Administration Announces Plans to Restrict Police Forces’ Access to Military Equipment...

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I don't know about anybody else but I am adamantly and unequivocally opposed to militarization of our community police forces. PERIOD! The federal government has ben providing police forces with military hardware and paraphernalia since the 1990's. President Obama is scaling back the program as the White House announced Monday "... that bayonets, weaponized vehicles and grenade launchers will no longer be available to local police and that other equipment such as riot gear and other types of armored vehicles would be subject to a more onerous approval process."

Militarization of local police forces is purely and simply a very very bad idea. Unless you don't mind the possibility of you or your children actually living in a right wing police state someday.

POLITICO - CAMDEN, N.J. - The nation’s largest police union is fighting back against a White House plan to restrict local police forces’ ability to acquire military-style gear, accusing President Barack Obama’s task force of politicizing officers’ safety.

The White House on Monday announced that bayonets, weaponized vehicles and grenade launchers will no longer be available to local police and that other equipment such as riot gear and other types of armored vehicles would be subject to a more onerous approval process.

The move came alongside the release of broader recommendations for “21st-Century Policing” and is part of the Obama administration’s response to a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police that has provoked a national debate about the relationship between police forces and the communities they serve.

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told POLITICO on Monday that he hopes to have a White House meeting as soon as Tuesday to discuss his concerns about how the plans could put cops at risk.

“The FOP is the most aggressive law enforcement advocacy group in Washington, and we will be at our most aggressive in asserting the need for officer safety and officer rights in any police changes that are to be effected,” Pasco said.

He said in particular he objects to a measure that would require police departments to get permission from city governments to acquire certain equipment, including riot batons, helmets and shields, through federal programs.

“We need to only look back to Baltimore to see what happens when officers are sent out ill-equipped in a disturbance situation,” he said. “Because you don’t like the optics, you can’t send police officers out to be hurt or killed.”

Not really surprising we are hearing this. First police protection and next we'll see the fear card being played. Public safety and security. Works every time.

Yet Obama, announcing the policy in Camden, N.J., said the policies are the result of input from law enforcement.

“We’re doing these things because we’re listening to what law enforcement is telling us,” Obama said.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like it’s an occupying force as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” he said. “So we’re going to prohibit equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments,” he said, while for other items, the administration would ensure officers have appropriate training.

But the sharp response from the police union illustrates the challenge before Obama — cracking down on controversial police activities while not alienating the law enforcement community

In recent days, Obama and his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, have taken care to honor fallen officers, while also being responsive to communities still simmering over a series of incidents of police brutality, including in Baltimore last month when 25-year-old Freddie Gray died after suffering severe injuries while in police custody.

Obama on Monday said the reform effort is everyone’s responsibility.

“We cannot ask the police to contain and control problems that the rest of us are unwilling to face,” Obama said while in Camden, which has a police force that is considered a role model of improved relations. He also said, “The overwhelming majority of police officers are good and honest and fair. They care deeply about their communities.”

Obama’s allies on Monday rallied around the administration’s reform plan.

There certainly are things communities, states. and the federal government can do. Increasing the militarization of police forces should not be among the options.



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Via: Memeorandum