Exclusive: White House to review ban on military gear for police - police leaders

[uawchild]

Source: Reuters

The White House will revisit a 2015 ban on police forces getting riot gear, armored vehicles and other military-grade equipment from the U.S. armed forces, two police organization directors told Reuters on Thursday.

Shortly after the recent shooting deaths of police officers, President Barack Obama agreed to review each banned item, the two law enforcement leaders said.

That could result in changes to the ban imposed in May 2015 on the transfer of some equipment from the military to police, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

Last year's ban came after a public outcry over police in cities, such as Ferguson, Missouri, using military-grade riot gear and armored vehicles during protests against police brutality.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-gear-exclusive-idUSKCN1012KW

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"A White House official said the administration regularly reviews what military equipment can be transferred to police and that current rules ensure police get “the tools that they need to protect themselves and their communities while at the same time providing the level of accountability that should go along with the provision of federal equipment.”

Pictures of police in riot gear and driving armored vehicles toward peaceful protesters sparked a national debate that drew attention to a program used by the U.S. military to unload its excess equipment on local police."


So, is this article saying the President is now being pressured to again give "riot gear, armored vehicles and other military-grade equipment from the U.S. armed forces" by police officials?

[villager]

1. What!? This President!? Bowing to rightwing pressure!? nt

[Equinox Moon]

3. Wow, don't have enough already?

I thought the plan was to have the police be less militaristic. Heck, they even were camouflage like they are in a jungle.

[PachobelsCannon]

7. Looks like they are gearing up for more 'unrest'.

This does not look good.

[Midnight Writer]

4. It ain't the gear. Hell, who doesn't want cops to have body armor if they need it.

It is the Dirty Harry them-against us mentality of some police departments and some cops. And this mentality is the reflection of much of the citizenry.

Who doesn't want cops to have body armor to protect them against hunter-killer type attacks like we saw in Dallas and Baton Rouge? Who doesn't want cops to have superior weapons to the criminals who are allowed to buy any military hardware they want?
Who doesn't want police forces to have access to remote controlled robots who can approach dangerous crime scenes without risking the lives of cops? Who doesn't want a trained cop with the best sniper rifle made in case of a worst possible case scenario?

The real problem is this escalation of minor situations. A broken tail light, not using a turn signal during a lane change, a kid playing with a toy gun, a health care provider trying to get his autistic charge to return to the facility, selling lose cigarettes or used CD's. These all turn into life and death situations when you have cops who are not qualified, not trained and not screened, and when the policy of the Department is "Take'm down, zero tolerance, us against them, show'em your nuts".

[Separation]

6. It's become a huge problem.

I can't put my finger on it, but it definitely was when the mentality went from citizens to civilians as how we are looked at.

[Igel]

9. Neither term, civilian nor citizen, is value-free.

The words have a variety of meanings by context. A lot of people don't get this. (Lots of words are polysemous, have more than one meaning. Next to me is a cat. A four-footed mammal. Not a lion or panther, but an American short-hair house cat. On a construction site a cat may be a caterpillar. At times you could call a person a "cat." A "gay cat" was a young hobo; "he's one cool cat" is old-fashioned, but still understandable. A catamaran is called a cat. So what a "cat" is depends on context, just a a lot of other words do. Not a hard concept.)

"Civilian" has been the usual term for many, many decades. In the '70s when I was a teen, it was the standard term. It's not new. They're not military, but police. Firefighters and police aren't civilians in this (non-military) usage.

In a military context, police and firefighters are civilians because they're not soldiers.

So are police non-civilians? Depends on the context.

"Citizen" includes non-police, it includes police, it includes the military. To contrast citizen against police is to say that police aren't citizens. That's like the "we the people" usage that doens't include the apparently non-people that we don't like. Or the 10% that say they're the 99%. If the military occupies your town, it's civilians occupying civilians. There's no contrast.

No, the mentality shifted in the '80s when some parts of some cities were nearly off limits to police, and when the police found themselves seriously outgunned. But in the last year we've seen two instances of big scary things we don't understand and want banned used to do good. the first was when a gunman had some hostages and had others pinned down. An APC was used to get between the gunman and those trapped, while protecting police from being shot. The second was when a BearCat was used to ram though the wall in Orlando and stop the killer in that club.

Even then, the shift in "mentality" was slight. People are intimidated by big scary pieces of equipment. At least some. We live not too far from a national guard depot, and sometimes they practice and some of those big scary pieces of equipment are on the roads. My kid thinks they're really, really cool. Then again, he doesn't assume that they're coming to get him but if they're used, they're going to be used against bad guys. (He doesn't feel any solidarity with bad guys.)

[truthisfreedom]

5. It's gotten to the point where, in large cities at least, we need random third-party monitoring

of police activities. I believe that every department should have random third-party unmarked cars assigned to police calls to shoot video and provide eyewitness accounts of police actions. I believe that if police never knew when they were being watched, they'd be a hell of a lot more accountable.

[Igel]

10. Body cameras were catapulted into the news last summer.

As of then, there were a couple of decent studies looking at the effect of body cameras on police-civilian interactions.

They sharply reduced really poor outcomes. They cut down on violence. This made the news.

What usually didn't make the news was that about 50% of the time the difference was in the civilian's response that changed, the civilian didn't engage in escalation. If they knew they were being recorded, they complied faster, were less abusive, and resisted less. The other 50% of the time it was the police's response, being more civil, less abusive, and escalating the use of force more slowly and deliberately. The news media only saw half the story, the half that the public wanted to see because it was in line with their suspicions.

Also not headline material was that if the civilian weren't told that a recording was made by the police their response was like they weren't being recorded. If the police carried dummy cameras and said they were wearing body cameras, it would have had the same effect.

I suspect that in some cases of video what we see is a civilian acting out even more because s/he has a videographer ally.

[GOLGO 13]

8. I have no problem with more protection for police officers.