Executive Order on Police Militarization

[woo me with science]

21. The militarization ITSELF needs to be stopped and reversed.

Last edited Mon Dec 1, 2014, 09:49 PM - Edit history (1)

The programs that *this* president resurrected and expanded need to be ended.

It's almost certain that if the police agencies cooperate, the ACLU will find that the militarization trend has accelerated since Kraska's studies more than a decade ago. All of the policies, incentives and funding mechanisms that were driving the trend then are still in effect now. And most of them have grown in size and scope.

The George W. Bush administration actually began scaling down the Byrne and COPS programs in the early 2000s, part of a general strategy of leaving law enforcement to states and localities. But the Obama administration has since resurrected both programs. The Byrne program got a $2 billion surge in funding as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, by far the largest budget in the program's 25-year history. Obama also gave the COPS program $1.55 billion that same year, a 250 percent increase over its 2008 budget, and again the largest budget in the program's history. Vice President Joe Biden had championed both programs during his time in the Senate.

The Pentagon's 1033 program has also exploded under Obama. In the program's monthly newsletter (Motto: "From Warfighter to Crimefighter&quot , its director announced in October 2011 that his office had given away a record $500 million in military gear in fiscal year 2011, which he noted, "passes the previous mark by several hundred million dollars." He added, "I believe we can exceed that in FY 12.”

Then there are the Department of Homeland Security's anti-terrorism grants. The Center for Investigative Reporting found in a 2011 investigation that since 2001, DHS has given out more than $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many of which have been used to purchase military-grade guns, tanks, armor, and armored personnel carriers. The grants have gone to such unlikely terrorism targets as Fargo, N.D.; Canyon County, Idaho; and Tuscaloosa, Ala.

The programs need to be ended.

We need a public, national database on police violence toward citizens.

And we need relentless attention from the DOJ to cases of police violence until this garbage stops.

Cameras to watch the militarized police are not enough. The militarization must be reversed. The police state must be ended. I see nothing serious from this administration showing that they have any thought, much less intention, of doing that.

This ongoing militarization is federally driven, bipartisan, and as much a part of the growing police state as the mass surveillance, prison industrial complex, and assaults on journalism, other political protesters, and whistleblowers.

We need much more than cameras. We need clear action to REVERSE this active militarization of our police forces by corporate politicians.

You will know the corporate Third Way by their refusal to demand an actual end to militarization.
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