Law enforcementChanges to Pentagon equipment transfers to local police not likely

Some lawmakers and their constituents are calling for restrictions on the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which transfers excess military equipment to law-enforcement agencies through the Defense Logistics AgencyLaw Enforcement Support Office. Congressional insiders say, however, that little will be done in the short-term.

The militarization of local police forces, as exemplified in the police reaction to the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri has, brought together many Democratic and Republican lawmakers, both insisting that the Pentagon should review its criteria for transferring equipment to police departments.

Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan), the House Judiciary Committee’s leading Democrat, has asked the committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) to hold hearings on the militarization of police forces. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has raised questions about what he called the “cartoonish imbalance between the equipment some police departments possess and the constituents they serve,” and Representative Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) plans to propose a bill that would restrict certain military equipment from local police forces.

“Before another small town’s police force gets a $700,000 gift from the Defense Department that it can’t maintain or manage, it behooves us to reign in the Pentagon’s 1033 program and revisit the merits of a militarized America,” Johnson wrote in a “dear colleague” letter last Thursday.

Defense Onereports that despite the calls to make changes to the 1033 program, some congressional lawmakers and staffers familiar with the program claim that just 5 percent of past equipment transfers from the Pentagon involve weapons, and that tactical vehicles made up only 0.35 percent of transfers. “This program protects taxpayers, and it protects our nation’s law enforcement men and women as they do a dangerous job,” said John Noonan, a spokesman for the Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program.

In November 2013, the Pentagon provided two non-armored Humvees, a cargo trailer, and a generator to the Ferguson Police Department, but USA Today reports that between August 2010 and February 2013, the St. Louis County police received twelve 5.56 millimeter rifles and six .45-caliber pistols from the Pentagon. Noonan insists that equipment transferred to police departments has been approved by DHS, adding that “the vast majority of what is actually transferred tends to be soft. It is items like radios and uniforms and office supplies.”

While Congress debates whether to make changes to the 1033 program, Attorney General Eric Holder has expressed his concerns to authorities in Ferguson regarding the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. House Speaker John Boehner has stated that he “strongly support a full and thorough investigation of the events surrounding (Brown’s) death, and subsequent actions, including the detention of journalists covering this heartbreaking situation,” though he has yet to support a hearing on the 1033 program, suggesting that the issue is unlikely to make the agenda when Congress returns from recess in September.