I honestly
cannot count the number of times over the last 20 years, that I was out
covering a story when I thought: “This
situation calls for a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected, fully armored
vehicle." That’s probably because I have never once
thought that our community needed such a vehicle. So you can imagine my surprise when I was
driving by the Sheriff’s office here the other day when I spotted this
monstrosity.
What you are looking at is just that, a mine
sweeping fully armored, six wheel drive transport vehicle. It is, for all intents and purposes the
property of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office. That vehicle retails at just over a half a
million dollars and it was paid for with your tax money. The MRAP is one of nearly 180 of these units
that the Department of Homeland Security has been handing out to local law
enforcement agencies around the country.
For those of you who are math impaired, that comes out to about 90
million dollars worth of Mine Resistant vehicles. I have been told that the Sherriff’s Office is
leasing this vehicle from DHS for the grand total sum of zero dollars a
year.
Now, I
want to get it out off the top here that I am not taking a swipe at our
Sheriff. Quite the contrary, I don’t
know too many people who would turn up their nose to the keys to a half million
dollar vehicle. I could certainly see
myself being the envy of all my drunk neighbors down at the Redneck Yacht Club
by showing up in that bad boy. But I
digress. I am getting away from the
point here. I understand that the
Sheriff intends to use this vehicle for his SWAT team. For that to happen, the vehicle needs to be retrofitted. I am not sure what this particular vehicle
needs, but according to Undersheriff, Paul Trudeau in Jefferson County, New
York, who also received one of the vehicles, retrofitting, will cost about
$70,000. That money is also coming out
of your pocket.
Back in
February, President Obama told the nation: “Weapons of war have no place on our
streets”. I guess he meant that weapons
of war have no place on our streets unless he puts them there. I would certainly agree that this particular
vehicle does not belong on our streets. According to manufacturer
specifications, this vehicle weighs 58,000 pounds. It is so heavy that it has a very well
documented history of destroying the very roads it is using to get around on. If you read my blog, you will know that quite
a few residents in this area pay for their own roads. Who exactly would cover
any damage to roadways caused by this thing rumbling through the
neighborhood? Are we going to put that
back on the residents again? Has the county even thought that through?
Earlier
this year, my son Alexander Robinson was home for a few weeks before he was
deployed to the front lines in Afghanistan. While he was home, he made it a point to
purchase new uniforms. YES we make our
soldiers buy their own uniforms now. He also
ordered a bunch of gear online to have it sent to his deployment area. I asked him why he was buying his own gear if
the Army supplied them. He told me that
the gear they were being assigned was generally not very good and that to be
well equipped the only way to do it was to purchase equipment for yourself.
So there it
is. We as a nation are failing to
provide for our troops who are deployed, overseas, in a war zone, to give them
the tools they need to stay alive and relatively comfortable on the fringes of
hell. Yet at the same time, we can
afford to be sending half million dollar vehicles around the country to communities
that neither want or need them. I should
think that these vehicles would better serve our troops fighting over seas. Now, once this vehicle is retrofitted exactly
what do we intend to do with it? Are you
going to load up your heavily armed officers and go blazing out to the next
complaint of loud music? If you listen
to the tin foil behatted, the whole idea is to be prepared to strike down
potential civil unrest in the future. I
just hope they don’t plan on driving down my road to do it.
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