Editorial: Petaluma doesn’t need military-grade equipment

It looked like a scene out of a Michael Bay movie as the Petaluma Police Department’s massive armored rescue vehicle traversed the floodwaters that pooled on Petaluma Boulevard North in January, where some residents were trapped in their homes and vehicles.

And like any good Hollywood story, the people were saved.

It was one of the few times that the military vehicles local police received from the U.S. Department of Defense came out of storage. Most of the time, the vehicles, which includes a Mine Resistant Armored Personnel Carrier, sit quietly unused, waiting for the worst to happen.

The federal government has been funneling weapons of war from the battlefield to small-town America since 1990 using a program first proposed in the National Defense Authorization Act to “fight the wars at home,” like those on drugs and gangs. Law enforcement agencies choose to participate, and as of June 2020, more than 8,200 departments in 49 states have signed up and received $7.6 billion worth of “free” ammunition, weapons and vehicles.

Of course, nothing is ever truly free.

According to the Defense Logistics Agency website, local agencies must pay for the cost to transport and maintain all equipment, which they receive “as is.” Petaluma police estimated that it costs around $5,000 a year to maintain its military vehicles. Should they decide they don’t want it anymore, they must pay the cost to return the equipment.

That’s to say nothing of the cost on the community. From the Occupy Wall Street protests, to the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, to the Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrations, military-grade equipment has been used to intimidate and harm protesters.

“Take the protests of June 2020, which began in response to the police murder of George Floyd, and sought to address systemic racism and violence in policing,” the American Civil Liberties Union reported in 2021. “During those protests in Austin, Texas, police critically injured a 20-year-old Black man protesting using ‘less-lethal’ weapons. At the time, they had in their possession five ‘less-lethal’ firing devices transferred (from the military).“

After years of free-flowing equipment from war zones to residential areas, the State of California in 2021 finally got around to tracking their deployment. Assembly Bill 481 requires all cities to chronicle how, when and why it uses this equipment.

Between August 2018 and November 2021, Petaluma’s military vehicles were used 16 times, largely is response to armed suspects. In its 2022 presentation on the program, a requirement of AB 481, local police included details about the rise in mass shootings and photos of the recently murdered children and teachers from Uvalde, Texas.

First responders tend to be a bit more hyper-vigilant than the rest of us. Whether police, firefighters or paramedics, they have seen the worst and are trained to prepare for anything. Police have consistently argued the equipment is needed “just in case.”

But in this case, these weapons of war feel like having a loaded AR-15 in every room of the house — sure, we’ve got plenty of “protection,” but is it worth the potential for harm if somehow this equipment is misused?

“Our preference would be to have one of the commercially made vehicles for law enforcement,” Deputy Chief Brian Miller told the Argus-Courier.

We agree.