Foiled in Ferguson and WTF

It’s hard to accomplish a police cover-up when the whole world is watching.  #Ferguson

Riot Gear ✔️

Tear Gas ✔️

Camouflage ✔️

Assault Rifles ✔️

Armored Land Mine Vehicles ✔

Dashboard cameras X

Wally and his laptop were up way past midnight logging onto google search and twitter.  Besides live-streaming, he was looking for an answer to a very simple question.  “How is it possible that a town with a 67% African-American population, has a white mayor, mostly all white police force, no members on the local school board and, of the six members of the city council, only one is black.”

But what was most scary for Wally were the videos and images coming out of Ferguson.  For a county, according to the 2010 census, of just under a million people, the local police looked more like an occupying army, and instead of “to protect and to serve,” their mission seemed more like, “to repress and to repel.”

Outfitted in gasmasks, riot gear, assault rifles, and camouflage, these masked invaders patrolled in Humvees and Armored Land mind Vehicles.  And what Wally wants to know is, in a county jurisdiction of less than a million people, where the hell did all that money come from?

Seems as if the St. Louis County and Ferguson Police Departments were part of a federal program run out of the Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) and known as Program 1033.  Designed to distribute surplus military equipment to police departments across the country, Program 1033 gave away $449,309,003.71 in arms and armor in 2013 alone.  The equipment ranges from simple pistols and assault rifles to MRAPS and Heavy Armored Vehicles, used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Problem with that kind of policing,” Wally insists, “is that the cops become schoolyard bullies and everyone else is helpless.”