“The major impact of using this military gear for everyday policing is on the lives of Black and brown people,” said Carl Takei, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. Not every agency that requested an armored vehicle received one — inventory is limited — but every request referred to in this story received Pentagon approval. A majority of Americans consistently oppose the police use of military gear and weapons, with a much smaller proportion supporting it. And the single most common way agencies use military gear is on SWAT raids to serve search warrants for drugs. Ultimately, the factor that most determined how many agencies received armored vehicles was how many armored vehicles the Pentagon happened to bring home from war that year, according to a Pentagon spokesperson.

Source: Huffington Post August 02, 2021 17:15 UTC