Military arms for cops puts people on edge
Stirs up memories of Ferguson
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration cleared the way for local police departments to become militarized again, a move that caused alarm among civil rights groups and law enforcement experts. But they’re not the crowd President Trump was looking to please.
As demonstrated by his pardon of Arizona’s former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio — who used his authority to racially profile Latinos, and refused to stop even after ordered to by a judge — Trump is seeking the approval of law-and-order conservatives, police unions and the folks who come by the thousands to the campaign rallies the president continues to hold.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ dismissal of concerns about police treating the community members they are sworn to protect and serve like wartime enemy combatants spoke volumes.
“We will not put superficial concerns above public safety,” Sessions said in Nashville yesterday at a National Fraternal Order of Police conference announcing the new policy.
The move drew praise from the FOP’s national president Chuck Canterbury, who said he personally urged President Trump to make the change, and blasted the Obama administration for being overly concerned “about the image of law enforcement being too ‘militarized.’ ”
Trump’s move lifted an Obama administration order greatly restricting a Department of Defense program providing military surplus equipment to local jurisdictions at no cost.
The Boston Police Department does not have any bayonets or other militarized gear, according to spokesman Lt. Michael McCarthy. Somehow the department managed to keep the peace in one of the country’s largest recent demonstrations without tanks or grenade-launchers.
But not all law enforcement agencies show such restraint, as we saw in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, when police used armored vehicles, military camouflage helmets and shields and automatic rifles to confront residents protesting the killing of Michael Brown, noted Tom Nolan, a criminologist at Merrimack College.
“The very real concern is that when we see people exercising their constitutionally protected free speech right to protest, they are going to be met with police who are equipped like armed soldiers,” said Nolan, a 27-year veteran and former lieutenant in the Boston Police Department.
Sessions cited the ongoing rescue efforts in Texas in Harvey’s wake as an example of the need for weaponized gear. Nolan and other experts agree that some situations call for needed tactical equipment, including hostage situations and the search for terror suspects such as the one after the Boston Marathon bombings. But it’s easier and wiser to put procedures in that allow access to military-style apparatus in exigent circumstances than to dole them out as if in a Pentagon garage giveaway.