When you've got 100,000 machine guns left over after a war, don't try to find a home for them...dispose of them.  When you've got nuclear warheads left over after the Cold War...dispose of them.  Tanks, warships, warplanes...dispose of them.  And then stop buying them!

"The worst part of outfitting our police officers as soldiers has been psychological. Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he'll reasonably think that his job isn't simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger. Instead of protecting and serving, police are searching and destroying.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they're working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy."

Does this look like a department who can't afford bullet proof vests for it's own ?  Here's the pic behind the pay wall.

 To date, the authors report, $4 billion in military equipment have been donated.  The "1033" program's regulations require police to use what they receive within one year--and they are compliant, using such equipment in routine police work, such as low-level drug raids and execution of warrants.  

Despite evidence that children were present -- a minivan in the driveway, children's toys littering the yard, and a Pack `n Play next to the door -- a SWAT officer tossed a "flashbang" grenade into the home. It landed in 19-month-old Bou Bou's crib and exploded, critically wounding the toddler. When his distraught mother tried to reach him, officers screamed at her to sit down and shut up, telling her that her child was fine and had just lost a tooth. In fact, his nose was hanging off his face, his body had been severely burned, and he had a hole in his chest. Rushed to the hospital, Bou Bou had to be put into a medically induced coma.

Only a few days later, though, Justice Kennedy dramatically expanded the government's reach over the individual by deciding to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement officers to force anyone arrested for even the most minor traffic violation to be stripped naked, forced into a delousing chamber, compelled to squat, cough, and lift their genitals under the peering supervision of a jailor. The fundamental values of a liberal democracy, on Justice Kennedy's view, do not require even one iota of reasonable suspicion, before the state can strip its citizens of all dignity, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy.

In the process, the court adopts weak reasoning, even patently deficient arguments, to support the police-state logic. The fact, for instance, that the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was stopped for driving without a license plate, or that "one of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93", is completely irrelevant to the decision whether to impose a requirement of reasonable suspicion before stripping someone arrested for a minor violation. Strip-searching McVeigh or, for that matter, the September 11 terrorist would not have prevented, in any way, those tragedies. Justice Kennedy nevertheless embraces the non-sequitur because it bolstered his police-state logic. In the security realm, "you never know ..." is regarded as a clinching argument.

Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us--regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy -- that was my son, Michael -- can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country -- that's me -- and I still couldn't get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren't going to be able to do anything about it either.