In June, a report by the American Civil Liberties union said police... with officers using training and equipment designed for the battlefield on city streets. The report found the amount of goods transferred through the military surplus program rose in value from $1 million in 1990 to nearly $450 million in 2013, according to the Associated Press .

"One of our concerns with this is it has a tendency to escalate violence," ACLU Center for Justice senior counsel Kara Danksy told the Associa... .

Law enforcement officials like LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing have said the equipment is necessary to take on "more sophisticated" criminals.

"In police work there are times we have to become soldiers and control through force and fear," Downing told the Associated Press . "But we have to come back to being a public servant as quick as we can to establish that normality and that ethical stature with communities, because they're the ones who give us the authority to do our police work."

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