The Metropolitan Police is trialling new ‘Sandcat’ armoured vehicles across London – which are manufactured by Israeli armoured vehicle company Plasan. For more than thirty years, Plasan has supplied these systems to the Israeli military, including around seven hundred ‘Sandcats’ since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
A Met spokesperson said the eighteen vehicles it has bought from Plasan will be used to suppress ‘serious public disorder’ and will replace its fleet of ‘Jankel’ armoured cars, according to reports in The New Arab.
Israeli arms companies frequently use the deployment of their weapons in Gaza as a sales tool, boasting that they are ‘battle tested’ after being used against Palestinians.
*genocide-tested in Gaza
It is nice how the genocide stuff gets imported back home to surpress the local population after “testing” it on Palestinians.
Really makes you feel like those tax dollars/pounds spent on Israel meant something.
A new way to fund the Israeli genocide, neat.
Fascists gonna fasc
This, in no way, looks like a vehicle that could offer anything but hindrance, difficulty, and cost to the job, being quite ineffective at most things required of it. It is designed with a purpose in mind and it wasn’t the streets of London.
Ineffective? It’s there to block streets and deliver riot police to an area. Looks like it’ll tick both boxes.
That may be true, but even worse, America shows: When you put war equipment on the streets, they’ll use it to wage war. The tools may not be the root of the problem, but they will supercharge a dehumanizing “us versus them” mindset of police.
Well yeah but they fucked up the moment they gave every cop a gun. That’s not a factor with the situations these vehicles will be used for. American policing is not comparable.
People will refer to these as “tanks” especially when a weapon is mounted on them but they are not, they are correctly referred to as MRAPs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine-Resistant_Ambush_Protected_Vehicle
You are right, MRAPs are for counter insurgency conflicts and for the love of whatever god you do or don’t worship please don’t let police institutions anywhere near war, what you will get is a genocide disguised as a war (turns gaze straight at the IDF with a Gorgon Stare).
Good news though! A common complaint from warfighters is that MRAPs are inherently tall (to direct mine blasts away) and thus easily tipped over and they are heavy af and probably super annoying to pull back upright so take from that what you will UK citizens.
It’s replacing these:
Metropolitan Police Jankel Guardians engaged on an operation. These are utilised by public order and armed officers for high-profile operations and airport patrols.
Hang glider unproofed
a fucking cab
…I had a sudden mental image of a fleet of black cabs skidding in sideways and riot police on horses pouring out, but their first card declined so they mill about digging through their wallets trying to pay the cabbies
Why not the Land Rover Tangi, or OVIK Pangolin? It works well in Northern Ireland
Tangi was an interim measure that somehow lasted almost 40 years. It’s very much out of date however. The company behind the Pangolin went bust in 2020. In any case, Land Rover stopped making Defenders a decade ago, and only make luxury vehicles now.
Just remember to never get out of them.
Ouch, I’ve been hit in the head by something wooden and traveling in an arc!
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