Police have geared up; State law enforcement has gotten $4.2M in surplus military equipment
Published 10:14 am Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Members of the Austin Special Incident Response Team move a Humvee into position in front of an Eighth Street Northwest home in January 2014, the site of a standoff with Austin police. The Humvee is one of 8,500 pieces of surplus military equipment donated to Minnesota law enforcement from 2011 to 2013. Herald file photo
By Jeff Hargarten
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Pentagon’s 1033 Program allows local law enforcement agencies to acquire surplus military gear — including weapons, medical equipment and vehicles — at no cost.
About 8,500 individual pieces of military equipment were transferred to law enforcement agencies in Minnesota since the program’s inception in the early 1990’s, according to public data obtained by the Star Tribune.
On Monday, President Barack Obama ended long-running federal transfers of some of the combat-style gear to local law enforcement in an attempt to ease tensions between police and minority communities, saying equipment made for the battlefield should not be a tool of American criminal justice.
Grenade launchers, bayonets, tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, firearms and ammunition of .50-caliber or higher will no longer be provided to state and local police agencies by the federal government under Obama’s order.
Between September 2011 and September 2013, Minnesota agencies acquired $4.2 million in surplus military gear, according to federal data. About $25 million in military inventory has been transferred to Minnesota police departments and other organizations overall, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
More than 8,000 federal and state agencies from every U.S. state and territory have participated in the program.
—Distributed by Tribune Content Agency
