via O.Canada.com
Growing numbers of Canadian police agencies in recent years have added armoured vehicles to their crime-fighting arsenals — beasts on wheels that go by such names as Thunder 1, BearCat and Grizzly.Read it here.
Several are retired military combat vehicles that have been modified and donated by the Canadian Forces. Other police agencies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase custom-built armoured trucks from private specialty builders.
Scenes of heavily armed and armoured police clashing with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of an unarmed black man, have sparked discussions on both sides of the border about the “creeping militarization” of police and accusations that they are wasting money on “toys for boys.”
But police officials from Vancouver to New Glasgow, N.S., this week defended their acquisitions. Even if these heavy-duty vehicles are sitting in a garage most days of the week — some have not been deployed even once — they are necessary for dealing with hostile and potentially life-threatening situations such as hostage-takings, incidents involving barricaded gunmen or active shooters and the execution of high-risk search warrants, officials said.
