When Rep. Hank Johnson began working on a bill last year to limit a Pentagon program giving surplus military equipment to local police, it was an obscure issue.
Then Ferguson happened. The Georgia Democrat now finds himself in the middle of a national debate about the militarization of local police.
After weeks of unrest in the Missouri town over the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a police officer, Johnson now has a Republican co-author and a handful of GOP backers on the bill.
It didn’t hurt that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., an outspoken libertarian and a vocal opponent of government intrusion on civil liberties, penned an op-ed in Time Magazine during the Ferguson riots calling for the demilitarization of police.
The bill, which Johnson filed last week, has attracted 20 co-sponsors, including three key Republicans: Reps. Raul Labrador of Idaho, Justin Amash of Michigan and Tom McClintock of California. Labrador signed on as a main author of the bill after brokering a few modifications with Johnson.
Last week, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., held a hearing on the militarization of local law enforcement agencies. Paul testified and called the militarization of police across the country “crazy out of control.”
Johnson spent his August and early September working with Republicans to try to win their support and talked with the Washington Examiner about the experience. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
How did a congressman from Georgia get involved in this issue?
Actually, my legislation has been a work in progress over this year … I was in a pre-Christmas parade for a small municipality in my district. My position in the parade was directly behind the mayor, and the mayor was riding in a great big military vehicle that I couldn’t see over or around.
And so I walked the parade behind this great big, massive hulking vehicle and I just wondered where it came from, so I asked my staff to follow up. They stumbled upon this Department of Defense 1033 Program that allows for state and local law enforcement agencies to petition the DoD for surplus military-grade weaponry and other items as well.
Once we started looking into it, we also found reports that some of this equipment that had been transferred to local law enforcement agencies around the country had gone missing.
So what happened when you saw the riots in Ferguson and the police using similar vehicles and equipment?
I was watching TV and watching the news reports and everything of what was going on up in Ferguson and I saw these big, hulking vehicles with people coming out of gun turrets on top of tanks — it looked like — and pointing their automatic weapons at the public. It looked like a war scene. So come to find out that was equipment that was obtained by the Ferguson police department under the 1033 Program.
The whole thing has exploded since then.
Everybody has seen the visuals, and it doesn’t look good for this kind of stuff to be used against Americans who are simply exercising their constitutional right to protest.
What does the bill do?
The basic bill prohibits the transfer of certain military-grade weaponry from the Office of Defense Logistics to these law enforcement agencies across the country. So it bans the things like automatic weapons that are .50-caliber or more, things like armored vehicles and tanks and MRAPs, and also armored drones, rocket-fired grenades, silencers.
So how did you start getting Republican support?
Before the recess, we had sent out a letter to all of the congressional offices testing the waters … and then Ferguson happened and we sent that same letter around to the House members, and, of course this time we got more bites and we actually got a number of Republicans and we’ve worked with Congressman Labrador’s office.
What changes did you make to the bill to convince more Republicans to back it?
One suggestion had to do with aircraft because the original bill as it was drafted included a prohibition on the transfer of aircraft. Due to the astute observation of one of the Republicans, helicopters and planes are good for things like rescues and finding and fighting fires … It’s useful for certain departments to have aircraft, so we took out the prohibition on aircraft and replaced it with a measure that would exclude certain types of aircraft that are outfitted in a certain way.
Are you upset that the GOP-controlled House hasn’t had hearings on the subject?
I’m not surprised at all so I can’t be upset. The House is in gridlock, and I don’t expect that magically gridlock will be broken because of the five-week recess period.
I’ve had discussions with Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member on the [House Armed Services Committee], requesting hearings. We will keep requesting a hearing and keeping pushing the issue.
