How's This For A Different paint Job On A Police Chopper?

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Admiral Beez said:
It's an odd thing to see my neighbours to the south. Army surplus doesn't really convey community policing.
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Far cheaper than the Bell Jet Rangers our Highway Patrol use and if we need a search and rescue team deployed in the nearby remote areas, they have to use either a CalFire UH-1 (based here in town) or wait for an Army or National Guard Blackhawk (based out of Sacramento).
 
True. I was more thinking of the surplus camo clothing, automatic weapons and armoured vehicles that get issued to PDs.
 
Admiral Beez said:
True. I was more thinking of the surplus camo clothing, automatic weapons and armoured vehicles that get issued to PDs.
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Like most other nations, actually - it's a sad fact that criminals have become much bolder, which in turn forces LEO to adapt.

To be honest, though, many nations have had police forces equipped with military grade equipment long before the 21st century.
 
Apart from the UK. I cannot think of anything the police are equipped with which could come from the Military, apart from the handguns which are Glock 17's. Even those the Police were using them before the Army.
 
The Sheriff Dept received a few M113 APC's from DoD surplus and got them running. I have seen then drive one on the street only once, when they thought some desperado was holed up in a house a couple of blocks away. They parked one of them in a vets memorial park for a while.

Several years back I recall that a guy walked into a Walmart, grabbed a 30-30 lever action rifle from behind the counter and some ammo, then hijacked a car and went around shooting things up. Now, a 30-30 is close enough to the lethality of an AK-47 to make no practical difference. Getting close enough to the criminal to take him down would have required an APC. But a police officer solved the problem simply, and bravely; when the criminal got out of the car the cop floored his police cruiser right into him, sending him flying. Surprisingly, the criminal was not badly hurt.

Some idiots said the cops should have used rubber bullets. To do that the police would have needed an M5 Stuart tank firing 37MM rubber bullets.
 
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Glider said:
Apart from the UK. I cannot think of anything the police are equipped with which could come from the Military, apart from the handguns which are Glock 17's. Even those the Police were using them before the Army.
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Here in Canada too. I'm in Toronto, our largest city and the police here have a decidedly civil service armament. We don't even have a helicopter, let alone a former military one. The RCMP has NATO-spec Colt Canada C7 and C8 automatic rifles, but I imagine they have more saddles than C7/8. Of note, the RCMP saddles are made by the German company Stübben, the same firm that equipped the Wehrmacht's cavalry units.

Isn't there a law in the US that surplus military gear MUST be offered to municipal police?
 
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One would think that Walmart, which locks up cold medicine (it's locked up because some types of cold medicine can be converted to meth), would do something radical like locking up guns and ammunition.

In this case, it's rather obvious that an APC wasn't needed: the police officer used a vehicle. I suspect that a lot of this up-arming of the police was driven, recently, by a bank robbery in, if I recall the 1980s, where the robbers had military or military-appearing weapons and body armor.
 
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swampyankee said:
One would think that Walmart, which locks up cold medicine (it's locked up because some types of cold medicine can be converted to meth), would do something radical like locking up guns and ammunition.
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They do, but Walmart also sells hammers and they are not locked up.

When some heavily armored crooks with full auto AK-47's robbed a bank in North Hollywood CA, the police found that their handguns were totally inadequate. They were pinned down, the crooks out of range. They resorted to running into a nearby gun store and getting some AR-15's.
 
The way surplus equipment is supposed to work in the US is if no other military service wants it, it goes on the GSA listing. First choice to state govt. agencies, then to counties (parishes in Louisiana) and finally to cities. Back in the 70s-80s one parish in my work territory had three DUKW, two deuce and half trucks, and an L-20 Beaver. All through GSA. At one time, the Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries (game warden) had two rare surplus YO-3A aircraft. They were used to catch shrimpers out of season. When they were unloading their catch at the dock, the YO-3A, at idle, would glide to within 500 feet over them and when they looked up, had their picture taken.
 
Just to be clear, virtually all police agencies in the U.S. don't wear or carry tactical equipment (which is rarely military) unless there is a situation that warrants it.
Surplus military equipment, like the Huey in the OP will most likely be used for search and rescue.
The patrol officers most often carry a .40 semi-auto side arm and have access to a shotgun and/or long gun like a Ruger mini-14 or an AR-15 (or clone) for crisis situations.
Local SWAT teams may have an armored car, which may be military surplus, which is used in a crisis situation. These armored cars rarely are equipped with weapons and are typically used to allow a team to safely deploy close to a point of entry or assist in extracting civilians who may be under fire.
Their ballistic helmets worn during tactical situations look like military issue, but are either military export grade or from manufacturers that sell exclusively to the law enforcement sector.

U.S. law enforcement agencies, when wearing tactical gear during a crisis, are no more militarized than their counterparts in the UK, France, Germany and so on.
Even the RCMP has identical tactical gear...
 
GrauGeist said:
Local SWAT teams may have an armored car, which may be military surplus, which is used in a crisis situation. U.S. law enforcement agencies...are no more militarized than their counterparts in the UK, France, Germany and so on.
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IDK, do police in the UK, France, etc. have M113's at the local level?





At least this one claims to be for rescue?

 
I have some British plastic 7.62MM NATO training ammo. If you are close enough, say at pistol ranges, it can still kill you. I am sure that is the case with that 37MM rubber bullet.

Rubber bullets are not like Star Trek Phasers on Stun. They are meant to make people in a crowd say, "Ow! That hurt! Ta heck with this demonstrating stuff! Let's go to Starbucks!"
 
special ed said:
The way surplus equipment is supposed to work in the US is if no other military service wants it, it goes on the GSA listing.
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That applies to real property, too. It is turned over to GSA, which checks to see if there is any agency that wants it. There is a high school in western Oklahoma that has its own Atlas missile silo. If no government agency wants it, it may be offered to the public as surplus.

While I was at the Pentagon we got a letter relayed through a NM congressman's office from someone wanting to know the "location, condition, and price" of Atlas missile silos. I had to say, "We do not know. They were transferred to GSA 25 years ago." It took me three full days to send out a letter that said that, and half of that was due to my management not believing that we did not know the current condition of missile silos we had gotten rid of 25 years before.

And our organization did not have a flipping thing to do with missile silos!
 
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