most departments have little justification for their bloated budgets or number of personnel.

Also, just because they made the little show you mentioned to justify a larger budget and sympathy for more toys to terrorize doesn't mean they even needed the shit then, couldn't be that big since you don't seem to remember what the hubbub even was or how the shopping trip carried the day.

People are always making up these movie style shootouts with ever out gunned cops supposedly due to the availability of weapons that have been around for a hundred fucking years like life is a fucking warzone but it isn't until they make it that way.
Bullshit, there is almost no need for this shit and certainly not the wild proliferation.

This is a con job.

Cops aren't doing shit but writing tickets and screwing around with vice, take those things away and they are doing very, very little other than post incident reports.