As the Department of Justice faces increasing pressure to examine the militarization of American law enforcement agencies, police associations have kicked off lobbying efforts aimed at keeping intact the Pentagon program that allows police to acquire military gear. This week a group of politicians, community leaders and celebrities joined the community-empowerment group Center for Global Policy Solutions to pen a letter to President Obama asking how the federal government intends to change policing policies after the heavy-handed response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The letter urges officials to address police race relations as well as departments’ increasing militarization. It calls on the Obama Administration to encourage increases in law enforcement training, accountability and diversity, along with the suspension of Pentagon programs “that transfer military equipment into the hands of local police departments.” From the letter: Investigations into the Ferguson shooting are ongoing, and many of the specific facts remain unclear for now. However, the pattern is too obvious to be a coincidence and too frequent to be a mistake. From policing to adjudication and incarceration, it is time for the country to counter the effects of systemic racial bias, which impairs the perceptions, judgment, and behavior of too many of our law enforcement personnel and obstructs the ability of our police departments and criminal justice institutions to protect and serve all communities in a fair and just manner. In addition, the militarization of police departments across the country is creating conditions that will further erode the trust that should exist between residents and the police who serve them. The proliferation of machine guns, silencers, armored vehicles and aircraft, and camouflage in local law enforcement units does not bode well for police-community relations, the future of our cities, or our country. And surely neither systemic racial bias nor police department militarization serves the interests of the countless police officers who bravely place their lives at risk every day. “We’re at our zero moment as a nation,” Center for Global Policy Solutions CEO Maya Rockeymoore said of the effort. “If we continue to let this go unaddressed, we’re going to have Fergusons springing up all across the country.” Meanwhile, with regard to calls for police demilitarization, police lobbying groups are vocally calling on government officials to leave law enforcement’s military toys alone. Last week, the National Tactical Officers Association shot off more than a thousand emails to Capitol Hill staffers urging them to encourage lawmakers to protect the Pentagon’s 1033 program. “The police have to be one step ahead of the criminal element, have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. You don’t want a community to be taken over by one or many criminals,” NTOA Executive Director Mark Lomax told the The Daily Beast of the effort. “We’re definitely for equipping our law enforcement officials out there properly, with proper training and proper policies.” The nation’s largest police organization, the Fraternal Order of Police, is also making its presence known at the Capitol by meeting with lawmakers ahead of Congress’s return from its August recess. According to reports, the police groups are concerned that some lawmakers could use a September stopgap funding bill needed to prevent government shutdown to halt military equipment transfers to law enforcement.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:17:48 +0000
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