Currently closed firehouse, Station 2, on Stadium near Packard: AnnArbor’s got a DAMN RIOT TANK!!! [photo] [Editor's note: Station 2 is slated to re-open, as a part a new station model recently proposed by fire chief Chuck Hubbard. Three other stations would close.]
Packard & Stadium
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That’s interesting. I made out the initials on the front, GPV, and did some web searching. GPV is the manufacturer, they’re based in Michigan. This is probably their “Sergeant” model armored car (“tank” is usually restricted to things with tracks and a big gun). That’s a battering ram on the front. Apparently a few years ago a bunch of southeast Michigan counties got Homeland Security money to buy three of them. One’s in Warren, one’s in Southfield, and this one run by the Washtenaw County Sheriff. They are shared among the city of Detroit and SE michigan counties as part of the “Southeast Michigan Urban Area Security Initiative”
[link1]
[link2]
[link2]
It looks like they had it at a car show in Saline: [link4]
Here’s a video made with a Warren police officer showing it off: [video]
In theory the vehicle can be sealed against toxic gases, so can be used in hazardous materials accidents, fires, etc.
Emergency personnel have always had ‘tools’ adapted to the very specific tasks related to rescuing people; axes, pikes, nozzles; all altered for better service fighting a fire. There are also a range of construction and military like tools like the “jaws of life” and water cannons. That said I have to wonder where this ‘tank’ has been used with effectiveness. Not just here but anywhere in the US. Just what kind of standoff has to develop for this thing to be called out? It feels a little too Cold War like to me.
Well, this is certainly one way to squelch dissent. Doesn’t that make us all more secure?
Soylent Green! It’s people! It’s people!
George (#1): Wow! Thanks for all the info!
David, you’re welcome, I had fun doing the research. There’s another slightly peculiar side to it. The company that build the thing, GPV, Inc., seems to have gone out of business. Their website is gone, and the company that supposedly bought them, CMI-Scheible, doesn’t mention them on their website. They seem to have sold these vehicles to a police department in Florida and and one in Tennessee, but no large orders, except that they sold/licensed the designs to a Turkish company that makes tanks and other armored vehicles. [link]
Do we have the Tucker of armored cars? I wonder about repairs and parts.
ABC: Just ask Steven Seagall.
Well I guess that tank makes all the sense in the world. I mean if Steven Seagall is successfully putting it to use…
We may have bought an armored vehicle from a defunct company with our homeland security funds, but Montcalm County (northwest of Lansing) bought a snow cone machine with theirs. (Filed under You-Can’t-Make-This-Stuff-Up).