Arian Schuessler/AP Photo/The Globe Gazette
An MRAP vehicle in Mason City, Iowa, in 2014. For small police departments, the federal government’s 1033 program offers the best route to getting otherwise unaffordable equipment.
It took a bit of scrolling, but Detective Captain Casey Spinsby soon filled his online shopping cart with the perfect item—a half-million-dollar armored vehicle. The Defense Logistics Agency’s online portal offers a number of armored military vehicles, so Spinsby needed to spend some time checking out a few before making his final selection. But once he found the perfect choice, all it took was approval from a state liaison, a credit card swipe for shipping, and the mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle that once roamed Afghanistan would now be living out its second life in Huron, South Dakota.
The machine pulled up to the station on the back of a flatbed truck that drove 1,500 miles from a government warehouse in Nevada. Officers pulled it into the department warehouse for fueling. Except, when Spinsby took a closer look, he realized the truck needed a lot more work than the standard fluids replacement that had been advertised. The armor plate covering the brake lines was gone. The engine didn’t work. And crucial hydraulic lines had been cut. “It looked like they’d taken parts off to make another vehicle whole,” he said. To get the armored car working, Spinsby says that Huron will need to shell out over $10,000—money they don’t have.
Post-9/11 hysteria saw the Department of Homeland Security play a major role in militarizing police against any threat of potential terror.
For small police departments like Huron, the federal government’s 1033 program offers the best route to getting otherwise unaffordable equipment. In 1990, at the height of the so-called War on Drugs, the George H.W. Bush administration included a provision within the National Defense Authorization Act that allowed local police departments to acquire excess military equipment for free. Lured by the promise of free equipment, 8,200 agencies across the nation participate in the program. It’s easy for departments like Huron, which saw an officer nearly die during a 2015 shootout, to get excited over the prospect of bolstering their defenses, especially when the federal government is so eager to hand out equipment. Post-9/11 hysteria saw the Department of Homeland Security play a major role in militarizing police against any threat of potential terror, allocating roughly $1.8 billion each year to community preparedness grants. However, many local departments discover the equipment to be unnecessary and financially draining, with much of it arriving in far from working order. And repairing the equipment often costs more than local budgets can handle.
Karena Rahall, a professor at New York University, says police departments offer new markets for defense contractors. Some contractors even reach out directly to local police departments to supply them with equipment. But small departments like Huron might never hit the radar of big defense companies, and the Hurons of the nation might never expect to be able to afford specialized defense equipment. However, the need to purchase spare parts for a piece of broken equipment establishes a relationship. To get the hydraulic lines they needed, Huron has no choice but to reach out to the manufacturer. Then, should they ever need equipment or repairs in the future, they now have a friendly defense contractor representative they know they can call.
And many departments will need to make these calls. The Bellevue, Nebraska, Police Department spent roughly $5,000 removing rust from the armored vehicle they received, according to Lieutenant Andy Jashinske. Norm Stamper, a former police chief and author of To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America’s Police, knows of a number of departments that received broken equipment through the program. And he’s seen how this equipment can transform a department’s culture.
Stamper worked for the San Diego Police Department during the 1984 McDonald’s massacre, where a shooter took the lives of 21 people. During the incident, a police sniper couldn’t attain a clear line of sight on the shooter, which led to a 77-minute standoff. He says the department wished they had owned an armored vehicle during that shootout. So they purchased one soon thereafter, but the SDPD never found themselves needing it again. Like so many police departments, they ended up shelling out money for repairs and using it needlessly for drug busts.
“If you don’t use it, you become rusty, so you have to use it,” Stamper said. “And that just adds to the militarization of police, reinforcing the notion that the police are an occupational force.” Stamper opposes the program. But repealing 1033 could prove to be a major challenge.
“If you don’t use it, you become rusty, so you have to use it. And that just adds to the militarization of police.”
The defense industry spent over $112 million on lobbying in 2019. Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, responsible for allocating funds to the 1033 program, received over half a million dollars this past election cycle from defense companies that rank among his top 20 donors. In 2014, former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson introduced a bill set to curb the 1033 program. Rahall found that members who voted against the bill received 70 percent more in campaign contributions than their peers who voted in favor of the restrictions. “When we’re not at war, the 1033 program probably means a little more to defense companies,” Rahall said. “I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t continue on any path that nets them more profits.”
Despite the immense influence of Big Defense, proposals to curb 1033 have risen again in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The Justice in Policing Act included Democratic House member Hank Johnson’s (D-GA) Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which called for the restriction of military equipment transferred through the program. Much of the rationale for the decision came from a 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office that found that the program’s overseers exhibited “deficiencies” in overseeing the program. (As part of their evaluation, the agency created a fake federal entity and obtained over $1.2 million worth of military equipment.) The act currently awaits approval by the Senate to be added as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and has bipartisan support from Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Rand Paul (R-KY).
While Congress continues to deliberate and the defense industry rakes in over $760 billion annually, the Huron Police Department continues to save a bit of their budget each month to put toward repairing their armored car. It sits unfixed, unusable, taking up space in the department’s storage facility. Whether the department still wants the machine or not, it’s their responsibility now and cannot be sold to the public. And while there hasn’t been a situation that has required the vehicle, Spinsby still hopes to get it up and running. “An agency our size would never be able to afford an armored vehicle,” he said.
