An Open Letter to the Chief of Police

Dear Chief Gramza,

I would like to provide a response to your comments which were recently published by Focus on Marshfield, in the article entitled “A Good Deal for Marshfield Citizens.”

First, thank you for engaging the community in a discussion about your acquisition of a military Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicle. I have a few more questions for you, along with some blunt comments based on experience, education, and research. Forgive me if I’m overly frank, but with the recent publicity and increased national awareness of the wastefulness and abuse associated with many small town’s acquisition of military equipment, I’m surprised to find that a city like Marshfield is participating in this program.

I’ll get right to the point: this is excessive and unnecessary, period. In no way is this a “good deal” for Marshfield. While the city faces budget cuts and tax increases, your department is acquiring used “as-is” military equipment that is expensive to train on and maintain, and is designed for war, not law enforcement. This is not the kind of equipment that is necessary to meet a previously stated need. Your insistence that an MRAP can be a catch-all solution to a variety of civil emergencies is simply not consistent with state and federal policy, or logistical realities in the scenarios you’ve provided. While the city cuts spending elsewhere, you are trying to funnel revenue from drug-related fines back into your own department and inflate your internal spending, rather than re-invest that money in the community. The situation is especially confusing since you do not intend to use this vehicle specifically for drug related crimes (which is dubious since most Wisconsin police departments end up deploying MRAPs for such mundane purposes as serving warrants). It would make more sense for you to invest those drug asset seizures and fines into drug use prevention and treatment programs, with a goal of eliminating the problem, rather than maintaining a perpetual state of having to find drug offenders in order to maintain unnecessary equipment.

Good stewardship of resources would require you to follow a step by step plan, beginning with determining a real and present need for this equipment. But it seems like you are doing this process backwards, in that you have acquired equipment and now try to justify it with vague scenarios related to an MRAP’s potential capabilities (not necessarily the capabilities of your vehicle, as you decide to configure it). I wonder if you have conducted an in-depth assessment of this acquisition (including risk assessments, annual cost estimates, deployment plans, training guidelines, etc.); and I worry that if Marshfield has a need for actual disaster relief equipment, why is the city not working on solutions to meet such needs? And shouldn’t the city have ownership and control of vehicles that are designated for disaster relief operations, and not use on-loan overly-expensive federal equipment held by the Police Department? I’ll speak more to that a little later.

You’ve proposed several uses for this vehicle, but I have to question if an MRAP is the right tool for the job. Allow me to review: “stopping rifle rounds towards citizens…” When questioned online, the Marshfield PD has cited several active shooter hostage situations where MRAPs were employed, to protect officers. I don’t believe an MRAP have even been deployed to serve as a barrier between a civilian bystander and an active shooter. MRAP’s only function in these cases was to get officers close to the shooter in order to assess the situation. MRAPs have notoriously poor maneuverability and poor visibility from the interior, making it ill suited to the task of observing what might be a mobile active shooter in a residential environment. Many other vehicles would be better suited to the task. Perhaps you could identify what specifically about an MRAP is required in such scenarios, where other nonmilitary armored vehicles would not meet the need?

Similarly, you stated: “acting as a shield to save an injured resident or officer in the street” I have a hard time imagining a scenario where this is realistic and necessary. If you’re simply blocking traffic, you can use any cruiser; and there are many other, less expensive, options for (nonmilitary) “bullet-proof” vehicles, if protecting officers and residents is your main concern. It’s not like officers will be patrolling in this MRAP, so this vehicle is useless in a truly “unexpected” encounter, as well.

Next, something that IS realistic in rural Wisconsin: “driving through 3′ snow-drifts to get paramedics to a medical emergency,” However, deploying medical personnel in a snowstorm is a little more complex than listing something off of an MRAP spec sheet. You need to consider how this giant truck would be staged: is it configured to be an ambulance, or a cargo truck, a SWAT vehicle, mobile command center, or a military troop transport? These configurations have very different needs, and if you’re taking time to swap equipment for each scenario as it unfolds, then you’ve probably wasted too much time already. Will it be stationed next to medical personnel, or have to go pick them up? Who would be driving this makeshift ambulance? Would local paramedics be trained in using it as an ambulance, and get rollover training and driver training(at additional expense)? It doesn’t do a lot of good to just dump an EMT in a big truck without the proper equipment, in the proper compartments, to be quickly accessed in a medical emergency. Not to mention the rollover risk in these vehicles, in snowstorms where you can’t tell the difference between a road and a ditch, driving on black ice… This proposal is akin to saying that cargo vans could be used as ambulances. They certainly could, in an emergency, but you’re doing citizens a disservice if you don’t have a vehicle and dedicated personnel equipped to do the job. So let me ask you: are you going to configure this MRAP to be a search and rescue vehicle or ambulance, and maintain on-call paramedics or personnel suited to the task?

And your coup de grace: “most recently delivering wood and equipment to the site of a collapsed hotel roof during an ice storm (this was during the recent table-top disaster scenario)” Do we need military vehicles to deliver wood for roofs in the middle of an ice storm? Who will be up patching those roofs in the middle of said ice storm? And how will they get to the work site if they don’t have their own MRAPs? Or will this thing be driving around like a taxi during inclement weather, facilitating all government operations and renovating private businesses that are damaged? This displays good outside-the-box thinking, but again, if this is something we think might happen, it’s poor planning to rely on the police department’s Big Wheels to be the designated go-fer truck during emergencies.

Furthermore, half of your proposed uses seem like they might be in violation of the state’s 1033 program, “All requests for property will be based on bona fide law enforcement requirements. Equipment/property acquired by the LEAs (Law Enforcement Agencies) being used for personal or other non-law enforcement related activities will not be allowed, and may be subject to suspension or termination from the Program “ I don’t think that “law enforcement activities” includes emergency medical services or emergency building material delivery. This is an armored troop transport, designed to withstand improvised explosive device (IED) blasts, not a peacetime emergency vehicle, and the state and federal experts recognize that. But maybe you’ve thought of that and worked out some arrangement with the state of Wisconsin, that you can use this MRAP for whatever you want. Have you done that, Chief?

You claim that this vehicle is free to acquire, except for the very expensive maintenance and fees associated with MRAPs and the 1033 program. It can cost up to: $50,000 shipping to get it to Marshfield, $100,000+ to retrofit a military vehicle for police use, and $50,000+ per year in estimated maintenance costs. Please let me know if these numbers vary wildly from your estimates, Chief; and let me know what your estimates for annual maintenance, training, and operation of this behemoth are. How much has your department already paid for this “free” equipment? Please remember that money your department uses on this, no matter where that money came from, could be redirected to one of the many city programs which faces budget cuts currently. If you have an extra $100,000 per year to blow on this equipment, maybe the city can cut your budget by $100,000 and raise taxes less. Just a thought.

In addition to the usage restrictions from state and federal government, MRAPs have their own technical restrictions. MRAPs weigh around 43,000 lbs., which means they’re restricted in crossing some bridges, such as those in rural central Wisconsin, they are too tall to pass under some overpasses, and they are a high rollover risk. These vehicles are so prone to rollovers that anyone who travels in an MRAP is required to have roll-over training in an expensive custom simulator, which is another recurring cost that you will accrue, no matter how you deploy this heavy armored vehicle. When the military uses these vehicles, they conduct detailed route planning to make sure the path can handle the size and weight of these nonstandard vehicles. Will the Marshfield PD have resources to conduct route planning for everywhere this vehicle will go, and will they be able to do so on-the-fly, when the destination depends on the scenario?

MRAPs are designed for Soldiers operating in war zones. The only capability they provide that can’t be met by a nonmilitary equivalent is protection from IEDs. Is that something you are concerned about in central Wisconsin? If not, you have the wrong tool for the job. If so, I must question your assessment of the threat in Marshfield. It doesn’t matter if you got a hammer for free, it’s not a screwdriver. MRAPs are not designed for, optimized for, or ideal for ad hoc usage for a wide range of civil scenarios. Chief, you want to justify this acquisition using broad scenarios and assumptions, but I’m afraid it’s just not practical when you look closely. If you determine a need based on the scenarios you cited, then get a vehicle suited to that need. An asset that the city can own and operate responsibly. This MRAP will cost the taxpayers of Marshfield hundreds of thousands of dollars, and do a worse job, in every scenario, than a specialized nonmilitary vehicle would. And it’s a rental, that you don’t even own.

Finally, if you start utilizing military equipment in the execution of serving and protecting civilians, you will run the risk of “intimidating or threatening” people. You need to understand how you present your department to civilians. If you use something that is designed for war, then you are perceived as making war on those you interact with. Few people want to live in a town of less than 20,000 that has a police force which is equipped for war. I hope you’ve considered some of the feedback you’ve received so far, through social media and other sources: the very real and literal will of the people you have sworn to serve and protect. Please remember that policing is more about the community that your own desires to play soldier in central Wisconsin. Please send your MRAP back, and spend the resources you’re wasting on this toy for legitimate equipment that meets the needs of the city of Marshfield; or even shore up the budget so we don’t need to make as many cuts or raise taxes as much. Just because something is on sale doesn’t mean you need to buy it, Chief; and unless you’ve done your due diligence and are willing to back it up with complete long-term cost estimates, risk assessments, and training and deployment plans, then you are just whitewashing your acquisition of a really cool, expensive, unnecessary toy, that will probably end up being misused like it has in so many other communities. Because, as you know, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So while you “pray it never has to be used,” you also know that if you never use it, you’re just wasting money on it, and will probably have to send it back at your expense. This isn’t something you can park in a garage and only bring out in a once-every-five-year emergency. You’re trying to sell this acquisition like it’s a free puppy, and minimizing the fact that it needs to be cared for every day. Not to mention you don’t own it; this MRAP is not a city asset, and if you use it in violation of the 1033 program, or the program gets cancelled, you’ll have to send the equipment back, at a cost to your department, and then you’ve spent a lot of money fixing up and maintaining a rental.

Allow me to reiterate and summarize: this unneeded military vehicle will cost the city of Marshfield significantly, during a time of proposed budget cuts and tax increases. Even if Marshfield had the money to spare, it could be better spent in the community, or on specialized equipment that meets pre-determined needs. Thank you for soliciting feedback and questions, I hope that you seriously consider the points I’ve brought up, and send this MRAP back ASAP.

Sincerely,

Michael Luepke

Former Marshfield Tiger and Major, US Army