- cross-posted to:
- texas@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- texas@lemmy.world
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A lot of police departments are just… gifted this shit by the military industrial complex.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization_of_police
They don’t have a need for it, but it looks cool parked at the county fair.
The problem is, once they have it, they reach for reasons to use it.
DOD doesn’t want to pay upkeep and it was designed for roadside bombs in remote mountains not Iranian drones.
Might as well give it to the cops, in case one of their supporters accidentally hits it while trying to bomb a women’s shelter or something.
They’re specifically not to be used on roads because they don’t fit, rollover if sneezed at and destroy our roads but fuck it they’re police right?
What are you talking about, that would fit perfectly parked in the bike lane
I dunno, it might have to “monster truck” its way over all the other motor vehicles already parked in the bike lane.
I’m confused about the design. If it’s designed for mountain areas but is top heavy and rolls easy, isn’t that a major design floor for an area where the terrain is likely to be steep from left to right in parts?
Maybe my idea of terrain in mountainous areas is wrong.
It’s designed to stay on roads.
Those roads are natural choke points where bombs are often hidden on the ground, which results in a high and heavy design.Correct, they move slow but they are quite explosion survivable past the original design.
Tall but narrower than other options while having survivability in case of getting IED’d. I know HMMWVs are actually big but the MRAPs didn’t all have a much larger footprint.
Fun fact though, they had to add a gunners harness because the gunners were more likely to die in a roll over. Armored plates all up over your back but you get crushed because the Specialist driving hasn’t even driven anything bigger than his Civic and doesn’t have enough hours dealing with actual Afghan roads.
You have correctly identified one of many reasons the military hated these.
Hey, you can easily get them up to 50mph on an airfield runway and feel the death rattle telling you to slow down. It’s basically all operator error.
Is it “gifted” to them, or are they paying taxpayer dollars to purchase these war machines? When they’re turning our local communities into war zones, some of us might even question whether we should reduce their funding significantly if this is what they’re squandering our money on.
Watch them cower inside of this vehicle, idling in the parking lot as a school shooter empties one magazine after another.
They pay little to nothing to get them, then they pay everything to keep, maintain, and store it. As someone else noted, looks like it’s already leaking oil.
They pay very little for it. Essentially shipping.
IUD jokes aside, I think the way the cops are grinning is enough to say they don’t need it and they view it as a toy.
I mean, I’d be pretty excited to get to drive one.
I feel like these should be used as a sort of honey pot. If your police department buys one of these, fire everyone and start over from scratch.
I think these are handed down for cheap/free by the military. Not that a police department needs these types of vehicles.
Precisely this. If the military donates it, they can get budget to get a new one.
DoD hardware for police usually comes with contracts that state they have to be maintained in working order, because the DoD can just take them back if there’s a military need.
Effectively, it’s the PD paying to warehouse and maintain DoD equipment for them, as long as the DoD doesn’t mind the stuff getting used once in a while.
The military will never want these back. In fact most of the stuff they give police is extremely obsolete from a military perspective.
Honestly this seems kinda sensible.
It’s a cover. The military is never asking for this equipment back unless they’re conscripting the cops to the front line in the Rockies because of the surprise North Korean invasion.
Slightly too big to fit through a school hallway. Just big enough to wait outside in the parking lot. We’ll take it - TX police
Illegally parked, no less
This is a little town on the north outskirts of the Dallas metro area with a population of about 38,000. The reasons they need it are innumerable. /s
In case the Mean Green were to turn liberal and rise up!
IUD?
Intra-Uterine Device??
How much of a threat is female birth control to these people??
insert joke about police officers and domestic violence here
Militarization of police.
Can’t use military on U.S. soil against its citizens? Turn police into the military to be used against its citizens.
Also: does the US have less troops on the ground around the world than they usually do? Gotta find a new market for the military industrial complex.
Don’t worry… terrorism will never end and wars will always find a way to creep back into our lives.
POV your local police department turns into an occupying military force. This is beyond dystopian. 2024 ❌ 1984 ✅
Police don’t but they often want a vehicle for SWAT related reasons, but SWAT trucks costs hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile MRAPs are “free”.
Prosper, Texas is home to 40,000 people. In 2010 their population was under 10k. They have quadrupled in size and are near the DFW area, so it’s not really a surprise they took the 1033 offer for an MRAP. That said most of these decom’d heaps of shit are loathesomely expensive. “High Cost of Free MRAPs” by Strongtowns. Most MRAPs being given out are first and second gen versions. And for those first gens, they got sent to the front lines of the GWOT and got beat to shit while newer ones were tested and approved. These old models they’re “giving out for free” have tire drum parts never used on later versions, transmissions like that of an F650 with half the reliability, and are ticking time bombs of use. Most cities often estimate maintenance costs at $5k per year, until something actually breaks and they have to get a second MRAP to cannibalize to fix the first. (Hint - that’s why you often see them picked up in pairs or more)
That’s before the optics. Petaluma, California has one and the police chief has even said “yeah it kinda has some bad optics sending police around in a former war machine”.
If your city is wanting to pick one up, it’s because someone who has zero experience with them really likes the idea of a big scary diesel monster rolling up on drug houses, and hasn’t actually considered that if they can’t pony up thousands of tax dollars every 6 months to keep the moneymonster fed, the only place it’s gonna drive is into a storage shed.
Edit: I should add that these vehicles are incredibly versatile and aren’t necessarily a bad thing for municipalities. With their ride height, sheer bulk, and high torque engines, Fire and rescue could probably make great use them in several cities. They make fantastic road clearing vehicles in the event of large accidents needing to move to the side of the road, or pushing debris out of the way. Additionally in flood prone areas they make very good rescue vehicles due to their ride height and “crew space” inside. They DO have value outside of terrorizing civilian populations, just that that’s all PDs will use them for.
“Storage shed, you say” - Local Sheriff
Thank you for the extra information.
Intra-uterine devices?
It’s Texas. They’re terrified of the demon birth control.
Lol yeah, i like how no one else realizes it’s supposed to be IED (Improvised Explosive Device)
They meant what they said. It’s Texas- they seem far more afraid of women’s issues than explosives.
You know, i hadn’t considered that, but that makes a lot of sense actually!
Patrick tends to later his wry social commentary - that is 100% on purpose.
Intra-uterine devices?
It’s Texas, you never know when someone might be in danger of wanting to have some level of control over their own body.
Yes that’s part of it. It’s also a play on IED. Improvised explosive device aka a bomb.
I think it’s a typo friend
It’s not
They will drive this beast right up your vagina.
That was the joke, yes
Looks like it already has an oil leak
It’s just so damn full of fossil fuel, it’s bursting at the seams.
It’s military. If it wasn’t leaking oil, it wouldn’t work.
You know that thing has gotta be a hangar queen that measures efficiency in gallons per mile. I guess the towncs educators are gonna have to tighten their belts some more.
Let’s say you’re a cop and you get a call: there’s a hispanic gay crossdresser armed with a .50BMG sniper rifle with explosive rounds reported on the roof of the KwikeeMart, and they’re threatening to shoot the Walmart across the street unless they’re called by their proper pronouns, black lives/matter. This situation calls for an immediate response with at least a MRAP, and that’s only because they don’t have the funding for an airstrike from an A-10.
Yeah I mean they would need an MRAP to keep them safe while they wait for the shooter to finish up or run out of ammo. We’ve got to think of the officers and their safety.
Fun fact. That MRAP does not protect against .50 cal rounds.
Sounds like they are in desperate need of an M1A2 Abrams then
All the better reason for the government to fund the airstrike option.
F-35’s coming to a local police department near you!
[…] only because they
don’t have theran out of funding for an airstrike from an A-10.FTFY
Haven’t seized enough cash to fund an airstrike from an A-10.
Operating an A-10, without firing its nose gun, runs about 19k-25k and hour. A full load of rounds is 1200. They fire at a rate of 3900 rounds per minute. The rounds, depending on the exact type, cost between 90 and 175$ per round. This also doesn’t include the cost of maintaining the gun which incurs a lot of maintenance because of all the heat, and forces, involved.
For real? Shooting the entire load of ammo is done in like 20 seconds? SO all those brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr memes should be more like brrr?
correct. the reality is that is fires in short bursts. the rounds are huge and include, DU and tungsten cores, incendiary loads, high explosives, and others. a one second burst of fire from the A-10’s GAU 8 Avenger Gatling gun is enough to destroy anything the rounds can penetrate.
When a pirate is flying it, it goes Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
In that case, I’d like to have one A10 airstrike of loan forfait please.
Pretty please?
I mean, we can’t exactly shoot loan forfaiting. We can shoot the financial industry executives though.
…yet
Didn’t police actually bomb parts of a town? But that might be from my limited knowledge about history
Yeah, the Phillie cops bombed an entire city block into rubble when they went after the MOVE group of fanatics. Coincidentally it was in a black neighborhood. What were the chances of that, eh?
Maybe not exactly what you had in mind, but the Battle of Blair Mountain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain ) is an excellent example of the dynamic between police, capital class, and labor.
Edit: fixing my stupid link; thanks for the heads-up!
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
I totally missed that. I completely agree and apologize for the oversight.
All good, it’s a really common mistake.
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
Tulsa, I believe they bombed the black communities while attempting an ethic genocide.
You’re a bit mixed up there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
There was a thriving black community in the Greenwood district. The whites resented “thriving” and “black” being in the same place. Read on and draw your own conclusions.
Prosper, Texas.
Population: 37,746
Crime rate per 1000 residents: 9.54
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/prosper
Nearby Dallas’ crime rate? 46.06 per 1000 residents.
Is it me or is this not exactly justified?
Not even in Dallas. But hey, at least some small town got to employ people to build this tank, and not call it socialism.
The “tank” was gonna be built either way. These items are purchased through a program that allows the military to sell off surplus equipment to law enforcement. So, basically, it’s a way of subsidizing the v already insane US military budget with money drawn from municipal and state taxes, while getting military hardware into the hands of cops.
It’s even stupider than that.
It’s either military surplus or reconditioned units that are offered for resale to stateside PD’s to “pacify” civilian unrest.
It depends through which glasses you look.
For them every black person, LGBTQ person and woman who wants to own their own body by having an abortion is a criminal. And according to right wing extremist propaganda the leftists are extremely dangerous, so I guess that would justify the purchase of military equipment.
Do you have any idea how deadly woke people are? Every time someone shouts “black lives matter” a white Karen’s feelings are hurt. The only way to combat this is assault rifles and infantry vehicles.
I get the sentiment but this kind of hyperbole helps nobody
Those pigs aren’t helping anyone either. I’m just being sarcastic because that’s basically the only response I can think of when reading things like this. It’s a fucking disgrace. It’s like people want to live in a dystopian shit show so bad, they don’t know how fast to dig their own grave. It’s fucking embarrassing. Yeah, awesome, let’s go for extremism and get a militarized police state, because that never went wrong. Extremism always solves all our fucking problems.
I suggest anyone interested in the history of police militarization pick up Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop. There are so many tiny little towns with fully kitted out SWAT teams. Cops are taught to view themselves as soldiers in hostile territory. They go to trainings where they’re taught bullshit science to encourage them to kill.
They are soldiers in hostile territory. They’re occupying indigenous land. Killing a cop isn’t murder, it’s warfare according to the proper rules of engagement.
Crime rate just means people who are arrested. They can increase or decrease it if they want to.
Do you think cops who are buying that sort of shit are reluctant to arrest people?
Common for agencies to have internal ticket and arrest quotas for their officers and to promote based on number of arrests by officer.
Consequentially, a change in the quota can result in a “crime wave” as the number of arrests rise. It is not uncommon for surges in arrests to occur during campaign season, as police departments lobby for bigger budgets and more manpower.
Very normal for suburbs (particularly white suburbs adjacent to black urban neighborhoods) to act like they’re living in a war zone, because they saw a guy in a durag smoking a scary cigarette outside of the gym.
I recently lived in Denton and frequently traveled to Prosper for various reasons.
It’s a little rich person town in the middle of nowhere. They definitely don’t need this.
“Yippy Dippy Doooo!!! We can hide in here as the kids get killed in Uvalde!!!” - Texas Cops
Citizens: votes them all back in. Excellent work!
I think I get where you’re going with this, but law enforcement isn’t hired by the public, except maybe the Sheriff, depending on where you are…
