I was joined on this week’s KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), to discuss his “Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act” [PDF] which he plans to introduce when the U.S. House returns from their endless recess in September.
He’s been at work on the bill long before the local “RoboCops” hit the streets when Ferguson, Missouri blew up recently after the police killing of Michael Brown. As Johnson described the legislation in his March 2014 USA Today op-ed, presciently headlined “Small town American shouldn’t resemble a war zone”, the bill would “ban MRAPs, other armored personnel carriers, drones, assault weapons and aircraft” from being transferred to local police departments under the Pentagon’s “1033 Program” and “ensure that the Department of Defense undertakes an annual accounting of what’s been transferred, by whom and to whom to prevent military items from being auctioned on eBay or sold to friends.”
“My main hope is to stop the flow of this military grade equipment to local law enforcement agencies throughout America,” Johnson told me during our interview today. “We’ve been flooding the streets with this surplus military weaponry, and I think the situation in Ferguson exemplifies what happens when you have too much powerful equipment in the hands of folks who don’t have the judgment or the training to utilize it properly.”
But has the horse already left the barn on this issue? And does the Congressman stand a chance of getting his bill through our broken U.S. Congress, even with some apparent bi-partisan support for curbing police militarization from folks like Republican 2016 Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, who recently called for the same in a Time magazine op-ed? You’ll have to listen below to hear Johnson’s thoughts on those questions.
After the Congressman left, I discussed a few other related items, such as the voter registration drive now taking place in Ferguson, and took a bunch of calls on all of the above, including at least one amazing one, in which the caller named “Al” insisted that “minorities are in worse shape than they’ve ever been” in this country. He says that “since 1965 we have been going down hill as a nation.” Hmm… I wonder what might have happened during that year to make him feel that way?
I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s program…
“But has the horse already left the barn on this issue? And does the Congressman stand a chance of getting his bill through our broken U.S. Congress …”
A constitutional challenge to the militarization of police forces (“the warrior cops” – Balko) is not likely to get widespread results.
So, your question is focused on where the rubber meets the road.
The lobbying of the weapons industry (we are number one in weapons sales) will militate against any resolution of this dangerous problem.
Plus, if the arms industry does not get rid of existing stuff they can’t make any new stuff for our tax dollars to be spent on.
Check out this map of military hardware distributed to counties in the U.S.
Thanks Dredd, for the link to the NYTimes interactive map of what military equipment has gone where. It’s a real eye opener – first I checked out some counties in Montana, since that’s nearest me, and wondered WTH Flathead County, with a population of ~90,000, needs with an armoured vehicle. But then, given some of the Aryan Nation’s and other militia types in Montana, Flathead might have more legitimate need of an armoured vehicle than most urban police departments.
But then there’s places like San Juan County, NM – 4 armoured vehicles and 2 helicopters for a largely rural county with only 120,000 residents? Really?