(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



The NYPD Megatruck That Showed Up at Hamilton Hall [1]

['Adriane Quinlan', 'An Emmy Award Winning Curbed Writer', 'Who Has Reported On New York City For Four Years']

Date: 2024-05-01 16:55:08.418000+00:00

Police climb a ladder attached to a tactical vehicle to enter Hamilton Hall. Photo: Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

Last night, the NYPD bypassed the barricades and a crowd of protesters and press surrounding Columbia’s Hamilton Hall by going over them. Literally.

Officers in riot gear drove up to the building in a tall black truck twice the height of a pedestrian and climbed a ladder that extended into a second-floor window to enter the building, while another group of officers gathered at the front doors, apparently awaiting orders to enter.

New Yorkers didn’t know what to make of the heavy police presence locking down the surrounding blocks — or the truck itself. An NBC reporter who asked the NYPD only got the truck’s nickname — “the bear.” Onlookers assumed the immense machine was a piece of military-grade equipment known as MRAPs, or mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, which were handed down to local police departments by a Pentagon program that started in the 1990s.

An NYPD MRAP carrying an armored ESU team just pulled up blocks from Columbia University. Among the men on the roof is head of DCPI Tarik Sheppard pic.twitter.com/ZwWxCpV1Ba — Liam Quigley (@_elkue) May 1, 2024

The truck looks military-grade. But it wasn’t handed down by the Pentagon. After the Obama administration ordered local police in 2015 to return the military equipment they got through that program, officers became more dependent on other kinds of tactical trucks, like this one, made by the private Massachusetts-based company Lenco. They’re called BearCats, and they’re SWAT vehicles used by police departments across the U.S. — including the LAPD — that are advertised as being smaller and easier to drive than MRAPs and aren’t capped with gun turrets. (They haven’t “been a popular thing to see for some folks,” according to the captain of a SWAT team that uses them in Wisconsin.)

The NYPD had its first BearCat by 2004. Five years later, the department had four, at a cost of around $225,000 each. (The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for more information on the trucks.) But truck obsessives consider seeing one in New York City to be a “rare catch,” and finding one with a ladder extension is so rare that it’s not clear if the NYPD ever used one before last night.

The trucks are used by the department’s Emergency Service Unit, which has a broad mandate to both help “retrieve keys from unlocked cars” and carry out “paramilitary operations,” according to a 2009 New York Times article, which reported that the BearCats were used to arrest four men in 2009 who were suspected of planning a synagogue bombing. “We drove right up to them,” a detective told the Times. “They’re pretty devastating.”

Yeah, the NYPD deployed a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle to aid in the crack down on peaceful, unarmed student protesters. These are military vehicles designed specifically to withstand improvised explosive device (IED) attacks & ambushes. What a joke. https://t.co/WjcfsgwWSZ — Tariq Kenney-Shawa (@tksshawa) May 1, 2024

The trucks are advertised as a way to get into difficult situations to free trapped hostages (thus, the ladder) and are known for being basically impossible to shoot through, with bulletproof shells that have “high-ballistic, multi-hit protection.” At the same time, ports on the sides of the truck allow officers inside to fire weapons, just like in a tank. Even the ladder racks, sold separately as a “mobile adjustable ramp system,” are bulletproof.

Last night, the ladder allowed police to simply bypass crowds on the street level (though they also reportedly drove through a bus stop, destroying the glass shelter). But it also allowed officers to work above the sight line of any observers. With no outside reporters allowed into Hamilton Hall during the sweep, it was impossible to know what was going on during the arrests on higher floors, and the NYPD has not released any information about the arrested protesters as of this morning.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.curbed.com/article/nypd-tactical-bearcat-truck-staircase-arrests-columbia-protesters-hamilton-hall.html

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/