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[Malyse]

Whoops.

Department of Defense (DOD) officials attempted to give $1.2 million worth of rifles, pipe bombs, and night vision goggles to a fake police department without verifying any of its information, falling for a Government Accountability Office (GAO) sting intended to test the DOD’s safeguards for the so-called 1033 weapons sales program.

GAO investigators launched the sting earlier this year but only published their findings last week, after showing Pentagon officials what they’d been able to do and receiving assurances that the U.S. military will tighten up its procedures for the weapons sales.
The 1033 program has been arming local police forces around the country since 1997. It allows Pentagon leaders to offload surplus merchandise to U.S. law enforcement offices, with little or no influence over how the materials get used locally.

The rifles and pipe bombs dispersed by the Pentagon arrive to police departments inactive, having been disarmed for use in simulation exercises. But they can be easily converted back to useful killing tools with a few quick repairs using “commercially available items,” the GAO report said. The 1033 program is supposed to apply stringent protocols to ensure such dangerous taxpayer-bought hardware doesn’t get handed over to the wrong people.

Yet when the GAO set out to test those safeguards, it discovered a system no more scrupulous than any other online store.

“It was like getting stuff off of eBay,” the GAO’s Zina Merritt told the Marshall Project. Pentagon officials sent a few emails, never figured out that the address listed on the fake police department’s application did not exist, and were ready to put the shipment in the mail “less than a week after submitting the requests,” according to the report.

The sting proves that neither the DOD nor the Department of Justice ever acted upon an executive order from former President Barack Obama that placed new controls on the military hardware distributed through the 1033 program. Obama imposed the new restrictions in 2015 and instructed DOD and DOJ to form a collaborative oversight group for the program after police in St. Louis County, Missouri responded to protests and unrest in Ferguson by deploying paramilitary units armed with disused Pentagon equipment obtained through the system.

https://thinkprogress.org/pentagon-police-weapons-sting-640f2b677b70

 

[theechrisfox]

Maybe we do need extreme vetting... of Pentagon officials.

 

[theWB27]

What kind of bombs do cops need?

 

[Chainsawkitten]

Why does law enforcement need pipe bombs?

 

[g11]

For fuck's sake, if the Pentagon has enough money to be giving away weapons to every Tom, Dick and Harry police department, they've got waaaaay too much money (as if we didn't know that). Time to trim that budget a good 10-20%, fellas.

 

[DonShula]

America: where we tell you to get a drug test before you're eligible for welfare, but freely ship you penis-compensating war toys if you can fake an address.

 

[Flying Toaster]

What kind of bombs do cops need?

All the bombs.

 

[Hjod]

Pipe bombs, really now..

 

[commedieu]

What kind of bombs do cops need?

Why does law enforcement need pipe bombs?

 

[Mudcrab]

What kind of bombs do cops need?

Why does law enforcement need pipe bombs?

I mean its in the OP:

The rifles and pipe bombs dispersed by the Pentagon arrive to police departments inactive, having been disarmed for use in simulation exercises. But they can be easily converted back to useful killing tools with a few quick repairs using ”commercially available items," the GAO report said. The 1033 program is supposed to apply stringent protocols to ensure such dangerous taxpayer-bought hardware doesn't get handed over to the wrong people.

 

[TheCochese]

They're new at this.

 

[RulkezX]

Why does law enforcement need pipe bombs?

Well if you take pipe bombs away from the good guys , only the bad guys have pipe bombs.

 

[Acorn]

Well if you take pipe bombs away from the good guys , only the bad guys have pipe bombs.

Checks out.

 

[L Thammy]

I mean its in the OP:

The rifles are also inactive? Does that just mean there are no bullets and the safety is on?

 

[theWB27]

I mean its in the OP:

That doesn't explain why the cops need them. It explains why they're already inactive.

Op was read before i posted.

 

[Master Yoshi]

Oh for fucks sake.

 

[Captin Quacker]

Why does law enforcement need pipe bombs?

For the bad hombres hiding in the pipes duh

 

[Mudcrab]

That doesn't explain why the cops need them. It explains why they're already inactive.

Op was read before i posted.

"For simulation exercises"

 

[jayhawker]

So it didn't go to cops? Seems like the system is working.

 

[Ri'Orius]

That doesn't explain why the cops need them. It explains why they're already inactive.

Op was read before i posted.

Simulation exercises. Presumably stuff like bomb squad defusal drills.

I tried to find the scene in Rush Hour, but apparently nobody's put it up on YouTube.

 

[theWB27]

"For simulation exercises"

Are you not understanding possession within a sentence? The use of the word having means its referring to the previous users.... not the cops.

 

[Haly]

This is less about "fuck the police" and more about "what the fuck is the DOD doing?".

Presumably the pipe bombs are already disabled and disseminated for use to local anti-terrorism drills, but the bombs themselves are realistic enough that they can be converted to functional pipe bombs on a whim (why? I don't know).