapsed freeway that killed dozens of drivers. That quake was centered near Santa Cruz, about 50 miles south of here.

But in the East Bay, the Hayward fault — which runs through East Bay cities and under the University of California, Berkeley’s football stadium — is the most likely to act up and cause a major earthquake in the next few decades, experts say.

The last major temblor on the Hayward fault was in 1868, Catchings said. He said the fault triggers a major earthquake every 140 years on average.

And it’s not just the fault line residents have to worry about. Additional fault lines —called traces — split off from the main fault, and the location of many is unknown. The vibrations set off by Warren Hall’s implosion will help scientists figure out where they are.

“In the event of a large earthquake, oftentimes it’s not just one break in the ground, it’s spread out over some distance,” Catchings said. “You’d kind of like to know where all these things are if you really want to understand the hazard.”

Mark Salinas, Hayward’s mayor pro tem, said knowing where the ground shakes will help the city decide where to put new housing and other buildings. “This data, when it’s available, will inform us on future development,” he said.

The idea to use the building’s demolition came from Luther Strayer, a geology professor at the university who called the USGS to see if they would be interested.

“Anybody in my position who is trained like I am would have recognized the opportunity,” Strayer said. “That’s really the cool part; it was sort of a simple obvious thing to do and it can do so much good for our society and the community.”

Associated Press

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U.S. puts jets in Jordan, fuels Russian fear of Syria no-fly zone

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The United States said on Saturday it would keep F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles in Jordan at Amman’s request, and Russia bristled at the possibility they could be used to enforce a no-fly zone inside Syria.

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U.S. puts jets in Jordan, fuels Russian fear of Syria no-fly zone