Fargo ND ready for the hordes of Taleban storm troopers

[boutons_deux]

Local police stockpile high-tech, combat-ready gear


If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.

In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. Until that day, however, the menacing truck is mostly used for training runs and appearances at the annual Fargo picnic, where it's been displayed near a children's bounce house.

"Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here," said Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. "There's no terrorism here."

Fargo, like thousands of other communities in every state, has been on a gear-buying spree with the aid of more than $34 billion in federal government grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The federal grant spending, awarded with little oversight from Washington, has fueled a rapid, broad transformation of police operations in Fargo and in departments across the country. More than ever before, police rely on quasi-military tactics and equipment, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

No one can say exactly what has been purchased in total across the country or how it's being used, because the federal government doesn't keep close track. State and local governments don't maintain uniform records. But a review of records from 41 states obtained through open-government requests, and interviews with more than two-dozen current and former police officials and terrorism experts, shows police departments around the U.S. have transformed into small army-like forces.

Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list of equipment bought with the federal grants reads like a defense contractor catalog. High-tech gear fills the garages, locker rooms and patrol cars in departments across the country.

Although local officials say they have become more cautious about spending in recent years, police departments around the country are continually expanding the equipment and tactics of their jobs, despite, in many cases, the lack of an apparent need.

The share of federal grants for Fargo and the county it anchors is more than $8 million, a considerable sum for terrorism defense given its remote location and status as one of the safest areas in America. Fargo has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there have been no prosecutions of international terrorism in the state for at least a decade, if ever.

North Dakota’s biggest city is a humble place set on plains so flat that locals like to say you can watch your dog run away for two weeks. Yet all patrol officers in Fargo now carry an assault rifle in their squad car.

http://americaswarwithin.org/article...bat-ready-gear

[Agloco]

Lots of drilling going on up there......the new economic engine of the West.

Gotta be ready for whatever.

[ChumpDumper]

If the rubes didn't get tanks after Red Dawn, they shouldn't get them now.

[Stringer_Bell]

These purchases are the direct result of Federal funds given as a result of 9/11 - a direct result of not being prepared for every scenario. Islamofascists aren't the only ones that want to destroy America. Renegade bands of Mexicans (that like working up in the North for some reason) could storm a City Hall and demand citizenship. A giant meth lab compound could be discovered and forces need to have the resources for a tactical assault. Gay people might take an orphanage hostage. Obama might spend us into total economic collapse that causes widespread looting in our towns.

We gotta be ready for any situation!