Humboldt County’s beefiest new truck was given to the Eureka Police Department gratis by the Defense Department last week. The catch? EPD had to pay to haul the 25-ton truck down here from Fort Lewis in Washington.
How much does that cost, you might wonder? $5,500, total said EPD Chief Murl Harpham. The department paid $2,500 and the Sheriff’s Office chipped in $3,000 more.
Don’t call it an “assault vehicle,” Harpham says. It’s for officer safety. And, he continued, conspiracy theorists need not worry — the new Emergency Response Vehicle is not signaling a militarization of the police department, nor is it the first step to take away everyone’s guns.
Read Thad Greenson’s Times-Standard article about the EPD’s new toy here.
This article appears in Dead and Disconnected.
Ok, how about an “Insult Vehicle”–it’s an insult to the idea that we live in a Constitutional Republic with certain inalienable rights. These things are not, by any stretch of the rational imagination, being dispersed throughout the country for our “protection”…
Them damn eurekans with there I.E.D.s. We must get armored IED resistant armored 50 cal mounted gun ships in the county as fast as we can….
If they ever need it once, it’ll probably be worth it, but it is sort of creepy looking.
Yeah Yeah but does it have BlueTooth?
It has become so routine to report half the story, no one notices anymore.
Someone needs to offer Mr. Harphum a “free horse”.
How many excellent, used, standard emergency vehicles would $700,000 buy?
The unreported costs of operating and maintaining our new “Dildozer” over this vehicle’s life would be better utilized to maintain the insufficient emergency vehicles and equipment we currently have.
Armored personnel carriers should be given to the public. Murhl’s Thugs have shot down a hell of a lot more people then cops have been shot. His crew has murder so many people in the last 10 years it is the public that needs some Safety. Thousands of dollars that could have been spent creating housing for the people that the brown-shirts reek their havoc on.
What seems to be lost in the discussion is that this vehicle wasn’t free. Taxpayers paid megabucks for this one and all the rest. Yet, they have more than enough and they can give them away to cities and counties for “free”.