President Obama’s new restrictions on transferring Defense Department equipment to local police, in reality, adds only one new piece of gear to the “banned” list: the bayonet.
Every other item on the “prohibited equipment list” released Monday was already a no-go for the Defense Department, a senior defense official told the Washington Examiner.
In 1999, the Pentagon banned the transfer of grenade launchers, which civilian law enforcement was using to fire tear gas. It banned transfer of tracked vehicles, predominantly the M113 armored personnel carrier, in 2011. The department continued prohibiting the transfer of .50 caliber or higher firearms and ammunition to local law enforcement since the intra-agency transfer program began in the early 1990s. The same went for weaponized aircraft and vessels, which were never provided.
Another item on the prohibited list, camouflage uniforms, hasn’t been transferred by the Pentagon since 2008.
“The department was not providing a majority of the items on the list,” said the senior defense official who asked not to be identified.
Stanford Law professor David Sklansky said the list is not as important as the message the White House was sending with Monday’s executive order.
“The most important aspect…is the signal it is sending: that we should be dialing back the militarization of American policing and returning to the very important and still very far completed agenda of community policing,” Sklansky said.
The bayonet had remained on the “go” list for Defense Department transfer even after congressional pushback in September, when the Senate Homeland Security Committee asked why 12,000 of the rifle blades had been distributed to local police.
Law enforcement agencies told the Pentagon they weren’t using the bayonets in their traditional sense, but that the hardened blades were useful for prying open car doors or cutting through seat belts in accidents.
Obama found the bayonets to be “incompatible with the concept of civilian law enforcement,” he said in his executive order, and that utility knives could be used instead.
The Pentagon also still provides tens of thousands of excess small arms, weapons sights and night-vision goggles to law enforcement, in addition to riot gear and shields. The Defense Department is responsible for tracking each of the pieces for the life of the item, and each ultimately has to be returned to the department. But it does not matter what condition the item is returned in, as long as the serial number can be tracked. All those items are still allowed for transfer under Monday’s executive order.
The order also does not ban the transfer of mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, which were fielded by the tens of thousands during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to better protect troops from roadside bombs.
Since the transfer program began in the 1990s, 625 MRAPs and 5,200 Humvees have been provided to law enforcement agencies around the U.S.
The ubiquitous combat trucks have come to symbolize the militarization of local law enforcement to opponents, and the senior defense official said there’s a long waiting list of U.S. police departments requesting more.
Monday’s order allows the transfers to continue, but “because of the lethal nature of the equipment, and/or the potential negative impact on the community,” requesting agencies will have to go through additional steps to acquire the vehicles, including a “detailed justification” for the vehicles.
Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation and the retired chief of the Redlands, Calif., police department, said the changes Obama put in place Monday don’t put onerous limits on police departments’ ability to acquire high-tech, military-style gear.
The 1033 military surplus program is just one of three different federal government channels in which local police can acquire federally funded equipment and vehicles.
The other two, administered through the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, already had rules requiring police departments to make presentations and seek permission from local officials before the gear could be transferred.
The 1033 program was the only one that didn’t require a more transparent, publicly accountable vetting process, Bueermann said.
“Before you could acquire something like a MRAP, you had to make a presentation to [local officials] essentially explaining what you’re going to do and how you’re going to use it, and this is really just the same type of mechanism,” he said.
Obama, he said, worked with police departments and organizations around the country to come up with a fair, transparent process that applies to all departments.
“Thoughtful police departments are already doing this. This just establishes a rule for everybody. If a police department wants an armored vehicle, they can still acquire one through the private sector, spending their own money. This is a reasonable response.”
Susan Crabtree contributed to this report.
