UPDATE 8/23/14: President Obama has ordered a White House-led review of the strategy of equipping police officers with military-grade equipment, thanks to imagery of the clashes in Ferguson, Missouri, which saw officers leveling assault rifles and using tear gas against protestors. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) explained: "The whole country and every representative and senator have seen the visuals, and at some level, it made all of us uncomfortable." —via NYT

Washington, Iowa, population 7,326, is about to receive a tank meant for the military. It's a military-issued MRAP and they don't really want you calling it a tank. But at 49,000 pounds and 10 feet tall, that's what it looks like.

It's part of a Department of Defense program to repurpose tanks and other military vehicles and equipment that never should have been built to begin with. One-hundred sixty-five of them were donated to American police forces between August and December of last year.

Mine resistant and ambush protected — thus the acronym — they cost $412,000 apiece. And the police are not sure what they'll do with them yet.

"Some people might ask, 'Why do we need something like this?'" Captain Sandy Casey of the Currituck County Sheriff's Office told the Virginia Pilot. "We don't know what could be next. They say domestic terrorism is what local law enforcement will be dealing with."

The program is nothing new. The 1033 Program, the Department of Defense's excess weapons reapportionment initiative, has doled out over $4.5 billion in military gear to law enforcement since 1997.

But now there will be more tanks than ever coming to law enforcement. Congress set aside $436 million on tanks last year, only to be told that the military doesn't need or want them. They were built anyway because their primary contractor, General Dynamics, spent $11 million lobbying Congress the year beforehand.

Now those tanks will be on American streets, some never before used in combat. Grenade launchers are part of the program, too.

"I think some of (the residents) are in fear that we're gonna get these vehicles and we're gonna go house to house and take everybody's guns," says Greg Goodman, the police chief of Washington, Iowa. "We don't believe in that at all."

That's not what they're worried about.

They're worried about an Albuquerque Police Department that shot more people than the NYPD in the last four years, then brought these kinds of vehicles when students went to protest against them.

They're worried about the 30-year-old who was shot and killed by the LA County Sheriff's Department this week while he was trying to save a stabbing victim. They're worried about the stabbing victim they shot, too, in the same incident, while the actual attacker remained safe in the house. They're worried about the lack of consequences, since all three officers on the scene will return to duty next week.

And they're worried about how much worse it would have been if the police had tanks and grenade launchers.

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