The Watch Charting the growth of MRAPs and the 1033 program

Brent Skorup and Andrea Castillo at the free-market think tank the Mercatus Center have put together a couple of graphs to illustrate the rise of the 1033 program, the law that instructs the Pentagon to make surplus military gear available to police departments across the country. The first graph looks at the growth of the program in general:

Note that the graphs were made from data compiled from NPR through the end of August.
The second graph looks at the increase in giveaways of mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPs, which we’ve also covered here at The Watch.

I should admit that I haven’t done much research on this, but I’m guessing that a graph of the number of land-mine incidents in the places those vehicles have ended up would look like something pretty close to this:

Radley Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces."

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/12/16/charting-the-growth-of-mraps-and-the-1033-program/