***Wouldn't Barney have to have gotten a voucher/cash advance/purchase order from either Andy, the Mayor,or city council?Therefore,Andy should not have been surprised.***
That's a good question, I don't remember if Barney said he bought it (most likely) or just "got it" from military surplus. But it brings up an interesting point. If that were to happen today, Barney likely would've just heard it was available from the government and they would've sent it free of charge. A lot of local law enforcement agencies are receiving military hardware that way now--tanks, non-tracked vehicles, boats, and in Texas at least one agency even has a drone. There's a big debate about it that I won't go into here, but there's no way Barney would've let such a trend go unnoticed. He would've been all over it. Just in my part of Alabama, the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office has two such tracked vehicles (and used them in a manhunt in August) while the Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit has a non-tracked armored vehicle. Calhoun, Etowah and Cherokee Counties all three have boats that had a previously life in the military (shades of "McHale's Navy"). So at the end of the episode, when Andy pulls over the tracked vehicle only to run afoul of a National Guard ranking officer, the comedy is in how preposterous it was that Barney would've come back with a tank. That's what makes it funny. But today, Barney would've been *more* likely to come back with a tank than a sidecar motorcycle! Dixon _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list [email protected] http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
