How the Pentagon militarized college campuses
Polygraph | Newsletter n°246 | 9 May 2024
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The 1033 program
Police in the United States are currently holding $1.6 billion in military property they acquired through the 1033 program.1 For police departments, this program is a way to get combat gear (nominally) for free; for the Pentagon, it’s just another way to shed excess military equipment.
The Pentagon doesn’t get rid of these articles entirely, though, at least for militarized equipment. The 1033 program is a loan program. The combat gear (“controlled property”) transferred to police remains Pentagon property forever, regardless of how long it’s been with a law enforcement office. Ownership over the innocuous items transferred through the 1033 program (“uncontrolled property”) shifts to the police after one year. The figures above and below only refer to controlled property, i.e., the militarized stuff.
How to shut down the 1033 program
Because that militarized stuff is on loan to police, the Pentagon can recall any and all such equipment whenever the commander-in-chief tells it to. Biden was vice president the last time this happened. Obama issued an executive order in 2015 that established a prohibited equipment list for the 1033 program. If police possessed any of those items (some items were prohibited by the US military already), they had to send it back to the Pentagon. This EO prompted the recall of tracked armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, and bayonets.
There’s nothing stopping Biden from expanding that prohibited list to include all controlled/militarized equipment through another EO. Just by signing a piece of paper, Biden could recall $1.6 billion in combat gear on loan to law enforcement offices through the 1033 program, including the $150 million police acquired since January 2021. Military vehicles account for about half of that amount. Under Biden, another 485 military vehicles went to police through the 1033 program, including 139 Humvees and 46 MRAPs.
There are several reasons why this Pentagon-to-police pipeline should be shut down, but the main one is that the more matériel police departments acquire through the 1033 program, the more violent they become. Considering Biden’s alarming rhetoric toward the antiwar protesters on college campuses, addressing police violence doesn’t appear to be too high on the president’s priorities, if it ever was.
Militarizing college campuses
It’s not just state and local law enforcement that participate in the Pentagon’s loan program. By my count, 68 college and university police agencies currently have militarized equipment that they received through the 1033 program:
Adams State University; Arizona Western College; Augusta Technical College; Arizona State University; Black River Technical College; California Polytechnic State University; Carl Albert State College; Central Georgia Technical College; Central State University; Cisco College; Clemson University; Coastal Pines Technical College; College of DuPage; Colorado School of Mines; Coppin State University; Eastern Tennessee State University; Eastern Connecticut State University; Eastern Oklahoma State College; Florida International University; Fort Hays State University; Hocking College; Illinois State University; Jefferson College; Lincoln University (Missouri); Louisiana State University of Alexandria; Medical University of South Carolina; Michigan State University; Morgan State University; Mount St. Joseph University; Northwestern State University; Ohio State University; Pima Community College; Purdue University; Purdue University Fort Wayne; Richland Community College; Saginaw Valley State University; Salem State University; South Carolina State University; Seminole State College; Southern Crescent Technical College; Triton College; Troy University; Texas Southern University; Texas State Technical College of Waco; University of Akron; University of Alabama; University of Alabama in Huntsville; University of Arkansas; University of Arkansas at Little Rock; University of Kentucky; University of Maine; University of Maine at Farmington; University of North Dakota; University of North Alabama; University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center; University of South Carolina Aiken; University of South Carolina Beaufort; University of South Carolina Upstate; University of Texas; University of Virginia; University of West Georgia; University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; University of Wisconsin-Platteville; Valdosta State University; Ventura County Community College; Wallace State Community College; Western Michigan University; Youngstown State University.
More colleges and universities have likely received combat gear through the 1033 program in the past. But the data the Pentagon provides is only a snapshot in time of the military property currently in police stocks — it doesn’t include transferred items that have been expended (like TASER cartridges, for example), returned to the Pentagon, or thrown out/destroyed. For that reason, the chart below isn’t a perfect representation of 1033 acquisitions over time. What it shows is the value of active militarized equipment based on when it was first transferred to police. It’s expressed as a cumulative total to show just how much combat gear Biden is deciding to leave on the streets — and on college campuses.
^Alt text for screen readers: Biden could recall $1.6 billion in combat gear loaned to police. Including the $150 million police acquired under Biden. This chart shows the acquisition value of Pentagon matériel currently on loan to police based on when the items were transferred and expressed as a cumulative total. It was relatively flat until starting to trend upwards in 2005, and then shooting upwards starting in 2010, and steadily climbing upwards over the last few years. Data as of 31 March 2024, via Defense Logistics Agency and Law Enforcement Support Office. More at stephen semler dot substack dot com
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Creatively named after the section in the law that created it, Section 1033 of the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act.