http://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-news/s-indiana-police-chief-returning-military-humvees
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-news/indiana-police-get-millions-in-dod-equipment
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S. Indiana police chief returning military Humvees
"Don't fit the department's needs"
TheIndyChannel.com Staff
5:52 AM, Dec 10, 2014
Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NEW ALBANY, Ind. - A southern Indiana police chief plans to return four Humvee vehicles his department received as military surplus this year from the Department of Defense.
New Albany Police Chief Todd Bailey says the vehicles were acquired by his predecessor as chief and that he's found they don't fit the department's needs.
Bailey tells the News and Tribune he believes the Humvees were sought for use in bad weather but they've never been used. Bailey says the department will be working to return the vehicles to the military.
The four Humvees were acquired at no cost under a Pentagon program that equips local police with surplus military weapons. The White House has ordered a review of the program after complaints about the militarization of police departments.
Indiana police get millions in DoD equipment
Acquisitions include MRAPs, helicopters and guns
Jordan Fischer, TheIndyChannel.com Staff , The Associated Press
12:01 PM, Oct 31, 2014
12:19 PM, Oct 31, 2014
Copyright Getty Images
SCOTT OLSEN
INDIANAPOLIS - Central Indiana police have received more than $11 million worth of surplus military equipment from the Department of Defense since 2006, including at least two MRAPs and several more armored personnel carriers.
Statewide, police and sheriff departments have benefitted from the DoD's 1033 Excess Property Program to the tune of more than $42,000,000. Those acquisitions include high-price items like the MRAPS – mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles used heavily to protect troops from IEDs during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – helicopters and bomb robots, as well as thousands of pieces of surplus military clothing, logistical equipment and rifles.
Eight Indiana counties – Johnson, St. Joseph, Jefferson, Morgan, Tippecanoe, Lake, Pulaski and Vigo counties – have received MRAPs, which have become the face of the national debate over the militarization of the police in the wake of the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson .
Five of those counties have populations of fewer than 150,000 people:
- Johnson County – 145,535
- Vigo County – 108,291
- Morgan County – 69,782
- Jefferson County – 32,458
- Pulaski County – 13,007
In Marion County, which has an estimated population of just over 928,000 people, police have received more than $1.5 million worth of military equipment since 2006, including two armored personnel carriers and 362 guns.
The donut counties as a whole -- Marion, Hamilton, Boone, Hendricks, Morgan, Johnson, Shelby and Hancock counties -- have received more than $3.7 million from the program.
Use the interactive below to see DoD equipment acquisitions by county:
In June, a report by the American Civil Liberties union said police agencies had become "excessively militarized," with officers using training and equipment designed for the battlefield on city streets. The report found the amount of goods transferred through the military surplus program rose in value from $1 million in 1990 to nearly $450 million in 2013, according to the Associated Press .
"One of our concerns with this is it has a tendency to escalate violence," ACLU Center for Justice senior counsel Kara Danksy told the Associated Press .
Law enforcement officials like LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing have said the equipment is necessary to take on "more sophisticated" criminals.
"In police work there are times we have to become soldiers and control through force and fear," Downing told the Associated Press . "But we have to come back to being a public servant as quick as we can to establish that normality and that ethical stature with communities, because they're the ones who give us the authority to do our police work."
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said his committee will review the program to determine if the Defense Department's surplus equipment is being used as intended.
READ MORE:
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Associated Press writers Tami Abdollah, Eric Tucker and Michael Virtanen contributed to this report.
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