Military Surplus

This project looks at how much U.S. military surplus equipment has been transferred to law enforcement agencies. It uses data from from the “1033 program” handled through the Law Enforcement Support Office, which posts data quarterly.

Summary of findings

Lede: The U.S. military transferred almost 20,000 controlled items to Texas-based police departments since 2010. The value of these items was nearly $126,000,000. Of the total controlled items tracked in our dataset, Texas received almost 33% of controlled items available.

Source: This data comes from the “1033 program” handleds through the Law Enforcement Support Office.

Other findings

• Houston received the highest value of items, totaling about $7,300,000.
• The San Marcos police department received less than half as many controlled items as Austin, which is a larger city by population. However, the value of said items sent to San Marcos was much greater than those Austin received. San Marcos received 525 controlled items with an estimated value of $3,200.000. Austin received 1,399 controlled items for a rounded value of $2,700,000.
• Mountable lights for arms, vehicles and tools for seeing at night were amongst the controlled items.
• The most expensive item went to the Houston Police Department. It was one piece of aircraft that cost $5,390,000.