The biggest sniper rifle request, however, came from within the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife. In 1999, some staff
wanted to ask the feds for 10 sniper rifles . Ronald Regan, then-commissioner of the department, apparently shot down his inferiors' shopping spree, though,
nixing the sniper rifles and approving a cut-down request for
M-14 rifles that
There is a tiny bright spot among these deadly firearm aspirations. After receiving its M-16 rifles (and night vision goggles), Brattleboro asked the feds
if it could return the equipment -- the town hadn't found much use for them.
This summer, Americans were shocked by the images of police in Ferguson, Missouri, draped with and surrounded by cast-off military weaponry obtained as part of a Defense Department program known as the
1033 surplus disposition program . Many people were particularly stunned by the
But military hardware is not a new phenomenon in Vermont. Although the state has just 620,000 residents and
ranks 48th in per-capita violent crime , state and local law enforcement agencies have been asking the federal government for sniper rifles and a lot of other weapons of war since 1998.
That’s surprised a lot of Vermonters. Few people had any idea of the amount of military materiel coming into the state. Because the items are largely free (ignoring, of course, the amount U.S. taxpayers originally paid to produce the weapons and other goods for the military), the items never showed up on local or state budget sheets – the place where details of acquisitions can usually be found.
Vermont journalists have been digging deep into data that details what Vermont police have been requesting and receiving through the federal 1033 program. (Check out stories done by
VTDigger ,
WPTZ , and
Hill Country Observer .) We've posted that data on our Web site in
text-searchable PDFs, sorted by municipality or state agency . Want all of the data to do your own analysis? We've rolled all of the files into
a tarball [480MB] (
or Zip [481MB]) for your convenience.
Over the next few days, we’ll be blogging about some of the things we’ve found in looking through the data files. Vermont police departments’ desire for sniper rifles is just a sliver of the military hardware that officers have been shopping for. You might be surprised at what your local department has on hand to patrol your streets and keep the peace.
Oh, did we mention that Williston asked for an