armor holdings empowering oppression

after last weekend's shenanigans, cran and i decided to do some investigation into the manufacturer of the flex-cuffs that were used to restrain us during our arrest. here's what i found out:

the cuffs are manufactured by monadnock, a police equipment manufacturer owned by armor holdings, inc.

"Armor Holdings Incorporated. The principal activity of the Company is to provide security risk management services to multi-national corporations, governmental agencies and products to law enforcement personnel through two operating divisions: ArmorGroup Services and Armor Holdings Products. ArmorGroup Services division provides sophisticated security planning and risk management, electronic security systems integration, consulting and training services, intellectual property asset protection, business intelligence, computer forensics and investigative services. Armor Holdings Products division manufactures and sell a broad range of high quality branded law enforcement equipment. Such products include ballistic resistant vests and tactical armor, duty gear, less-lethal munitions, anti-riot products and narcotics identification kits. Law enforcement equipment accounted for 61% of 2000 revenues and security services, 39%."

at the moment they're looking to dump their services division and focus solely in equipment/armor/weapons manufacturing. here is their corporate profile, including their top exec's earnings, and here is their 2001 annual report.

a search on opensecrets.org reveals the following contributions on behalf of the company and its top execs:

• $5000 to the nrcc
• $1000 to ohio republican dave hobson, who has an attrocious voting record
• $1500 to ohio's 7 star pac, the soft-money love child of ohio senator mike dewine, coincidentally, another scumbag voter
• $2500 to pioneer pac, another republican action committee
• $2000 to andrew crenshaw, yet another big winner

for a florida company they sure seem to pay a lot of attention to ohio, don't they? well they've got a good reason... 7th district congressman hobson sits on the house appropriations committee and is responsible for overseeing military spending, some of which, of course will be doled out to armor, particularly because they now employ hundreds in hobson's district having recently acquired ohio-based o'gara-hess, a leading provider of armor shielding to the us military. gotta love the kickbacks.

unfortunately i couldn't find anything supershady (beyond the fact that armor provides paramilitary equipment to local and federal law enforcement agencies to help revoke american civil liberties and oppress the nation's citizenry, going as so far as to make political contributions to keep the flow of criminals coming) with the exception of their tear gas manufacturing facility in casper, wyoming. seems the epa is interested in what's going on over there and has labeled the facility a superfund hazardous waste site.

anywho, that's about all the dirt i've got.