Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sessions: ‘Lifesaving gear’ will help officers do jobs
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump moved Monday to again allow the Pentagon to distribute surplus armored vehicles, grenade launchers and large-caliber weapons to local police, his latest reversal of an Obama-era policy intended to stop militarization of law enforcement.
Trump signed an executive order reversing the limits that President Barack Obama had imposed after heavily armed police had used military equipment to quell street protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has sought to restore tough-on-crime policies and remove what he sees as shackles on law enforcement, told a police union Monday that Obama’s restrictions “went too far.”
Trump’s order, he told the group, “will ensure that you can get the lifesaving gear that you need to do your job and send a strong message that we will not allow criminal activity, violence, and lawlessness to become the new normal.”
Under the program, created by Congress in 1990, the Pentagon has transferred $6.6 billion worth of military gear to local law enforcement agencies.
The Pentagon program has come under sharp criticism for weak controls and poor oversight.
In July, a report by the Government Accountability Office said an investigator set up a phony federal law enforcement agency and, with fake identification, was able to pick up $1.2 million worth of equipment from Defense Logistics Agency warehouses — including night vision goggles and fake pipe bombs used in training.
The report called on the Defense Logistics Agency to improve its internal controls.
In response, the defense agency said it shut that part of its program for about a week to certify that equipment was going to legitimate entities. It said it is changing policies and adding training and internal controls “to ensure the program vulnerabilities are eliminated.”
Use of surplus military equipment by police made headlines three years ago when Ferguson, Mo., erupted in violent protests after a white policeman shot and killed an unarmed black man.
Ferguson police responded to the protests with military weapons and armored vehicles — sparking a public outcry and criticism that the federal government had gone too far in helping to militarize local police departments.
In 2015, Obama announced that he would end the military grants of surplus armored vehicles, grenade launchers and high-powered weaponry like .50-caliber rifles to local law enforcement.
“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling that there’s an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” he said.
The impact of Obama’s order was largely symbolic since most of personnel carriers with tracks were outdated models from the Vietnam era, and few agencies had use for the grenade launchers, which were old models modified to shoot non-lethal devices like tear gas canisters.
The Defense Logistics Agency has continued to distribute other surplus equipment, including 875 mine-resistant trucks that were built to protect U.S. troops from roadside bombs during the Iraq war and more than 400 other armored vehicles.
The program also still distributes military rifles and ammunition as well as body armor, helmets, shields and other protective gear to police.
“It’s pretty clear that in many places around the country local police departments went overboard in acquiring and using this type of equipment,” said David Alan Sklansky, a law professor at Stanford University who has studied policing issues. “Once you have the stuff, it tends to be used.”