Why???

MRAPs And Bayonets: What We Know About The Pentagon's 1033 Program

by Arezou Rezvani, Jessica Pupovac, David Eads and Tyler Fisher

Amid widespread criticism of the deployment of military-grade weapons and vehicles by police officers in Ferguson, Mo., President Obama recently ordered a review of federal efforts supplying equipment to local law enforcement agencies across the country.

So, we decided to take a look at what the president might find.

NPR obtained data from the Pentagon on every military item sent to local, state and federal agencies through the Pentagon's Law Enforcement Support Office — known as the 1033 program — from 2006 through April 23, 2014. The Department of Defense does not publicly report which agencies receive each piece of equipment, but they have identified the counties that the items were shipped to, a description of each, and the amount the Pentagon initially paid for them.

We took the raw data, analyzed it and have organized it to make it more accessible. We are making that data set available to the public today.

Here's what we found:
1. Gear: MRAPs, Bayonets And Grenade Launchers

The 1033 program is the key source of the most visible, big-ticket, military item being sent to local law enforcement: mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs. Designed to withstand bullets, grenades and roadside bombs on the front lines of war, more than 600 of them have been sent to local law enforcement agencies in almost every state in the U.S., mostly within the past year. Los Angeles County, for example, has nine of these vehicles, six of which were obtained just this past March.

But the program is a conduit for much more than just MRAPs. Since 2006, through the 1033 program, the Pentagon has also distributed:

79,288 assault rifles
205 grenade launchers
11,959 bayonets
3,972 combat knives
$124 million worth of night-vision equipment, including night-vision sniper scopes
479 bomb detonator robots
50 airplanes, including 27 cargo transport airplanes
422 helicopters
More than $3.6 million worth of camouflage gear and other "deception equipment"

2. More Than Just Combat Gear

It turns out that weapons are a relatively small part of the 1033 program.

Each item in the database has a National Stock Number (NSN), which NPR used to determine the general category of each item and gain a broader understanding of what types of equipment have been made available through the 1033 program. The list includes building materials, musical instruments and even toiletries. (We've added those categories to the data we're publishing today.)

Read the rest here:
http://www.npr.org/2014/09/02/342494225/mraps-and-bayonets-what-we-know-about-the-pentagons-1033-program