Police Departments Taking DHS Tanks and Gear “Are Building a Domestic Army,” Warns Retired Marine Colonel

Reason 24/7ReasonConcord, New Hampshire, officials are still
debating the wisdom and public saleability of taking Department of
Homeland Security money to acquire a Bearcat armored vehicle for
the local police department, as
noted last month
by Brian Doherty. As part of the application
to DHS justifying the need for what has been called, only a bit
hyperbolically, a tank, the police department warned of challenges
it faced in the form of “Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens,
Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire.” Sounding off at a public
hearing on the issue, retired Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino
picked up on that sort of message and cautioned, “We’re building a
domestic army…because the government is afraid of its own
citizens.”

Martino pointed, too, to other standardized equipment supplied
to police departments by DHS and identical to the gear he used in
combat zones, except for the color.

From
Free Keene
:

“We’re building a domestic army” – In this video by Bikerbill, a
Marine Corps Colonel named Peter Martino speaks out against police
militarization at the Concord BEARCAT hearing:

Says Martino, “the last time more than ten terrorists were in
the same place at one time was September 11, and all these vehicles
in the world wouldn’t have prevented it, nor would it have helped
anybody.”

With regard to the DHS funds, he closed with, “my wife always
told my kids, there’s always free cheese in the mousetrap.”

Free Keene notes that this is apparently the same Peter Martino
who was a
whistleblower in a case involving fraud in ArmorGroup
International’s bid
to provide security for the U.S. embassy in
Kabul, Afghanistan.

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