Robert Shellmyer was relieved to see last week at his hometown’s 175th anniversary celebration that the local police department’s new prized possession was not driving alongside the tractors and floats in the parade.
That’s because a 45,000 pound, explosion-resistant vehicle from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might spoil the mood.
Shellmyer, a 78-year-old city councilman for the small town of Washington, Iowa, was the sole local politician to vote against the department of 12 police officers getting the free MRAP—short for mine resistant ambush protected vehicle—from the Defense Department two months ago. Washington is one of hundreds of towns and cities to get a recycled MRAP from the Pentagon over the past year and a half.
“Here’s the thing,” Shellmyer says. “Washington, Iowa has 8,000 people. We have an MRAP now. We have a SWAT team. We have [police] dogs, and we have a SWAT team transportation vehicle that’s not armored.”
The city councilman began to think: “Goodness, this is overkill.”
But as a new report by the ACLU demonstrates, Washington’s use of military tactics and equipment has become the norm. Most of America’s police departments now have special paramilitary units—called SWAT teams—to respond to emergency situations, conduct drug raids, and even, in some cases, patrol the streets. In the past few years, more of these SWAT teams are getting armored vehicles provided by the federal government to expand their capabilities.
Law enforcement leaders say the increased military equipment and tactics are necessary to respond to violent emergency events, like school shootings. Critics counter that the militarization of police causes needless violence. The ACLU report found that 46 civilians were injured in 818 SWAT raids over two years in 11 states. Children were present in the home in 14 percent of the raids the group studied. In 60 percent of the raids, police had a search warrant for a drug offense. Only 7 percent of the SWAT deployments the ACLU studied were for hostage or active shooter scenarios.
The MRAPs, designed to protect U.S. soldiers from roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, are now providing more firepower to these raids thanks to the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which began in the late 1980s to recycle old military equipment to cops. (That includes tens of thousands of machine guns, as well as more quotidian items like office furniture and computers.) The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, provides millions of dollars in grants to local cops to buy lighter armored vehicles, like BearCats, to combat terrorism or drug running. (Keane, New Hampshire received a DHS grant on the strength of an application that listed their annual pumpkin festival as one of several potential terrorist targets.)
