Much of the military equipment we’ve seen over the past few days in coverage of the Ferguson, Missouri riots was provided to law enforcement by the 1033 program, a Defense Department initiative that transfers excess equipment to state and local law enforcement.
The 1033 program first came onto MuckRock’s radar last fall, when MuckRock user Robert Ritchie requested documents regarding equipment obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency by the Wisconsin State Police and the Madison Police Department – the latter received a mix of 5.56 mm rifles, snow trousers and a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected [MRAP] vehicle, as well as a “Robot, Explosive EOD.”
Our curiosity piqued, we figured we would go straight to the source and ask the Defense Logistics Agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office, which oversees the 1033 program, for a list of all participating agencies as well for its database of all dispensed equipment.
After some negotiation with DLA, in December we obtained the full roster of participating law enforcement agencies, as well as a spreadsheet with two years of equipment transfers down to the state level.
Participating agencies
The data below is a sample of the list (just one state, Missouri) as released by the Defense Logistics Agency, Disposition Services in December. It has not been cleaned in any way, but is just one state because of how large the full list is. As of December, there were 7,032 state and local law enforcement agencies enrolled in the 1033 program. Here are the Missouri agencies:
The complete roster of participating agencies as of December 9, 2013 can be downloaded here, and explored online in full here.
Equipment transfers
Between September 2011 and September 2013, the DLA recorded 105,879 equipment transfers to the agencies in that database. Data for all 1033 program equipment transfers from September 2011 through September 2013 down to the state level can be downloaded here.
Here is the Missouri data:
Again, the equipment transfer data does not include the specific agency that received a particular equipment transfer, but does indicate the item name, quantity, cost and national stock number, as well as the date and state for each statement. Note that the spreadsheet sent by DLA includes two tabs — “CURRENT RECORDS” and “ARCHIVED RECORDS.” The embedded spreadsheet above includes only data from “CURRENT RECORDS” to give a sense for the scope and available fields.
MuckRock is continuing to press the Defense Department to release 1033 equipment transfer data down to the agency level. In light of the events in Ferguson, we’ve submitted an expedited FOIA request for 1033 program data back to 2000 that includes the agency that received each equipment transfer.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
