Police got $454M in military gear since ’17
Armored vehicles seen during recent protests
As protests over police brutality lead to calls for law enforcement overhauls, a decades-old Department of Defense program faces renewed pressure from Congress to stem the flow of military equipment to police.
Local law enforcement agencies have obtained nearly half a billion dollars of surplus military equipment under the 1033 Program since August 2017, when President Donald Trump lifted restrictions imposed by the Obama administration, a USA TODAY/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis found.
Because the Department of Defense does not report items that police obtained but decommissioned or returned, the true amount of military equipment given to police since 2017 is probably higher.
Law enforcement agencies have received almost $454 million in surplus military equipment since Trump lifted restrictions on the 1033 Program. This is about the same amount law enforcement received while the Obama administration’s restrictions were in place.
Using federal data, the analysis found that law enforcement agencies largely gave up controversial items such as grenade launchers and bayonets, prohibited under the Obama administration.
Police have increasingly obtained other military-grade equipment such as riot gear and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, the hulking, heavily armored vehicles designed to withstand explosive blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such equipment has been spotted in Minneapolis and Spokane, Washington, during protests in response to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed, handcuffed Black man who died as a police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
According to the latest federal data, police agencies possess nearly 1,100 MRAPs through the program, nearly double the number in 2014, when protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, another unarmed Black man, put the program under a microscope.
Legislation unveiled last week by House and Senate Democrats would go further than Obama’s executive order. Certain firearms, ammunition, grenade launchers, bayonets, mine-resistant vehicles, drones, silencers and long-range acoustic devices (LRADs) used to deter riots would be prohibited.
LRADs have been used on crowds of protesters, including in Austin, Texas, on June 6. Data from the Pentagon shows four of the $35,000 devices have been given to agencies in California and Colorado in recent years.
Proponents of the 1033 Program said it provides a tremendous cost-saving and puts taxpayer-funded equipment to good use. The nation’s largest police union said it opposes further restrictions.
Police agencies possess about $10.5 million worth of riot gear and “nonlethal” weapons, such as pepper spray, through the program, nearly three times the amount they had in 2014, according to the Pentagon’s data.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who served in Iraq with the Marines, said municipalities should have to justify to residents why police agencies need surplus military gear.
“It’s ridiculous that every small town in America thinks they need an MRAP because one is available,” Gallego said.
The 1033 program accounts for a fraction of the military-grade equipment police have at their disposal, said Charles Mesloh, a weapons expert at Northern Michigan University.
Because they are relatively cheap, most of the less-lethal projectiles – such as foam rounds, flash bangs and bean bag rounds – are purchased by police commercially.
Mesloh, who studies the safety and reliability of less-lethal weaponry, said he’s concerned about the lack of quality control and training in the industry. He said he’s particularly concerned about skip-fire rounds, which are intended to be shot at the ground and bounce back up.
“If you aim them directly at people, it’s like shooting wooden blocks at people,” Mesloh said. “I’ve argued about this for years about whether those should be in the toolkit.”
When military equipment goes unused, it’s transferred to the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency and goes into a giant repository for law enforcement to peruse and request. If not transferred for free to those agencies, the equipment is donated, sold or destroyed.
Since the program began in 1990, the Department of Defense has loaned out more than $6 billion of equipment to 8,000 law enforcement agencies, according to a report in 2018 from military think tank RAND.
Transfers grew more than 10-fold after 2006 as the U.S. military offloaded equipment no longer needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to data from the DLA, which administers the program.
The majority of the gear – about half the program’s value – is not controversial. It includes office furniture, generators and first aid kits. RAND estimates that from 2015 to 2017, 2.2 million of those items accounted for $1.2 billion.
The program came under scrutiny during the Ferguson protests in 2014, after images of police riding on armored personnel carriers and carrying assault rifles flooded social media. As a result, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that reduced police access to controversial items, such as grenade launchers, bayonets and MRAPs. From 2015 to 2017, those 3,000 items accounted for about $775 million.
The policy shifts slowed only certain categories and amounted to “window dressing,” said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has testified in favor of scrapping the program entirely.
Over the past three decades, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has issued eight reports criticizing the record-keeping and control around the program. In July 2017, the office revealed that a watchdog group created a fictitious federal agency and obtained 100 restricted items worth over $1.2 million.
Trump overturned the Obama administration’s restrictions in August 2017 via executive order. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy shift at a gathering of the Fraternal Order of Police during the cleanup after Hurricane Harvey, in which he said some of the equipment was used.
The president of the FOP, the nation’s largest police union, told USA TODAY last week he was open to legislation prohibiting chokeholds and tracking officer misconduct, but banning the military surplus gear was ill-advised.
“I know this equipment has been beneficial and has saved lives,” Patrick Yoes said.
Vehicles, planes and helicopters are some of the most valuable items transferred to police agencies over the years.
Arizona’s Department of Public Safety received several aircraft and trucks worth more than $55 million since 2011. The California Highway Patrol received a $22 million aircraft in 2016. Kentucky state police received a plane, helicopter, several armored trucks and more than 500 rifles since 2004.
It isn’t just the large agencies getting high-priced military equipment.
In Willmar, Minnesota, pop. 19,600, police received a surplus diesel 2007 AM General up-armored Humvee from the military in August.