This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 12th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The increasing militarization of local law enforcement has been helped along by surplus equipment including tanks from the

Pentagon and grants from the Department of Homeland Security.

Karadanski, the American Civil Liberties Union, is looking into how local governments are

using this military grade equipment.

We spoke last week.

So we've been concerned about various aspects of policing for some time and we've been noticing

trends in the area of increasingly aggressive policing.

And so we decided to launch a public records request to look specifically at the militarization

issue.

And so we are looking at local law enforcement use of SWAT,

as well as local law enforcement participation

in the defense departments, what's referred to as the 1033

program, which essentially is a program that allows

the defense department to share military equipment,

weapons, other kinds of equipment with local law enforcement, as well as local law enforcement

participating in the Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security grant program,

which authorizes DHS to provide local law enforcement with money to then purchase

what we view as potentially excessively militarized equipment.

So one of the chief concerns here is that by granting money rather than

providing surplus which the Pentagon has provided,

...