From the Pentagon to the Police: The 1033 Project

As we saw in Ferguson, and most recently in Dallas and Baton Rouge, every day American police look less like a neighborhood watch and more like a paramilitary force. Here's how and why that happened.

For over a year, Shawn Musgrave tracked military transfers from the Pentagon to police via the “1033 Program.” Here’s the final report, produced in collaboration with The Marshall Project.

Image via Wikipedia Commons and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

15 Articles

Police in Newnan, Georgia had received close to a million dollars in military equipment from the Pentagon

by JPat Brown

April 23, 2018

This weekend, images of a heavily-armed law enforcement presence at a white supremacist rally and counter-protest in Newnan, Georgia again brought the issue of growing police militarization to the forefront. A review of records originally released as part of Shawn Musgrave’s project to track the Pentagon’s transfers of military equipment to local police departments through the infamous 1033 program show that not only did the NPD receive close to a million dollars in gear from the program but also non-lethal ordinance specifically intended for use as crowd control.

The strangest military gear on campus police’s back to school shopping list

by Daniel Welch

September 09, 2016

Through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, police departments are eligible to receive secondhand supplies once used by the U.S. military. Among the participating agencies are those hired by public educational institutions – state colleges, universities, and K-12 school districts. Some of these items are pretty standard, some are frightening to think about, and some are pretty difficult to make sense of. Below are a few of the latter.

Do your local police have banned military equipment?

by JPat Brown

May 18, 2015

Today, the Obama administration announced an immediate ban on certain types of military equipment transfers to local police. However, it’s unclear what that means for ordnance the police may already posses - thanks to an earlier collaboration with The Marshall Project, you can find out if your local law enforcement agencies have any of the restricted gear.

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