Dude, where's my MRAP? Weapons of War for cops in Virginia

Armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines have become standard gear in the arsenals of Richmond-area police departments.

Across other parts of Virginia, law enforcement agencies in 105 localities — including 10 in central Virginia — have received as military surplus more than 2,800 tactical firearms, vehicles and other instruments of war without cost from the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Just looking at it, I would say it’s a bit frightening,” John W. Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group, said of what he describes as the emerging American police state. “I don’t know what the reason for it is. Crime is at a 40-year low, murder rates are drastically down.

“I live in Charlottesville and the police tell me there’s no crime, but they’re armed to the teeth.

Whitehead also decries the military-style appearance that police forces sometimes display, with officers in combat fatigues, helmets and boots, sometimes aboard armored vehicles more commonly seen in war zones.

Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, says there is virtually no civilian oversight of the sophisticated tactical weapons that local police departments are acquiring, either through regular budget purchases or free surplus from the federal government.

“We think it’s extraordinarily important that police understand that, to the extent that they’re going to become military organizations, that civilian oversight even becomes more important,” she said. “Just as our American military has the oversight of the Defense Department and Congress, so should our local law enforcement agencies that are now local militaries.”

She added, “The community should have a role in what weapons they have, how they are going to police, what they’re going to use those weapons for and how well trained they are.”

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Police point to what they consider to be game-changing shooting incidents over the past 50 years that they say influenced law enforcement tactics and armaments.

They said SWAT units began to proliferate in the late 1960s and early 1970s after the tower shootings at the University of Texas in Austin, where a student and former Marine randomly killed 11 people while perched from the 28th-floor observation deck.

Another defining event occurred in North Hollywood, Calif., in 1997, when two bank robbers clad in body armor engaged Los Angeles police with illegally modified, fully automatic assault rifles with high-capacity drum magazines in the street. Patrol officers were outgunned, carrying only 9 mm or .38-caliber handguns and 12-gauge shotguns.

Eleven police officers and seven civilians were wounded and numerous vehicles and property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the police and robbers, who eventually were killed.

In subsequent years, many departments across the country began acquiring military-style patrol rifles and boosting their firepower.

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The Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the Virginia Coalition of Open Government questioned why state police would not release basic descriptions of their taxpayer-funded firearms stock and equipment.

“Transparency in government is the basis of democratic freedom,” said John W. Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer and president of the Rutherford Institute. “If the American public is paying for it, and we’re supposedly the masters, then the servants should tell us what they have if we need to know.”

State police twice denied Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch seeking complete inventories of the department’s weapons and armored vehicles. The agency provided a partial list that included handguns, shotguns and several vehicles, but denied all the rest, citing a FOIA exemption that allows discretionary release of “specific tactical plans,” which the newspaper did not request.

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In the second denial letter, state police Superintendent W. Steven Flaherty said disclosing the requested information “would pose a potential threat to the safety of our officers and the public” by allowing others to assess the department’s capabilities.

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Repeater said:

Do we have a Standing Army?

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davidmcbeth said:

But you CAN .. you know where to find one ....

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Primus said:

Military grade assault style rifles? Lol ate those the black ones everyone has? Or the cool painted ones?

Whatever happened to not falling for names and terms that antis use to make it seem like our guns are scary and extra killy?

Precision battlefield sniper rifle? You mean a Remington 700 chambered in .308? Scary...

Tactical firearms? Are those the ones with flashlights on it? Or the ones with laser beams?

And my favorite.. "Instruments of war". Really? Is that like a weapon of mass destruction? Do they have tac nukes? (Nukes with flashlights/laser beams)

Or is any weapon used for "war"? Does that include my pocket knife if I carry it into "war"?

Sounds like an anti gun guy wrote the article with all the anti catch phrases he uses....

Here's all anyone needs to know about media perception:

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wimwag said:

Tactical firearm...my P22 has a threaded barrel...check.



Military grade assault rifle...my Mosin was issued by the Soviet Army in 1943...check.



Precision battlefield sniper rifle...I bought a $60 scout scope for my mosin...check.



Instrument of war...mosin comes with bayonet...check.



The bayonet also doubles as a screwdriver, so if I lose the headspace tool I can break down the rifle. It has two uses and is black which makes it tactical.



I'm so operator.

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Primus said:

No lasers? Rookie.

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

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Primus said:

No lasers? Rookie.

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

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wimwag said:

I make up for it by placing the back of the slide directly against the tip of my nose.

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Chesterfield seems to have set the best example for cooperative transparency; that’s been the Editorial Department’s experience, too. By contrast Henrico, Hanover and Richmond exhibited what Bowes calls “strong initial resistance” to providing information asked for under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. They also utterly refused to disclose how many machine guns and sniper rifles they possess.

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The public has a right to know how its tax dollars are being used. Whether an agency obtains its gear free through the Pentagon, or buys it off the shelf, the taxpayers are picking up the tab.

What’s more, law-enforcement agencies act only because the public authorizes them to do so. They have no authority to use force, except that granted to them by the citizens. The fact that they sometimes must use force against individual members of the citizenry does not change the fundamental relationship: Government employees work for the public, and should answer to the public. Period.

That goes double when the citizens are buying the weapons that the police might one day use against them.

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Repeater said:

Pretty good editorial:


Gosh, you mean our public servants have Machine Guns?

I like the closing comment:


No kidding.

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