With the recent Ferguson violence - and the law enforcement response to it - still fresh on many people's minds, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt spent Monday visiting with law enforcement officials in four Missouri cities.
His Jefferson City stop was the third of a four-city fly-around.
"Law enforcement issues are important," he told reporters after meeting with several law enforcement officers and group representatives.
Blunt, R-Springfield, said the Mid-Missouri officials told him what others have, that "a lot of that money in our state has gone into communications - but also that the defensive vehicles, like the three vehicles we used in Ferguson, are available generally around the state."
Blunt first met privately with the law enforcement representatives at Jefferson City's Memorial Airport, before meeting with reporters.
"I actually wanted to talk with the officers about the tactics they use," the senator explained, "(to get) the kind of information I probably wouldn't have gotten in a more open meeting."
Cole County Sheriff Greg White attended the Monday afternoon meeting.
"I think that we all agreed that many of the decisions are local decisions," White told the News Tribune afterward. "The fact is, local municipalities and local counties have greater control of local law enforcement.
"And it's not up to the federal government to tell local law enforcement what they wear (or) what their policies are."
As he often says in his Missouri appearances, Blunt agreed.
After a black teen was killed last month by a white police officer, the North St. Louis County town of Ferguson was wracked by protests, looting and violence.
The police responded with some heavy equipment that Blunt and White both described as "defensive" - and that are from two programs both men said were good for law officers and their communities.
Blunt told reporters Monday: "The best analogy of that would be a (bullet-proof) Brink's truck."
He noted many other law enforcement vehicles where damaged by bullets, rocks and other things during the week-long violence.
White said the vehicles - often acquired from the federal government, especially the Homeland Security and Defense departments - are helpful in dangerous law enforcement situations.
"It creates a ballistic barrier," he explained. "When we have to deliver personnel to combat someone shooting, or you have to pull that vehicle in between someone who's injured and the people who are trying to do them harm - so you can render aid to them - I think that's a pretty significant value to the community."
White would not disclose where local vehicles had been used, but said that on "one raid where we used the vehicle to get us there, over a half mile of open country," they discovered the suspect had a night-vision scope along with his weapons.
On a different search, White said, the suspect had "more semi-automatic rifles - whether they were in AR platforms or AK platforms - loaded and prepared, than we brought with us."
Having an armored vehicle helps even the fight, the sheriff said.
"You drive a Ford Explorer up there and you're going to get holes all the way through it," White said. "You're going to have dead deputies or dead law enforcement officers in there.
"And how do you rescue someone if you're going to get killed before you could ever get there?"
Blunt said the biggest federal questions about the programs isn't making the vehicles available to law officers, but may be that the federal government ordered too many vehicles.
"I thought one of the interesting things that came out of the hearing on the military surplus program was how much of that equipment has never been used," he explained. "We had 39 percent of the military surplus equipment never (was) used.
"How did we manage to over-order that??"