In 1997, the Republican-led Congress added, and President Bill Clinton signed, a little-debated provision to the National Defense Appropriations Act.  The provision, known as Section 1033, allowed, for the first time, the U.S. military to surplus equipment directly to civilian police forces around the United States.  Although billed as a means of winding down the Cold War, the program ended up radically transforming municipal police departments — with tragic results.  Casey Delahanty is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies at Gardner-Webb University, and he’s studied the violence associated with police forces that obtain military-grade hardware.