Does Yosemite Really Need $435,000 of Military Equipment?

Assault rifles, knives, tactical vests, night vision goggles, infrared-monitoring devices. It sounds like the gear for a company deployed to a Middle Eastern war zone, right? Wrong. This bevy of aggressive military equipment belongs to the National Park Service, according to new information released in November. It’s enough to make one think some villainous entity plans a full-scale invasion of our park system. The NPS quietly started acquiring high-end, military-grade weaponry from the U.S. Department of Defense 25 years ago. The initiative was part of the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which has distributed approximately $5 billion in military equipment to law enforcement agencies across the country since 1990. The initial goal was to bolster the police’s fight against drugs, but it was expanded in 1997 to let all agencies acquire military-grade equipment for “bona fide law enforcement purposes.” The program's come under fire recently as police violence has spurred protests across the nation. The images from Ferguson showed a law enforcement force that looked more like a military unit in hostile foreign territory than local police. In response, President Barack Obama released a report in December proposing to limit a law enforcement agency’s ability to get military equipment, but he stopped short of advocating to end the 1033 program. While the general outline of the weapons giveaway initiative has been widely reported, it wasn’t until late November that the Pentagon released details on the 1033 program following intense pressure from the media and civil liberties organizations. According to data from The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news outlet, the National Park Service has acquired roughly 4,100 pieces of equipment worth about $6 million since the program’s inception...more