© Dover Post
Dewey Beach Humvee
A tiny police department in a small Delaware town has been using the newly reinstated 1033 program to amass an arsenal of vehicles, weapons, and equipment and they are keeping it secret.
Last August, the
Trump administration lifted a ban on military surplus hardware being transferred to police departments across the United States. The controversial 1033
program became a source of citizen outrage after images of
police armed with military-grade weaponry, including grenade launchers and armored MRAPs, were beamed into people homes across the country during the battlefield-style police response to the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.
As many Americans noted,
Ferguson, Missouri looked like a war zone, with police kitted out in Marine-issue camouflage and military-grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in armored vehicles - virtually indistinguishable from US soldiers.
Shortly after the American public became widely aware, and largely outraged, over the extreme militarization of their local police forces,
President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) that blocked large-caliber weapons, armored vehicles, grenade launchers and other heavy military hardware from being repurposed from battlefields across the globe to small town USA. This was one of very few notable pro-liberty moves by the Obama admin, however,
thanks to the current administration, it is all gone.
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