Small-Town Cops Get Armored Vehicle. ‘It’s definitely a big icebreaker with the kids.’

Watertown, Connecticut, a
city
of 22,000 people with crime rates that seem to be enviably
below the national average, now has itself a slightly used
Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle. Nearby Waterbury
has one, too. All they had to pay for the military surplus hardware
was a few grand for shipping and handling (new, the vehicles run
$733,000)—and maintenance from here on out. And now they have
themselves some mobile armor designed to survive insurgents armed
with small arms and explosives.

“It’s a great opportunity for the public to learn about the
police and what we do,” says Watertown Police Sgt. Curt Molnar.
“It’s definitely a big icebreaker with the kids.”

And brick-breaker, and timber-breaker, and cinder-block
breaker…

Writes Bill Bittar at
Stars and Stripes:

WATERTOWN, Conn. — When Waterbury’s Emergency Response Team set
out to arrest two suspects in a home-invasion case early this
month, they went in force: Two heavily armored trucks led a convoy
of officers to nab the suspects at a house on Laurel Street.

The mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles used in the raid
were acquired for free by Watertown and Waterbury, which are among
11 Connecticut police departments to own such gear.

Watertown Police Sgt. Curt Molnar said his department shares its
MRAP as a regional vehicle with Waterbury, Naugatuck Valley
Community College, Wolcott and Middlebury.

“You hope not to use it much, because it could mean there’s a
shooter or a serious call,” Molnar said.

Just a few weeks ago, the same publication
pointed out, “MRAP armored troop carriers, night-vision rifle
scopes, camouflage fatigues, Humvees and dozens of M16 automatic
rifles are just some of the tools that have found their way to
Michiana police, courtesy of the federal government.”

Reason has covered the ongoing militarization of
policing for years, well before it hit the national radar as a
serious concern (see our video, below). The American Civil
Liberties Union recently reported on the phenomenon,
cautioning:

Across the country, heavily armed Special Weapons and Tactics
(SWAT) teams are forcing their way into people’s homes in the
middle of the night, often deploying explosive devices such as
flashbang grenades to temporarily blind and deafen residents,
simply to serve a search warrant on the suspicion that someone may
be in possession of a small amount of drugs.

Even the federal government’s own Justice Department is
concerned. Karl Bickel, a senior analyst in the DOJ’s Community
Oriented Policing Services Office,
wrote this past December:

Police chiefs and sheriffs may want to ask themselves—if after
hiring officers in the spirit of adventure, who have been exposed
to action oriented police dramas since their youth, and sending
them to an academy patterned after a military boot camp, then
dressing them in black battle dress uniforms and turning them loose
in a subculture steeped in an “us versus them” outlook toward those
they serve and protect, while prosecuting the war on crime, war on
drugs, and now a war on terrorism—is there any realistic hope of
institutionalizing community policing as an operational
philosophy?

Of course, much of the impetus for small-town police departments
with military vehicles, weapons and tactics comes from the feds
themselves. That free MRAP in Watertown comes courtesy of the

Defense Logistics Agency’s 1033 program, which supplies
law-enforcement agencies with military surplus. “Preference is
given to counter-drug and counter-terrorism requests.”

The
program’s current catalog (get your shopping done early!) lists
all sorts of goodies, including tactical vehicles and assault
rifles. It’s a bargain many police departments can’t resist.

And it’s such an icebreaker with the kids.