The ban — effective immediately — won’t fund the transition of armored vehicles on a tracked system (not wheels), firearms of more than .50-caliber or higher, grenade launchers, bayonets, camouflage uniforms and weaponized aircraft.
“I don’t think most agencies would have a problem with any of that (being banned),” said Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer, whose department got its vehicle in May 2014. “If it comes to the time when I need a piece of equipment that’s .50-caliber or higher, then we’re in trouble.”
Fischer and Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly agree that the old military armored vehicles fill a need for their SWAT teams, and save their budgets while re-using equipment taxpayers have already bought.
“For us to go out and purchase an armored vehicle like this, would not be something that would ever work into the budget,” Kelly said. “When the military makes these units available, we have to take advantage of them.”
Kelly said his department’s armor-plated Humvee — which they acquired in December 2012 — could have been used for cover in the Jan. 1, 2011 shootout in which a man shot and killed Clark County Sheriff’s Deputy Suzanne Waughtel Hopper.
“We hope we don’t have a need for it,” Kelly said. “But if we do, we know that it’s readily available, it’s ready to go and it’s armor-plated. So it can go into a situation where we have an active shooter.”
Clark and Greene county officials have painted or plan to paint their armored vehicles.
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