Towns Dont Need Tanks? San Diego Unified School District Has an MRAP NowMelissa Melton Though the vehicles cost nearly $750,000, many police departments across the nation have acquired their very own MRAP tanks for pennies on the dollar (and sometimes free) from the Pentagons controversial surplus program that seeks to dump military equipment into Americas neighborhoods. Now the indoctrination inside our classrooms can compete with the indoctrination on the schools front lawn that America is such a police state war zone, its totally normal for a school district to also require a tank. School districts. Are getting. Tanks. On sale special at a 99-percent-plus discount, theSan Diego Unified School District recently got a good bargain, too; it only cost the district $5,000 to transport the $733,000 vehicle to campus. But dont worry. San Diego Unified School District Police Chief Ruben Littlejohn held a news conference back in September to assure his fellow citizens that A) MRAPs arent tanks, B) there will be medical supplies and teddy bears kept in the non-tank MRAP, and C) dont worry, this really isnt a sign of the militarization of our schools. There will be medical supplies in the vehicle. There will be teddy bears in the vehicle. There will be trauma kits in the vehicle in the event any student is injured, and our officers are trained to give first aid and CPR, he said. (source) Guess they are concerned they might have a lot of Iraq-style bombings involving high-grade explosives to respond to there on the good ol campus? The police chief assured everyone the MRAP is going to be used as a rescue tool. There are even plans to paint it up like an ambulance: One commenter on KPBS wrote: They can call it a love buggy, a student patrol limo, or a campus police fun bus and then paint it pretty colors, a reader wrote, but that doesnt change the fact its a piece of military equipment that is unnecessary and sends the message that local officials are at war with students. Hm. By that logic, maybe we should start painting all the militarized riot gear our modern American police officers wear up to look like giant teddy bears complete with giant bear head helmets, too. That way they can look all cutesy poo when theyre stomping your face down with their boot and firing tear gas at you for daring to exercise your First Amendment rights on U.S. streets or shooting your dog during a no-knock SWAT raid at the wrong house. By the way, if this MRAP is such a rescue tool, what are the police doing with it? Isnt search and rescue more of an EMS and fire department thing? Oh, but apparently San Diego Unified needs an MRAP because Sandy Hook: The district said the rescue vehicle is one of the ways it is responding to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, and preparing itself for potential disasters in the future. (source) So having an MRAP is going to magically stop school shootings now? Why not just post a few more gun-free zone signs around campus? The sheer amount of common sense and sound logic flowing out of this sheriff and the school district in justifying their MRAP purchase really should make us all feel so much better that A) these people are in positions like sheriff and superintendent of a whole school district within our education system in the first place and B) that these people are also now in charge of a freaking teddy bear filled tank. The MRAP should go really well with the whole police state apparatus being erected on that campus, according to another KPBS commenter: San Diego Unified Police have been carrying military-grade semi-automatic weapons in their car trunks for a year and a half. Last year the entire Education Center at 4100 Normal Street was converted into a locked-down i.d.-card-swiping system, paid for with federal Homeland Security money that is subverting civilian institutions and American values. (source) Wow. With crime down to 20+ year lows, why exactly is America becoming a war zone again? Because it actually is one? Or is it because people like this justifying the fact that were arming it like one (That last bit was rhetorical.) Resources 