USA TODAY International Edition
Trump plans to rearm police
Law enforcement would again receive surplus military gear
WASHINGTON The Trump administration is preparing to lift a controversial ban on the transfer of some surplus military equipment to police departments whose battlefield-style response to rioting in a St. Louis suburb three years ago prompted a halt to the program.
The plan, outlined in documents obtained by USA TODAY, would roll back an Obama administration executive order that blocked armored vehicles, large-caliber weapons, ammunition and other heavy equipment from being repurposed from foreign battlefields to America’s streets.
Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to address the annual meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, and he may outline the program changes there.
Administration officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The administration’s action would restore “the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources,” according to a administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups.
“Assets that would otherwise be scrapped can be repurposed to help state, local and tribal law enforcement better protect
public safety and reduce crime.”
The fraternal organization and some other law enforcement groups have long been pressing for a reversal of the Obama administration policy, arguing that access to such equipment was needed, especially in cashstrapped communities, to better respond to local unrest.
Local access to the high-powered gear was put on national display in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., where armored vehicles and heavily armed police clashed with protesters for days after the police shooting of an unarmed 18-yearold black man by a white officer.
The deployment of such equipment, President Obama argued at the time, cast the police as an “occupying force,” deepening a divide between law enforcement and a wary community.
“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they’re an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” Obama said in announcing the ban in 2015.
The ban was among a host of recommendations from a White House advisory group formed after the Ferguson rioting.
The Obama order did allow for the limited use of other surplus — aircraft, wheeled tactical vehicles, battering rams and riot gear — on the condition it was approved by the federal government.
The surplus-sharing agreement, also known as the “1033 program,” was created by Congress nearly 30 years ago as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It was intended to assist local law enforcement in drug investigations but was expanded in 1997 to include all local law enforcement operations, including counterterrorism. Since then, according to the government, more than $5 billion in gear has been transferred to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.