Even small towns are loading up on grenade launchers

What, for that matter, is anyone doing with military equipment? Only once news images showed the equipment trotted out by law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, did the larger public begin to notice the phenomenon against which conservative and libertarian writers had been inveighing for some time, particularly Radley Balko, in his 2013 book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Now, of course, President Obama has promised an inquiry into the program.

But those relatively minor Pentagon details involving South Dakota (which received only a few military assault vehicles and suits of armor, which I looked up solely because it’s my own small-population state) point to a deep constitutional offense hidden in the 1033 surplus equipment—and point toward that offense even more clearly than the arming of police in big cities. Are things so bad along the banks of the Missouri River that the town of Yankton (population 14,500) really needs a robot, a grenade launcher, 14 reflex sights, and a pair of riot guns from the U.S. military? The sheriff of the surrounding county, Jim Vlahakis, apparently thought his office could get by with only a pair of rifles from the military program. So why did Brian Paulsen, Yankton’s chief of police, think his police force needed all this? (The run-around and refusal to return phone calls that most of the South Dakota law-enforcement agencies gave me is revealing; only the desk officer in Custer spoke to me originally, and mostly, I think, because my question took him by surprise.)