(crossposted at five before chaos)
As I was going through my usual Sunday morning newsdump, this article over at Alternet caught my eye, which asked the important question:
When local police departments are armed with military grade equipment, the soldier's mentality is not far behind. Domestic policing has come to resemble a string of combat operations in a scene that repeats itself every time an Occupy encampment is raided, which raises the question: exactly what type of policing equipment is in the arsenal of law enforcement agencies in America?
The article then goes on to answer the question, detailing the process that has led to our ever-increasing militarization of our civilian police forces, as well as all of the nifty crowd-destroying gadgets that are rapidly becoming available to them. Several major cities are mentioned, and then, much to my surprise, this:
The Vermont State Police are now the proud owners of a BearCat G3 as well. A $189,400 DHS grant, in addition to $65,998 worth of forfeited assets from convicted drug dealers, were used to cover the vehicle's $255,398 cost. The state police say they plan on sharing it with city and county law enforcement agencies, should they “face an active shooter, high-risk warrant subject, or barricaded suspect.”
This is a Bearcat G3:
Photo: VSP
According to Police Magazine:
The vehicle can carry 10 fully geared-up tactical officers, who respond with the truck. It’s powered by a diesel engine, provides higher-riding clearance, and allows officers to deploy less-lethal chemical munitions from inside the vehicle.
The PM article makes it sound more like it’s something they needed for natural disasters, yet I can think of few where less-lethal chemical munitions need to be deployed from inside the vehicle. It’s just a reminder that as much as we like to think that in Vermont, we’re somewhat insulated from a lot of the civil unrest (and more importantly, its ever-increasing retaliation and suppression), that those days are over. Don’t you feel safer, now?
to design a post-war “need” that will allow all the fat-cat arms dealers who profited so handsomely from the wars in the Middle East to go on raking in the cash.
The new “front lines” will be urban streets of America, and the new threat will be the enemy within.
that public money, one way or another can always be found for.
Huh ! Farmers? Yes,drones to spray pesticides.
http://www.latimes.com/busines…
there are some VSP that are itching to drive this rig to some real action.
Many people like gadgets, and weapons like this have the gadget-factor going for them. A new weapon like this begs to be used.
Lots of folks want to use that gun in the closet, that TASER on their belt, or the pepper spray or tear gas that they’ve been riding around with in the trunk of their squad car.
I am not disparaging the cops. Human nature is at work here.
Back in the 80s I worked at Rockwell outside Atlanta in HR. They built the Hellfire missile system and the GBU (Guided Bomb Unit) and AGM (Advanced Guided Munition) TV and IR (infra-red) seekers upstairs from my office. (The GBUs and AGMs were controlled much like the Predator drones – from a distance, although not from the other side of the world). We built them, and sent them to Anniston AL to be warehoused. Until Gulf War I, when the generals and the colonels got to take them off the shelf and use them on real live Iraqis. I remember watching the ‘briefings’ on CNN where the colonels would show the TV footage of the GBUs and AGMs blowing up buildings and bunkers, and realizing how satisfied they seemed that the weapon worked. There was definitely a ‘ooh – wow’ factor at work, and they wanted to let us Americans in on it…
Anyhow, you know there are some folks that really really really want to ‘go live’ in this contraption.
if this is our first urban assault vehicle, what is that thing next to our new super jeep??? floorboards designed to have a lot of jackboots resting on them as they motor off to crowd control somewhere??? Don’t think, if it is ours, that we heard about that purchase…
that much cash would have filled a lot of donut holes for some old retiree needing a few RX filled.