Do police need armored trucks? Law enforcement near Charlotte get military equipment
Concord, a suburban community off Interstate 85, has 188 law enforcement officers who serve the city’s 90,000 residents.
It might seem an unlikely place for police to have two heavily armored vehicles that were previously used to protect U.S. soldiers from roadside bombs in the Middle East.
But Concord Police Chief Gary J. Gacek defends his department’s Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, valued at upwards of $500,000 each.
“I’d rather have the armored capability and not need it, than to need it and not have it,” he said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.
At least 15 law enforcement agencies near Charlotte have received more than $6.5 million in surplus military equipment — including MRAPs — from the U.S. Department of Defense’s 1033 program, according to an analysis of federal data by McClatchy News and The Charlotte Observer.
The militarization of police has been the source of renewed criticism in the weeks following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in the custody of Minneapolis police after an officer kneeled on his neck for about 8 minutes. Four officers have since been fired and criminally charged.
Smaller law enforcement agencies, which typically receive military gear through the 1033 program, point to MRAPs as a needed tool for rescue missions and SWAT operations. But critics say that kind of over-preparedness is how officers’ interactions with the community can turn violent — and, in some cases, deadly.
How it works
The 1033 program gives excess military gear a second life by permitting local departments to use it for law enforcement purposes. According to The Marshall Project and recent data, that equipment encompasses anything from trombones to telescopes.
About 92% of gear transferred to local law enforcement during the 2019 fiscal year consisted of “general” items, such as office equipment, sleeping bags and computers, the Defense Logistics Agency said in a news release June 10.
The remaining gear — classified as “controlled” equipment that’s tracked by the Defense Department in public databases — includes night vision goggles, small arms and tactical vehicles.
“When agencies no longer have a use for these items, they are returned to the Defense Department for disposal or transfer to another law enforcement agency,” the Defense Logistics Agency said.
In North Carolina, small arms and tactical vehicles mostly involve rifles, shotguns and MRAPs.
Smaller agencies surrounding Charlotte have benefited from the 1033 program since at least 1993, according to the Defense Department’s most recent quarterly report.
They include sheriff’s offices in Catawba, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Stanly and Union counties, as well as police departments in Belmont, China Grove, Concord, Davidson, Gastonia, Kannapolis, Lincolnton, Mooresville and Mount Holly.
Of the 15 departments that received equipment over the life of the program, six haven’t gotten anything in more than a decade.
More than 1,000 MRAPs have been transferred from the U.S. Department of Defense to local law enforcement agencies since 2013, McClatchy News reported. At least eight were given to departments near Charlotte in the last four years, data show.
The Concord Police Department and the Union County Sheriff’s Office have received the highest value of military equipment through the program at $1.5 million and $1 million, respectively, largely due to their possession of one or more MRAPs.
Trump reinstated program
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office are not among the program’s recent recipients. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t at one time participate in the program.
The 1033 program came into the national spotlight in 2014 when police used military-style tanks to quell civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after an 18-year-old Black man was fatally shot by a white officer.
President Barack Obama stopped the transfer of some weapons under the program in response, but Donald Trump reinstated it in 2017 following his presidential win.
After Trump’s decision, CMPD spokesman Rob Tufano told reporters the department received military surplus equipment through the 1033 program since the 1990s but had since returned it, WFAE reported.
“We don’t use, nor are we requesting any of that equipment,” Tufano said, according to the radio station. “So it’s inconsequential here as far as this organization goes.”
Casey Delehanty, a professor at Gardner Webb University who has studied the militarization of police, said CMPD’s noted absence from the current 1033 program data is due in part to the department having “the budget to buy that stuff outright.”
“For the most part 1033 stuff goes to smaller and more rural agencies,” he said.
CMPD was recently criticized for using tear gas — a chemical weapon banned in warfare — on protesters in June.
Tear gas was included in the city’s budget until Charlotte City Council members voted June 8 to remove that funding.
The Mecklenburg sheriff’s office has since said its deputies are also not allowed to deploy tear gas during protests or other law enforcement encounters.
The case for MRAPs
The current value of Concord’s military equipment stems almost entirely from its two MRAPs — the first of which was worth an estimated $865,000 when it arrived in 2016, defense department data show.
Gacek said the Concord Police Department acquired its first MRAP “at no cost to local taxpayers” to replace a 1976 light-armored vehicle.
According to the Defense Logistics Agency, local law enforcement doesn’t pay for the equipment they receive from the 1033 program. They do, however, fund its transport and all maintenance costs thereafter.
Gacek said he used asset forfeiture funds — such as money seized during drug investigations that’s returned to police after the case goes to court — to get the MRAP to Concord and outfit it as a rescue vehicle. The MRAP has since been “marked with graphics indicating as much,” he said.
Gacek said a second MRAP delivered to Concord in August 2019 valued at $575,000 is “much smaller” and used as a rapid response vehicle.
Law enforcement agencies are required to receive permission from their local governing bodies under the terms of the 1033 program before receiving an armored vehicle, Gacek added.
”We provided such proof because our city council approved of the acquisition,” he said. “We did not acquire these vehicles unilaterally.”
Upkeep on both vehicles, including preventative maintenance and oil changes, is covered by the police department’s taxpayer-supported vehicle maintenance fund, he said.
“That’s no different than the (1976 light-armored vehicle), except our MRAP costs are less expensive because the MRAP is much newer and in better condition,” he added.
The two vehicles have been used for training, “high risk search warrants” and at least one SWAT call, Gacek said.
He also noted that police in Concord, home to Charlotte Motor Speedway, provides security for NASCAR, the National Hot Rod Association and the Carolina Rebellion music festival, which “attracts tens of thousands of people.”
“These special events are a potential target for a terrorist attack or an active shooter attack,” he said. “In my opinion, I’d be negligent in my duties if I did not take advantage of the 1033 program to obtain this armored capability for my community.”
Gastonia and Kannapolis police departments also have one MRAP each, as do sheriff’s offices in Iredell, Lincoln, Stanly, and Union counties.
Stanly County Sheriff Jeff Crisco said the MRAP, valued at $658,000 when the agency received it in 2016, can be used for navigating rough terrain — such as driving in the woods or high waters. It’s also occasionally used for SWAT-team purposes.
Crisco has been sheriff for 18 months. In that time, he said, the MRAP has been used once to help a neighboring county respond to a “barricaded subject who had fired on law enforcement.”
“(The MRAP) is something typically that is not used because it is so big and bulky,” he said. “They are used for worst-case scenarios.”
Crisco also noted that each MRAP has to be repainted to “get away from the military look” under the terms of the Defense Department contract — which also requires agencies to deploy their equipment at least once in the year after they receive it, according to Delehanty.
Stanly County’s MRAP is painted gray, Crisco said.
The sheriff’s office also received a number of fully automatic rifles from the 1033 program, but Crisco said they were sent back because “there’s no need for a fully automated weapon in law enforcement.”
“It’s not that we are trying to become the military,” he said. “We just try to be prepared with training and equipment for any type of situation that is thrown at us. You train for worst-case scenarios — that way you’re prepared to handle anything.”
SWAT team raids
Delehanty said he understands an argument for preparedness — but it’s not without drawbacks.
“Most of us, if our job was to rush toward the danger, would want to be over-prepared to face it,” he said. “The problem is, we have pretty ample evidence that over-preparation leads to over-deployment. Once you over-prepare those police departments they tend to use that power in ways that are unnecessary and dangerous — to both law enforcement and civilians.”
He points to how MRAPs are commonly used during SWAT team raids as an example.
“The practicable usability of them is pretty negligible,” Delehanty said. “The best argument you can make for it is, ‘We need something to stand behind during search raids.’”
Delehanty said between 80% and 90% of those raids are for nonviolent search warrants — not “people barricaded in a house that need that level of force.”
“These are the exact same kind of raids that killed Breonna Taylor,” he said.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment in March by police officers executing a search warrant.
Her family has since called it a “botched raid,” according to The Cut.
Caveats to government data
The 1033 program data released by the federal government is not without pitfalls.
KPCC, a local public radio station in Los Angeles, compiled a guide to understanding it after the government released its first major data dump in 2014.
According to that guide, the quarterly reports are not a complete historical record so much as “a snapshot of controlled items still in the possession of law enforcement agencies over the life of the program.”
The data doesn’t indicate whether an agency has received more equipment over time because it only shows when each agency’s current gear arrived there, KPCC reported.
“If a law enforcement agency returns, transfers or discards an item it simply no longer appears in data for that agency,” the guide states.
The gear that an agency receives can also arrive in varying states — fully functional or better used for scrap parts — and a lot of the record keeping depends on how particular law enforcement agencies and individual states report their equipment.
Delehanty, the Gardner Webb University professor, said the way gear is named in the 1033 program can also be “misleading.”
“The term for some equipment matches its use by the (Defense Department) and not necessarily by police,” he said.
For example, military grenade launchers are canister launchers typically used by police to release tear gas, Delehanty said, and bayonets are “just big knives” that “are useful in the way that big knives are useful.”
Charlotte Observer investigations reporter Gavin Off contributed to reporting.
