Congressional Republicans are pushing to restore a program that allowed local police officers to reuse surplus military equipment, arguing that the president’s unilateral decision to terminate the program more than a year ago put lives unnecessarily at risk.
“Day after day, as you turn on the television and see events happening in places like Ferguson or Charlotte or Orlando or Dallas, whether it’s from the standpoint of protests or terrorist events, sometimes police are our first line of defense,” Rep. John Ratcliffe said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
The Texas Republican has been spearheading the effort to pass his chamber’s version of the PLUS Act, an acronym for Protecting Lives Using Surplus Equipment. The effort has won support from a sizable number of members, and his bill has 31 cosponsors in the House and a companion bill in the Senate authored by Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
The legislation would reverse Executive Order 13688, signed by President Obama in 2015. The 50-page order put significant restrictions on the so-called 1033 Program, which allowed police to reuse military equipment.
The order placed some items on a list of “restricted equipment,” including .50-caliber firearms and weaponized vehicles, preventing it from being recycled and used by local police. Items including riot gear, breaching apparatuses, and wheeled vehicles were placed on a list of “controlled equipment,” making them more difficult for police to obtain.
Ratcliffe said he believed the president’s decision was motivated more by politics than by realities on the ground. “The president unilaterally moved to recall much of this equipment in response to events like Ferguson. Politically, he’s taken the position that local law enforcement has gotten too militarized, or that certain equipment looks like military equipment. That includes things like track vehicles and ballistic vests and helmets.”
“But with the rise of terrorist events and activities, we’re often counting on police to be our first line of defense, and they need military-grade equipment to respond,” Ratcliffe said. “And it’s not just terrorist events. It’s emergency situations, crisis and rescue situations, natural disasters, and a whole list of well-documented circumstances where the public and public safety benefits from the fact that state and local law enforcement have this type of equipment.”
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With just weeks remaining before a newly-elected Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, it seems unlikely the proposal will be heard by the full body this year. But with intense feelings surrounding the issue, it also seems likely to be revived next year.
Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, said the law enforcement community supported reviving the surplus program. “I had a hearing on this involving a lot of representatives for state and local police organizations and sheriff’s associations pointing to the benefits,” he said.
“My bill relates to a federal program that doesn’t cost taxpayers any money. It’s efficient, it’s effective, and it involves equipment that’s already been paid for. It’s simply repurposed to aid state and local law enforcement,” he said.
“Right now, it goes back to the government where it is simply destroyed,” Ratcliffe added. “It is not repurposed again. The government is destroying vehicles, weapons and equipment simply because they don’t want state and local law enforcement to have it.”
