The problem with using a per-capita dollar figure as a metric of police militarization is that, when you look at the list of the actual items provided, you discover that most of it is pretty innocuous stuff: flashlights, first-aid kits, tool kits, hazmat suits, canteens, etc. The kind of stuff that's available in any army/navy store in the country.
A lot of the counties that appear to receive a high dollar value of military equipment are getting entirely this sort of stuff. Conversely, some of the comparatively low-dollar-value counties have items like grenade launchers, APCs, full-auto machine guns, etc. in their lists. This is the worrying stuff, and the map doesn't offer a good way to distinguish it from the harmless equipment.
I think that's a great point, and I agree that it's not the ideal metric for illuminating the issue. However, I'd argue that, to a limited degree, even the "harmless equipment" acquired by Law Enforcement agencies from the Department of Defense serve to "Militarize" the police forces in a way that reinforces conflict rather than cooperation.
If you let the cops dress up like soldiers, train like soldiers, and equip them like soldiers to the extent that we currently do in the US, eventually they start to believe they are in a war.
But yes, I do agree that the ratio of seemingly mundane items to the big ticket MRAP's and APC's is skewed toward stuff you can get at REI or OfficeMax, which sort of muffles the message. There's interestingness and insight buried in this 1033 program data, I believe. This probably isn't quite it, yet.
Sure, if they're wearing BDUs, army-style helmets, etc., it can be reinforcing a culture that isn't appropriate to civic policing. Maybe some of that stuff is part of this program, but even that's still buried among the flashlights and first-aid kits.
Perhaps you could add to the dataset tags that identify whether an item is e.g. "weaponry/armor", "military regalia", "general equipment", etc. and make these available as map filters. Or, even more basically, a simple indication of whether the item is also available for civilian purchase.
Some stuff might be a bit ambiguous too. For example, the entire acquisition for the county I live in consisted of four "utility trucks". Are those MRAPs, or are they just cheap vans that might as easily be used by the animal control department as by the police?
Cool stuff here! I started up a similar site at https://policedemilitarization.com -- perhaps we should collaborate or consolidate some of our efforts?
Thanks! Considering I probably couldn't even spell choropleth a month or 2 ago, I'm pretty grateful for Mike Bostock and his proclivity for documentation (for D3 and mapping concepts in general) by creating working examples. http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock is my favorite thing on the internets.
A lot of the counties that appear to receive a high dollar value of military equipment are getting entirely this sort of stuff. Conversely, some of the comparatively low-dollar-value counties have items like grenade launchers, APCs, full-auto machine guns, etc. in their lists. This is the worrying stuff, and the map doesn't offer a good way to distinguish it from the harmless equipment.