Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight
My understanding is that state departments of public safety typically own a number of armored personnel carriers and various weapons systems not typically utilized by local police departments..
My only point, essentially, is that quite a bit of hardware has been purchased by police departments of smaller towns and suburbs, some of which have fairly low historical crime rates.
Although cities may get some surplus stuff cheaply, I doubt that most of it's likely to be inexpensive to maintain and operate year after year.
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Most is "loaned" on a "subject to recall" basis with a prohibition against selling or otherwise transferring from the agency .... several governmental agencies participate in the "lending" program ... when post-911 activities ramped up AR-15s were "pulled back" for instance .... NASA has robotics "on the shelf" as "experimental prototypes" that are "loaned out" to special teams ..... and there are multi-agency task forces .. who share ... and spread the "upkeep" costs among the agencies involved by "allowing" their partners to "keep" the equipment ... since 911 there has been an effort to "share" more among smaller agencies and to participate in collective efforts ... even train together and meet regularly.
The bottom line is .. they have to give it back if requested .. and some are just bought:
