The CEO of the company that manufactures the controversial BearCat armored personnel carriers favored by police departments dismissed civil rights complaints during an appearance on Fox News.
Lenco CEO Len Light manufactures the "BEAR and BearCat Armored Tactical Vehicles" which the company claims "are in use by over 700 US Federal, State and Local tactical teams to respond to active shooter scenarios, barricaded suspects, response and rescue, and high-risk warrants."
The BearCat, which stands for Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck, have been highly controversial.
A 2014 ACLU report on the "excessive militarization of American policing" noted the Lenco vehicle by name.
"American policing has become excessively militarized through the use of weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield," the ACLU found. "Militarization unfairly impacts people of color and undermines individual liberties, and it has been allowed to happen in the absence of any meaningful public discussion."
The report also found that it was not too late for reform.
"The use of paramilitary weapons and tactics to conduct ordinary law enforcement—especially to wage the failed War on Drugs and most aggressively in communities of color—has no place in contemporary society," the report concluded. "It is not too late to change course—through greater transparency, more oversight, policies that encourage restraint, and limitations on federal incentives, we can foster a policing culture that honors its mission to protect and serve, not to wage war."
The CEO of Lenco, however, disagrees.
"Police are the guys that have to respond to this kind of thing," Light told Fox News. "And to save their lives, and enable them to save members of the community, they need to have protection: body armor and armored vehicles."
"That's really the way it is nowadays," he claimed.
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