Stop giving surplus military gear to police departments.

[pnwmom]

Last edited Wed Jul 22, 2015, 10:09 PM - Edit history (1)

I wonder if this is something that Obama could accomplish immediately by executive order.

We don't need police departments armed with tanks and military style weapons against civilians. And we especially shouldn't build-in an encouragement to use them, such as including a condition that the tank be returned if it isn't used within 18 months.

And in case anyone's wondering, it appears to me that SWAT gear and military-style weapons are used disproportionately against minorities. I haven't forgotten about the baby that had his face half-blown off when a grenade was thrown into his crib last year because the police were looking for some uncle who was wanted for a drug charge.

ON EDIT: I have been informed that President Obama has ordered that tanks and grenade launches will no longer be provided to police departments. I wonder if there's any way to take back the ones that have already been provided.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html

NEENAH, Wis. — Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small.

The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.

During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”

SNIP

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http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-11-07/health/os-illegal-barbering-arrests-20101107_1_criminal-barbering-licensing-inspections-dave-ogden

As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business hours on a Saturday in August, handcuffing barbers in front of customers during a busy back-to-school weekend.

It was just one of a series of unprecedented raid-style inspections the Orange County Sheriff's Office recently conducted with a state regulating agency, targeting several predominantly black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Pine Hills area.


In "sweeps" on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people — the majority charged with "barbering without a license," a misdemeanor that state records show only three other people have been jailed in Florida in the past 10 years.

The operations were conducted without warrants, under the authority of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors, who can enter salons at will. Deputies said they found evidence of illegal activity, including guns, drugs and gambling. However, records show that during the two sweeps, and a smaller one in October, just three people were charged with anything other than a licensing violation.

Orange County sheriff's Capt. Dave Ogden, who commands the area that includes Pine Hills, described the operations as a "minuscule" part of a larger effort to snuff out crime in one of Central Florida's notorious hot spots.

SNIP

[daleanime]

1. K&R.....

[tammywammy]

2. President Barack Obama Bans Some Military-Style Equipment Provided To Police

05/18/2015

WASHINGTON -- In an unexpected move, President Barack Obama on Monday will ban the federal government from providing certain military equipment to police departments.

Effective immediately, the government will no longer provide local law enforcement with tracked armored vehicles, grenade launchers and bayonets. Other items like explosives and riot equipment will be transferred to police only if they provide additional certification and assurances that the gear will be used responsibly.

The changes stem from recommendations made to the president in a new report produced by a White House working group. Obama created the task force earlier this year via executive order.

The president's action is part of a broader effort to relieve tensions between law enforcement and minority communities after the deaths of several black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore; and other cities. In Ferguson, for example, local police rolled out armored tanks and riot gear in response to protests over the 2014 death of Michael Brown, a reaction that many saw as making the situation dramatically worse.

More at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/18/obama-military-equipment-police_n_7304504.html

[Recursion]

3. He banned it months ago (nt)

[pnwmom]

4. You're right. It's a step in the right direction but not far enough.

And what will happen to the armored tanks that are already in the hands of eager police departments?

[msongs]

5. hmm if they have surplus to give away they are making toooo much in the first place. the MIC gouging

taxpayers with elected government officials' consent

[pnwmom]

6. I agree. The whole program was a way to justify making more and more. n/t