When I talk about military-issue tanks, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers rolling down and hovering over Main Street en route to a drug raid, a few radio hosts have suggested that I might be exaggerating.

Nope. Here’s the story that goes with the picture above:

The Memphis suburb of Germantown doesn’t have much violent crime and has never had a riot. What it does have is a brand new, $184,000, armored personnel carrier.

The vehicle, called BearCat, was bought with a Homeland Security grant.

Germantown prides itself as one of the safest cities in the nation. SWAT team commander Inspector Rodney Bright says the vehicle will be available to surrounding agencies if they need backup and it puts Germantown in the forefront of preparedness.

Note the absurdity, here. We’re paying to stock domestic police department with all of this military-grade equipment . . . which they in turn then use on us.

The picture above certainly isn’t any image I’d associate with a free society.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 10:36 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.