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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Obama: Now That You Mention It, Maybe Police Shouldn't Have Tanks
Police in Ferguson, Missouri advance on protesters wearing military gear. The feds could still give police departments armored vehicles like the ones pictured under President Obama's just-announced policy change. (Getty Images)
President Obama is banning the feds from handing out certain types of military weaponry to local police departments, White House officials have announced. The move comes after the nation got an eyeful of what that Army gear looks like rolled out all at once by an aggrieved police force in Ferguson, Missouri, and more people started asking why officers should have the ability to turn into soldiers in the first place.
In January, Obama assigned some of his people to look at how Washington can help everyday civilians and the police whose salaries they pay get along better, and one of the things they came up with was ending federal funding for tanks, the highest-caliber firearms and ammunition, and camouflage uniforms, the Times reported. Also off limits will be weaponized aircraft, bayonets, and grenade launchers, according to NBC.
The police show of force in response to Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and elsewhere shined a spotlight on the federal government's two-decade-old practice of doling out big guns and big toys to local cops. As Mother Jones reported last fall, the flow of gear comes from:
[...] a vast Defense Department program that has furnished American police arsenals, at no charge, with $4.3 billion worth of combat equipment leftover from two foreign wars. [...] In the past eight years, the Pentagon program has loaned local law enforcement some 200,000 ammunition magazines, 94,000 machine guns, and thousands of armored vehicles, rifles, aircraft, land mine detectors, silencers, and grenade launchers—all at the request of the local agencies themselves. But images of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, of police in military gear cracking down on peaceful protesters, have turned many communities against a program critics say has eroded the line between police officers and soldiers.
Recently, in response to the local outcry over aggressive policing tactics, San Jose, California's police department announced plans to return its mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP), and the Los Angeles school system police department has agreed to return its three grenade launchers.
No word yet on what if anything will become of all that firepower sitting around in police storage. Police militarization expert Radley Balko was cautiously optimistic about news of the equipment ban.
Obama is set to tout his task force's policing recommendations today in Camden, N.J., which he and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie say has been a model of community policing since 2013, when the state disbanded the police department in the impoverished, violent city and handed control to the county. Violent crime is down in Camden, but as the American Civil Liberties Union has noted, Broken-Windows-style summonses for low-level offenses are way up. And a recent visit by Vice on HBO found, in addition to blanket surveillance of much of the city, officers routinely stopping people without probable cause, simply for being outside.
http://gothamist.com/2015/05/18/obama_takes_cops_toys.php
Police in Ferguson, Missouri advance on protesters wearing military gear. The feds could still give police departments armored vehicles like the ones pictured under President Obama's just-announced policy change. (Getty Images)
President Obama is banning the feds from handing out certain types of military weaponry to local police departments, White House officials have announced. The move comes after the nation got an eyeful of what that Army gear looks like rolled out all at once by an aggrieved police force in Ferguson, Missouri, and more people started asking why officers should have the ability to turn into soldiers in the first place.
In January, Obama assigned some of his people to look at how Washington can help everyday civilians and the police whose salaries they pay get along better, and one of the things they came up with was ending federal funding for tanks, the highest-caliber firearms and ammunition, and camouflage uniforms, the Times reported. Also off limits will be weaponized aircraft, bayonets, and grenade launchers, according to NBC.
The police show of force in response to Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and elsewhere shined a spotlight on the federal government's two-decade-old practice of doling out big guns and big toys to local cops. As Mother Jones reported last fall, the flow of gear comes from:
[...] a vast Defense Department program that has furnished American police arsenals, at no charge, with $4.3 billion worth of combat equipment leftover from two foreign wars. [...] In the past eight years, the Pentagon program has loaned local law enforcement some 200,000 ammunition magazines, 94,000 machine guns, and thousands of armored vehicles, rifles, aircraft, land mine detectors, silencers, and grenade launchers—all at the request of the local agencies themselves. But images of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, of police in military gear cracking down on peaceful protesters, have turned many communities against a program critics say has eroded the line between police officers and soldiers.
Recently, in response to the local outcry over aggressive policing tactics, San Jose, California's police department announced plans to return its mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP), and the Los Angeles school system police department has agreed to return its three grenade launchers.
No word yet on what if anything will become of all that firepower sitting around in police storage. Police militarization expert Radley Balko was cautiously optimistic about news of the equipment ban.
Obama is set to tout his task force's policing recommendations today in Camden, N.J., which he and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie say has been a model of community policing since 2013, when the state disbanded the police department in the impoverished, violent city and handed control to the county. Violent crime is down in Camden, but as the American Civil Liberties Union has noted, Broken-Windows-style summonses for low-level offenses are way up. And a recent visit by Vice on HBO found, in addition to blanket surveillance of much of the city, officers routinely stopping people without probable cause, simply for being outside.
http://gothamist.com/2015/05/18/obama_takes_cops_toys.php
