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NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub
- lifeisstillgood 12y agoI presume this is an obvious leap, but in Ferguson the BBC reporter just commented on the tensions between the Black population and "the security forces". I used to scoff at the "militarisation of the police" stories on HN. I assume this is the same mental leap everyone else is having?
- zrail 12y agoThis is awesome. Not really sure why they chose to release it as an XLSX document on GitHub, but it'll work!
- shebson 12y agoI'd assume it's an XLSX simply because that's the format they received it in from the Defense Department.
- pgrote 12y agoThere is a CSV uploaded as an update.
- imacomputer2 12y agoMaybe they are hoping that it will attract more attention from hackers who might do something cool with the data. I'd like to make an app that plots all of the purchases on a map, or finds all the military gear ordered near you. But I don't have the time.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoIs interesting that this has made itself on here and not been flagged yet. I have noticed that HN normally has an aversion to issues that are directly to do with contemporary politics outside the realm of telecoms, patents and copyright and I wonder if this seems more of an acceptable discussion for the site, given the wider issues raised, purely because the material being discussed is up on Github.
- maxerickson 12y agoThere were similar substantial discussions a couple times in the last year or so: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=police%20milit#!/story/sort_by_date/prefix/0/police%20milit https://hn.algolia.com/?q=police%20milit#!/story/sort_by_dat... (the articles from the New Yorker, Salon and the Economist)
- bradgessler 12y agoIn .xlsx format.
- untog 12y agohttps://github.com/DataGarage/node-xlsx-json https://github.com/DataGarage/node-xlsx-json Node module to convert xlsx to JSON.
- ISL 12y agoNo matter who was doing the acquiring, the "acquisition costs" of firearms are impressively low. Who buys a military-grade .45 pistol for $60?
- bmelton 12y agoI can't think of any others, but a $60 Colt M1911 is indeed a hell of a bargain. Unless it's in a dire state of disrepair, I'd say that price is about $800-900 cheaper than expected.
- MBCook 12y agoI see places where the prices change year to year based on when it was acquired. I wonder if it's a depreciated cost based on how old it is.
- pmorici 12y agoThose are probably not the actual acquisition costs the government paid. The way the surplussing process works is the people doing the surplussing just make a random guess at the acquisition value if the exact information isn't available. For most things that number isn't readily available to the person filling out the surplus paperwork.
- frisbee14 12y agoImported it into Google docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AXPtmdbZ6zJph9Nly6_3TioVKqvaVi39rRCwemkiE88 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AXPtmdbZ6zJph9Nly6_3... (throwaway account)
- sr-ix 12y agoA contributor just uploaded the data in CSV format as well.
- notjustanymike 12y agoWhat's an "extreme mitten" ?
- talmand 12y agoMittens intended for extremely cold weather, like San Francisco in the summer.
- AmVess 12y agoExtreme cold weather mittens.
- barkingcat 12y agoyou can handle the Bhut Jolokia pepper with it.
- crazypyro 12y agoMight just be the parts I looked at, but some of the data is bad. e.g. Repeated orders, orders with 0 cost, but then the cost is calculated into another line, etc. Also why does the Florida Police (or anyone) need a 800k Mine Resistant Vehicle??
- cwal37 12y agoFrom the Article[1]: "The Times is now posting the raw data to GitHub here. With this data, which is being posted as it was received," The data they got was bad in general. Their original article[2] also discusses the lack of information out there. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/data-on-transfer-of-military-gear-to-police-departments.html?abt=0002&abg=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/data-on-transfer-of... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic...
- crazypyro 12y agoAh, I didn't really read the articles, just dove straight into a python interpreter to start checking out the data. I figured it wasn't the Times' fault, but just a warning.
- amcnett 12y agoI was surprised to see a number of mine-resistant vehicles associated with very rural counties in Washington State. Not being completely sure whether a mine-resistant vehicle was a tank or not, I googled the term and came across this article: http://news.yahoo.com/as-wars-wind-down--small-town-cops-inherit-armored-vehicles-233505138.html http://news.yahoo.com/as-wars-wind-down--small-town-cops-inh... Choice quote from the article: “Here’s the thing,” Shellmyer says. “Washington, Iowa, has 8,000 people. We have an MRAP now. We have a SWAT team. We have [police] dogs, and we have a SWAT team transportation vehicle that’s not armored. The city councilman began to think: “Goodness, this is overkill.”
- dublinben 12y agoIf we're lucky, those massive armored vehicles will be parked behind the station, and left to deteriorate. They're so expensive to operate, small departments are loathe to actually use them. If we're unlucky, we get the events in Ferguson, MO.
- dredmorbius 12y agoSome years back I was in the position of managing a few systems for a nonprofit. It had been awarded equipment through a donation program. Some of this was usable. Some ... was not. One particular item turned out to be such a white elephant that it was literally more sensible to try to sell it and replace it with something more economical. Which other branches of the nonprofit were doing, though I never convinced the GM of ours to do. Equipment that's not actually usable isn't an asset. (And yes, I'm keeping this all pretty intentionally vague.)
- lotsofmangos 12y agoLet me guess. Was it actually a white elephant?
- dredmorbius 12y agoDespite certain outward similarities, no. A white elephant would have been more useful.
- thewopr 12y agoQuick question, is the apache license really the most relevant for a dataset? Does that license apply? I ask only because I'm planning on doing something similar.
- teachingaway 12y agoIf the dataset comes from the Gov't (e.g., Freedom of Info Act), one might argue that its public domain data. If its public domain, then slapping a license on it doesn't change anything. If its not public domain, and you want people to use it fairly freely, Apache seems like a good license. Disclaimer: i haven't thought about this very carefully before posting. Could be wrong. One thing I do know is that @copiesofcopies is a former EFF guy that knows open source licensing. Ask him!
- thewopr 12y agoYeah, I would tend to agree with this. These data are derived from work originally done by the U.S. federal government. If they had chosen to make it freely available without a FOIA, public domain would have applied. I don't think having it being a result of a FOIA changes anything.
- anigbrowl 12y agoCorrect. If it comes from the government it's automatically public domain, and according to the repo description the NYT is just sharing what the government provided. NYT is getting very good at the digital journalism approach, I'm pleasantly surprised to see them using Github for this.
- pavpanchekha 12y agoRoughly (I'm not a lawyer) data by itself is not copyright-able, but the organization and selection of data is, so most datasets do, in fact, have to come with a license to be usable.
- rpedela 12y agoApache is probably okay for data, but I would recommend Open Data Commons or Creative Commons licenses. http://opendefinition.org/licenses/ http://opendefinition.org/licenses/
- geetee 12y agoWhat in the world do police need parachutes for?
- geetee 12y agoMonroe, Kentucky's refrigerator was a steal for only $2,394,800.0
- giarc 12y agoMorgue?
- pinoceros 12y agoBASE jumping?
- crazypyro 12y agoThe same world where just these departments have a combined MRAP value of over $56 million. edit: jk, thats just the first page.
- ianstallings 12y agoDon't give them any ideas!
- ianstallings 12y agoWhat I don't get about this is, this is a non-hacking topic. An outside discussion. So why is my post, obviously in jest, inappropriate?
- krawczstef 12y agoWhere's the D3 vis of it? :D or iPython notebook on it? ;)
- comrh 12y agoYikes: AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12 AL,MONTGOMERY,1010-00-691-1382,"LAUNCHER,GRENADE",1,Each,720,2006-04-12
- crazypyro 12y agoThere's 84 total grenade launchers in the data set, if you are curious. Florida took twice as many as CA (36 to 18) and the rest of the states with them are under 10. Why Florida needs so many is another question... Also interestingly, Montgomery got all 9 of AL's grenade launchers, more than Sacramento or LA took. edit: actually, this data is wrong because I only used the first page, didn't even see the other 3....
- comrh 12y agoThere was a big thing made about it in Bergen County, NJ when it was first reported that they had received one. The police basically said they had no use for it and couldn't even image a reason to use it.
- giarc 12y agoWhy does any police force need a grenade launcher? Unless these are used for tear gas or something.
- ajackfox 12y agoThe grenade launchers are M79's, and can be used for tear gas and other non-lethal rounds. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M79_grenade_launcher#Ammunition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M79_grenade_launcher#Ammunition Now about the quantity some PD's ordered... that's a different story.
- rrggrr 12y agoDisappointed but I guess not surprised to see the small number of helicopters, armored vehicles and assault rifles provided to southern border states. Federal government appears happy to distribute heavy weapons anywhere except where they are needed most as evidenced by actual incidents.
- idlewords 12y agoYou realize the Mexican War is over?
- whyaduck 12y agoAs a resident of Arizona, I can tell you that however inefficient and/or incompetent you think the federal government's border agencies are, most of the state and county agencies in this state are far worse. I'd prefer some of them have nothing more deadly than a water pistol (especially the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office - headed by the country's most corrupt un-indicted law enforcement official). Local law enforcement officials are generally competent and savvy enough to want nothing to do with the kind of work you seem to imply they should be doing.
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoThe equipment is distributed in response to requests from police departments. (source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic...) I'm afraid you'll have to blame the locals, not the feds, for being soft on those sinister Mexicans.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoHow long before state police start pointing these back upward? I mean, in some areas it is basically handing military gear to secessionists, which does not seem all that bright. I certainly wouldn't like to be the federal official charged with the job of asking for any of them back.
- ceejayoz 12y agoOne county on the map has ~16k population and 640 military surplus assault rifles. If they're equipped with 30 round magazines, they can shoot everyone in the county without reloading once.
- staunch 12y agoNo, they couldn't shoot more than a few people before thousands of armed citizens made them stop. To help clarify things: the city of LA has 10,000 police officers and 1,000,000+ armed citizens.
- jfoutz 12y agoYeah, that worked really well in Ludlow. I can't think of any other cases in the US where armed civilians were up against automatic weapons. I'd be delighted to see some more examples.
- amcnett 12y agoDisorganized pseudo-infantry (i.e. pissed off individuals with guns) will always be inferior to organized paramilitary forces with armor.
- wisty 12y agoIt's lucky crime rates have dropped so low. You wouldn't want this kind of hardware lying around if there was any chance the wrong king of person could get their hands on it. It would make a great movie or game premise though.
- existencebox 12y agoIt's called saints row. (Although more of a comical than a dystopian twist, but the latter is certainly hinted at.) One of their primary plotlines is taking down an overmilitarized police force with their own gear.
- teachingaway 12y agoI see 205 of "Launcher, Grenade" followed by only 1 of "Laundry, Cleaner"
- BugBrother 12y agoAs a European which don't follow the subject of US police, my TV habits are not crime dramas, I just have to ask: WTF are police going to do with grenade launchers?! (Do they have 155 mm artillery too? :-) ) Are those for tear gas? I just don't believe even US gangs are doing Taliban style insurrections or Intifadas? (Being Swedish with our really open borders for refugees from the Middle East, I should just wait a few years and find out why police need heavy weaponry? :-) :-( ) Edit: Other commenters seem to say (a) These really aren't needed by police, (b) there are lots of surplus weapons from Iraq/Afghanistan. Why aren't those extra weapons just sold/donated to countries which need them? Like most neighbors of Russia, they ought to be starting with big defense investments right now (except for the complete crazies, see Swedish politicians.)
- learc83 12y ago>Are those for tear gas? Almost definitely. There are a variety of less than lethal projectiles that can be fired from a 40mm grenade launcher. Everything from tear gas canisters to rubber projectiles. Even the most overzealous SWAT team wouldn't use a grenade launcher with real fragmentation grenades in a populated area. Fragmentation grenades kill by producing shrapnel, which is just too indiscriminate for police use. That being said, I do remember a story about a SWAT team attempting to drop a homemade bomb out of a helicopter, so you can't be 100% sure. Edit: Found a link to the police helicopter bombing story. The improvised bomb caused a fire that spread to 50 or 60 other houses. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/14/us/police-drop-bomb-on-radicals-home-in-philadelphia.html http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/14/us/police-drop-bomb-on-rad...
- cmsmith 12y agoNote that Washington, DC seems to have received 17 military cargo planes despite not having an airport (also shows up on nytimes.com piece). Is it possible that this is a mistake?
- stormcloud 12y agoI can only imagine this is an error, but apparently Brevard County, FL has received at least 61 helicopters... 8 of them worth $18m a piece. Someone tell me this is misreported? There is no way a county of ~500k people could need 61 helicopters, rght?
- draker 12y agoPatrick Air Force Base is in Brevard County. "Headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, the 920th Rescue Wing is the Air Force Reserve Command's premier combat search and rescue (CSAR) unit. The wing consists of over 1,500 Airmen, trained and equipped to locate and recover U.S. Armed Forces personnel during both peacetime and wartime military operations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/920th_Rescue_Wing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/920th_Rescue_Wing
- mludlum 12y agoWell,they needed 3 Kiowa(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_OH-58_Kiowa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_OH-58_Kiowa) & a lot(54) of Bell UH1-H's.....How do they afford to maintain a fleet that big?
- amcnett 12y agoImagine, or hope?
- guimarin 12y agoYou don't think they 'actually spend $20k on a hammer, $30k on a toilet seat, do you'[1]? If this is not an error, I think we just found the best justification I've seen for making all budgets/purchases etc. in government publicly available via API, as this and the ones below are amazing finds. [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes?item=qt1534129 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes?item=qt1534129
- mludlum 12y agoJefferson county in WV did pay $189 per a latrine though...
- 12y ago
- DanielBMarkham 12y agoCouple of random observations after looking at the data: 1) Looks like a contest where the winners are folks who are able to pull the biggest political strings in DC. It has nothing to do with forces needing anything. This was a free-for-all giveaway. It's all political. 2) In defense of DoD, once you build this crap, it's gotta go somewhere. Maybe some of these MRAPs could only be used for local parades. Local PDs do not need this junk, but the rest of the country doesn't need it either. Better dumping it on Deputy Joe than letting it rot. As long as Joe doesn't start getting delusions of terrorism. 3) A lot of the local rural counties where I live got M16s. I guess that seems useful. The M16 is a fine rifle, and if you could get every one of your cops a proven rifle it sure beats trying to get the poor local governments to pay for them. The cities are a different story: much better connected and with more resources (and ambition?) to screw as much out of the system as possible. The nearest city to me is getting all kinds of idiotic stuff. Do we really need 20 $4k night vision sniper scopes? Perhaps if the city were attacked by protesting vampires such a purchase would be useful. But I guess guys gotta play with their toys. The distribution alone is not worth ranting about. The problem is what happens once all this junk is distributed. If you own a bear gun, you have a tendency to go out into the woods hunting bears. You also see evidence of bears where others do not. That's the real problem.
- ejfox 12y ago> Better dumping it on Deputy Joe than letting it rot. This is a central assumption the DoD/Government has been making, that is turning out to be misguided if not flat-out wrong. The police in this country are not properly trained as to when to deploy this equipment, and when it's deployed, how to use it. Just as spreading weapons of war to all parts of the middle east hasn't exactly lead to peace there, spreading weapons of war all across America will hardly lead to an orderly society. It seems like if you give men weapons, they itch to use them, or the power it gives them.
- alxndr 12y agoYeah, > As long as Joe doesn't start getting delusions of terrorism. ...seems to be the real problem.
- partacus 12y agoSorted from most greedy to least, wow, look at Florida: State Amount FL $252,801,365.49 AL $117,321,970.75 TX $93,960,116.66 CA $92,199,594.55 TN $88,036,810.05 GA $74,258,127.54 IL $63,856,929.46 SC $49,446,894.25 MI $43,557,552.29 IN $43,153,872.84 OH $41,066,993.83 KY $38,672,666.63 PR $37,712,132.94 AZ $37,173,754.35 OK $26,113,459.50 NM $25,077,905.94 NY $24,920,353.44 VA $24,257,646.82 NJ $24,075,459.47 WA $23,543,976.61 AR $21,806,380.46 DC $21,741,478.09 LA $20,327,539.50 CO $17,701,285.74 MO $17,481,149.80 NC $17,296,016.90 DE $12,483,178.35 ME $12,048,389.87 MA $11,878,711.88 WI $10,122,693.61 WV $8,970,650.95 MT $8,943,135.43 NH $8,806,115.87 MN $8,580,400.72 CT $7,920,540.33 IA $7,493,026.26 ID $7,491,468.74 MD $7,049,130.61 OR $6,891,336.22 PA $5,942,289.17 NV $5,836,317.88 GU $5,466,524.59 NE $5,430,787.55 RI $4,812,144.16 WY $4,575,149.39 KS $4,009,658.36 ND $3,871,164.59 UT $2,264,747.07 MS $1,791,294.53 SD $1,771,105.98 VT $1,609,630.11 AK $706,554.76 HI $521,054.41 VI $228,504.00
- munificent 12y agoThat's a meaningless comparison unless you account for population differences. Per capita would be useful to show.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- partacus 12y agoDo you really think per capita works in this situation? It's not like your average citizen can pick up a surplus grenade launcher. Breaking down geo-politically would be more useful. But grabbing per capita values from bjterry and going by party... Senator Avg per Capita Democrat $4.14 External (VI, PR, ..) $33.19 Independent $9.07 Republican $7.21
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jaredstenquist 12y agoThe DOD gives this shit away (to our rural towns and cities) so they can consider it in use and order more from contractors, which gives more cash to the lobbyists and contractors. Rinse and repeat. It's very straightforward.
- Game_Ender 12y agoOn MRAP front the military is getting rid of them for a good reason. They ordered the initial batch very quickly and ended up several different platforms [0]. None of them fit the bill perfectly and having several variants made logistics and vehicle operations difficult. They then did a real procurement program and ended up purchasing several thousand M-ATVs. The surplus MRAPs went into this law enforcement give away system [1]. 0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP#MRAP_deployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP#MRAP_deployment 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP#Post-war_reductions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP#Post-war_reductions
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- orf 12y agoAL,CHEROKEE,4930-01-442-9106,"DRUM,HOSE REEL",1,Each,1630.97,2013-06-20 AL,CHEROKEE,5120-00-222-2220,"MALLET,RAWHIDE ",3,Each,50.31,20120518 CA,LOS ANGELES,3530-DS-SEW-ING0,"INDUSTRIAL SEWING MACH, MOBILE TEXTILE",2,Each,0,2014-02-19 Stop this madness.
- wcummings 12y agoTheir Github has some other repos w/ data, and a few w/ code (to process the data etc)
- dmourati 12y agoNPR covered this military surplus program. The most frightening fact was the typical local law enforcement agencies must agree to "use it or lose it" with the acceptance of the gear. This sets up a perverse incentive and encourages local PD to misuse military hardware or forfeit it back to the federal government.