We've got two line items of mini refrigerators. Two of them cost $1K each, and three of them cost $50 each.
Three desks cost $160 each, but two others were $0.
We got a three-quarter of a million dollar mine-resistant vehicle. I guess because all the old coal mines.
Without looking at the list yet, I've seen some stuff in cop cars here which looks excessive to me for a suburban town.
It seems to show "value", which is not necessarily the amount paid by the LEA.
Also it's kind of unhelpful that it only shows the data at county level.
3: Don't forget the 15 sleeping mats at $8.92 per.
I'm extremely amused that scary old Baltimore City appears to be significantly less militarized than a lot of sleepy suburbs.
Surprised that the majority of stuff in my county seems to be non-offensive - clothing, kit bags, tents, that sort of thing. The only offensive weapons are one grenade launcher, 60+ rifles, and a sword and scabbard. (Plus sights and riot shields.)
Somehow I suspect this is not a comprehensive list.
Where do you think soldiers come from?
9: why in God's name did your local police department feel the need for a sword?
That's stakes. Swords are for Highlanders.
12: Probably for ceremonies, mostly funerals.
It just says my county. Could be my city police, or any number of other city police, or the county sheriff's department, or other miscellaneous separate entities like the transit or parks district police departments. Hence my 6.
I'm extremely amused that scary old Baltimore City appears to be significantly less militarized than a lot of sleepy suburbs.
Well, the suburbs have more money.
re: 14
I was thinking more for the post-staking beheading.
That's stakes. Swords are for Highlanders.
And Blade.
None of the counties I've looked at have any major purchases, other than "Truck $25,000".
On the other hand, even four M-16s seems unnecessary for Sullivan County, which consists entirely of farms and has about 4,000 people.
On the other hand, that is probably vastly outnumbered by the number of M-16s belonging to the populace of Sullivan County.
14: wait, there's a sword and a grenade launcher, and you found the sword excessive?
Small counties, good idea. Alpine County has 1,200 people, no incorporated cities, but got 1 grenade launcher, 4 rifles, and 15 "eyepiece assembly, optical instrument" (some kind of sight/scope, I'm guessing).
Sierra County has 3,200 people and one incorporated city. 10 rifles, a bunch of cold-weather clothing, 4 intrenching tools, 10 "infrared equipment, subassembly" (?).
10 "infrared equipment, subassembly"
Maybe IR filters for lights, for use with night vision optics. (Night vision intensifies visible light and near infra red, so you can have torches and cyalumes that show up in night vision but not to the naked eye). Probably not heat-vision, as the military tends to call that thermal imaging (though it's still IR of course).
Hey, they probably got a good deal on those eyepiece assembly, optical instruments. Those aren't cheap to buy on their own, and are clearly necessary for police work.
In this context "necessary" means "would amuse me". Also in many other contexts.
A thirty-thousand dollar laser level?
New York NY county (which appears to include the five boroughs, as Brooklyn's Kings County was not a scroll-down option) had two items total.
My parents' county, Contra Costa in California, had 11 pages with all kinds of things like boots and gauze pads and special windows and yes, a 658,000,000 mine-resistant vehicle and a couple of assault vehicles.
I suspect some sampling error.
That is amusing:
DRYER MAYTAG 1 EA $573.98
DUMBELL 2 Each $0.00 (repeat 15 times)
GLUTE HAM BENCH 2 EA $1,500.00 (??)
GRENADE POUCH,MAINTENANCE OF ORDER AND CROWD CONTROL 30 Unknown $0.00 (at least it was free . . . ?)
I stopped at the L's.
... and a fucking buttload of guns, wow.
26: "Laserplane Leveling System." It's an airplane that levels buildings with lasers, right? Surprisingly cheap.
I think I already said this on someone's feed at the other place.
The prices are high because this is a doddle to pay the arms manufacturers?
27: Queens County looks to have sprung for a "SPECIAL TOOL KIT,ORGANIZATIONAL" in March.
Ours seems pretty reasonable, though I don't know where or why they expect to use modular sleep systems. But flood lights, generators, trailers, I'm not too worried.
1033 gives this stuff free of charge! The dollars are for accounting purposes! Why are you still talking about "deals"?
"Modular sleep system" = sleeping bag?
Ah, Westchester County got in on the action: eight full pages. 10K each for two explosion-disposal robots and 12 data servers, as well as lots and lots of "utility trucks." Maybe New York City loaded up on this stuff right after 9/11 under Giuliani and didn't need anything under the 1033 program.
What on earth is DC doing with 17 cargo planes?
"Modular sleep system" = sleeping bag?
Sleeping bag + goretex bivvy bag + cold weather sleeping bag liner + stuff sack to put it all in.
LA County has close to 3500 rifles and the LAPD has its very own design for the reticule in their Trijicon sights because of not invented here syndrome. Woohoo! If there's ever again two old Asian ladies with a truck needing ventilation, we're up for it.
I wonder if these grenade launchers come with any sort of training.
"Before firing into crowd always remember to make sure they are leftists. After firing it is imperative to shout "Disperse or I will shoot!"
Also, man are police in the UK rationally organized - all services seem to have at least a thousand officers, except for City of London, Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and Warwickshire. By contrast, my county of 1.5 million people has operating in it 14 city police departments (including two cities of 10,000 people), the sheriff, the state highway patrol, two university forces, and police departments for BART, the parks district, the utilities district, and Union Pacific Railroad, for god's sake. Not including any federales.
My county of 1.2 million people has 107 municipalities. They don't all have police departments, but I think a majority of them do.
Plus at least two university police forces, the sheriff, the state highway patrol, the public school district police ...
Just rifles here, and a radio set. Nothing at all for RightWingNutJob County to our south. Flathead got one of those mine resistant vehicles, which makes sense, I suppose, given the border with Canada.
I said "Mom, that coat rack is plaid, with a butterfly collar."
Wow, .45 caliber automatic pistols are cheaper than I thought they'd be.
Going through the listings for the various places I've lived over the years, I came across these entries for Virginia Beach, VA:
D0UBLE STACK OVEN 1 EA $5,470.00
SALID BAR 1 EA $3,422.01
SLICING MACHINE 1 EA $2,500.00
VEG CHOPPER 1 EA $2,500.00
("Get to the chopper!!")
Hey, we just had cops with long guns (as I believe the fetishists insist they be called) on our street. No idea exactly what was going on, but there was one hell of a turnout for what seems to have been one young dude fleeing on foot. At one point 2 cops and a police dog were in our basement because they though the guy might have fled in there. Exciting!
In "annoying MIL" news, her reaction time to the information that there could be a gunfight directly under her feet was about 30 seconds to leave the room, including the annoyed, "I am hurrying" rejoinder. Mind you, she was standing and aware of the basic circumstances at the outset.
At one point 2 cops and a police dog were in our basement because they though the guy might have fled in there. Exciting!
Wow.
but there was one hell of a turnout for what seems to have been one young dude fleeing on foot
Well yeah. Chases are fun and sometimes you get to see some bite action from the dog.
I haven't watched the video, but I keep seeing the "Big Important CEO kicks puppy dog in elevator, then blames the puppy dog" and each time I think "Yeah, well puppies can be really fucking annoying."
I guess manners mean you couldn't run to the basement ahead of her to get a better view.
My local police sure buys a lot of china. The LAPD cafeteria (temporarily shut down) used to serve its food on melamine, but maybe after it reopens they'll host doll tea parties.
My favorite thing I found was that police in New Orleans bought twenty snow camouflage parkas. In New Orleans.
They're probably just fucking with Minnesota.
60: after the 1783 Icelandic volcano eruption the Mississippi froze in New Orleans.
sometimes you get to see some bite action from the dog.
Indeed, subsequent reports are that the chasee was, indeed, bitten before being subdued. I'm very glad that my dog didn't notice all the police dogs running around the neighborhood and decide to bust out and try to play.
Rather more alarmingly, apparently he (the chasee, not my dog) tried to shoot at the cops, but his gun jammed. He was hiding out in the old age/rehab home down the street.
I'm kind of surprised that 62 isn't from Emerson. And 58 is funny.
62 maybe belongs in the Icelandic volcano thread.
Hennepin Cty. got 9 pps. worth of stuff. I have to say, picking up only 1 LITTER, DECONTAMINATION, MASS CASUALTY sounds either strikingly optimistic or significantly ill-planned.
61: Looks like we got 112 pairs of extreme cold weather boots, plus 50 ECW parkas and pants.
One county I checked got a bunch of bayonets. That strikes me as inappropriate for police use.
I went to see if I could find the news report on 54. Instead, I found this gem.
Warning: Page loads with sound and Bell.
Fairfax County, VA's list is short, and remarkably sensible.
68 makes me feel better about my MIL's hoarder tendencies.
67 doesn't make me feel better about anything.
Since nobody ever clicks on links, 70 excepted, I'm going to put the key quote here:
"He has no sewage, no running water. He takes his urine, puts it in a cup and dumps it all over the neighborhood -- same thing with his feces."
It might keep the critters away. I once had a nursery lady tell me it was okay to pee around my garden's exterior, because it keeps the animals away.
Next time ask her about peeing around the exterior of your neighbors' gardens.
No mountain laurel on my property, just for the record.
As several people have noted, there definitely seems to be a tendency for suburban and small-town PDs to get a lot more of the crazy-sounding stuff than major cities. Anchorage seems to have gotten mostly cold-weather gear and rifles, and Albuquerque got lots of optical equipment of various kinds. Farmington, on the other hand, got two helicopters, three mine-resistant vehicles, and something listed as "only complete combat/assault/tactical wheeled vehicles." Several very rural counties in NM with small populations also got mine-resistant vehicles.
Maricopa County, AZ (i.e., Phoenix and its suburbs) has 82 pages of stuff, including two helicopters, two airplanes, and four mine-resistant vehicles.
What do you think the opex on a helicopter/mine-resistant vehicle is? Gotta say if I was the cops and someone offered me a free military vehicle I'd be pretty chary of the maintenance & running costs.
That where they have a sheriff who crossed from "trolling everybody" to "actual evil".
79: Yeah, I mean, it's not actually surprising at all. Still, 82 pages!
So much potential for inappropriate sexual relationships.
78: I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that many of those costs get rolled into the overall municipal budget in many cases. Or that, as line items, they're very rarely questioned.
What do you think the opex on a helicopter/mine-resistant vehicle is?
The helo is really in a different league there on both maintenance and operating. If you already have a city fleet maintenance with repair shops and such handling snowplows, garbage trucks, and fire engines then you likely already have the facilities and mechanics on staff who can handle or get cross trained to repair and maintain an MRAP. But you can't just snag one of your dudes off of the repair bay working on a fire engine and put him to work on a helicopter.
68: Seems like 15 years ago he was homeless. Now he owns a home... but it is deemed unfit for human habitation.
And 35 years ago... he was opposed to the Count Von Count.
65: To my surprise but vague MN pride it turned out that of those nine pages something like seven were just "rifle, 5.56mm" and "rifle, 7.72mm" listed over and over again with a quantity of 1. (A bunch of them were on the same date too, which makes it look like a strange data entry protocol.) Most of the rest was winter gear, first aid stuff, and for some reason*, two armored trucks. That's a lot more temperance than I would have expected from them, really, especially since Tracy MN just made some minor news for having a Humvee (notable only because they could fit the entire police department inside it without anyone having to take the awkward middle seat in the back).
*(My guess: "Dude! Armored trucks!")
84: Thanks. I'd have never gotten the back story.