⁍ In 1997, Congress codified the federal 1033 program to transfer surplus equipment from the military to civilian law enforcement agencies.
⁍ Two decades later, the Government Accountability Office created a fictitious agency to investigate the 1033 program and obtained approximately 100 items worth around $1.2 million.
⁍ Many of the items transferred to police departments are run-of-the-mill office expenses such as screwdrivers, pens, shirts, bandage kits, sleeping bags, as well as trucks and furniture.

– In the 1990s, the Pentagon came up with a novel way to get rid of its surplus military equipment—it gave it to police departments across the country, Yahoo Finance reports. Under a program known as 1033, the Defense Logistics Agency would send items like Humvees, MRAPs, and grenade launchers to police departments, who could then use them on the cheap or in much-needed upgrades. “I could’ve gotten anything I wanted,” says Charlie Mesloh, who used the program while working for the University of Central Florida’s police department between 2000 and 2002. “You could fill out a form that was the size of a postcard and you can check off everything you wanted.” Now, some 8,200 departments from 49 states and four US territories have received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, including everything from screwdrivers to sleeping bags. “When they get this stuff, they want to use them in capacities that police departments are not [supposed] to use them in,” says Wayne McElrath of the Project on Government Oversight. Some police departments say the items they received were necessary, like the California Highway Patrol getting a $22 million drone. But others say the equipment was needed, like the Hocking County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio, which