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NEENAH, Wis. — Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small.
The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.
During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received 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.
The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclubin 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”
As the nation’s wars abroad wind down, many of the military’s surplus tools of combat have ended up in the hands of state and local law enforcement. Totals below are the minimum number of pieces acquired since 2006 in a selection of categories.
MRAPS BY STATE
WA
ME
432
= 1 vehicle
ND
MT
VT
MN
MRAPs
OR.
MA
ID
NY
WI
WY
Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles
MI
CT
NE
IA
NJ
PA
NV
OH
UT
MD
CA
IL
IN
CO
WV
VA
KS
KY
MO
NC
TN
AR
AZ
OK
NM
SC
GA
AL
LA
TX
FL
HI
435
44,900
533
93,763
180,718
Other armored
vehicles
Night vision
pieces
Aircraft
Machine guns
Magazines
Planes and helicopters
5.56 mm and
7.62 mm rifles
Including cars and trucks
Including sights, binoculars, goggles, lights and accessories
No ammunition
To read the rest of this article on the New York Times website, click here.
