They also use them to track black people

No, seriously

"In more than 3,000 pages of emails, the terms "murder," "homicide," "assault," "robbery," and "theft" are never mentioned..."

THAT is kind of impressive. Disturbing, but impressive.

Someone just fired their gun in drug related violence? Sorry community, there's someone who has moderate anti-government views so we're going to stalk them until they get the right message about this government. We're going to use government goons to follow them everywhere they go, attach themselves to their phone, figure out their friends, hunt them down and make sure that any action they take in this world will be heavily monitored by dozens of people who want nothing more than to silence every part of your being. Oh and threaten their family with the exact same thing, and find bullshit charges to bring you in on.

But yeah, that gun murder thing, we'll, see what we can do. If we have any time, we are after all, quite important.

Every major city got these grants and dozens more like them. The grants are driven not by the needs of local police forces, but by the ability of military contractors to sell the need for the equipment to DHS. After the initial round of training and installation there is a strong likelihood that much of this equipment will be unused, expired, or out-of-date within a few years. There is no local money for ongoing maintenance and training. Our police force doesn't even seem to know what they've installed yet, let alone in a couple years.

These grants represent billions of dollars spent to companies owned by political donors for no public benefit.