The Concord, New Hampshire city council voted tonight to acquire a Lenco BearCat G3 tank. The acquisition passed by a vote of 11 to 4 despite hundreds of people coming to the city council meeting last month in opposition. Public pressure had also caused the Concord police chief to back off his ludicrous claim that he needed the tank to fend off a terrorism threat posed by the Free State Project and Occupy New Hampshire.
In Keene, New Hampshire, police acquired their own BearCat in 2011, also free via a US government grant. A Keene Sentinel editorial points to the Keene police’s tank as a boondoggle whose primary use if for training people how to use the tank itself. Let us hope the people of Keene can continue to be so lucky. As explained in powerful testimony to the Concord city council, the alternative of the tank being used for its intended purpose is much worse.
The people of Concord, over 1,500 of whom are reported to have signed a petition opposing acquisition of the BearCat, now have their council members’ votes on record. What a strike for liberty the people of Concord could make by electing a new city council that gets rid of the tank.
