Some Senators Are Freaking Out Because The White House Is Pitching Some Extremely Minor Police Reforms

from the fainting-couches-all-around! dept

Some senators are getting all angried up about proposed police reforms President Biden possibly might deliver as an executive order. Reporting earlier this month indicated Biden had something planned, but no one involved in breaking the news appeared to have any details.

President Joe Biden plans to sign executive actions on police reform as early as this month, three people familiar with the plans said, as his administration seeks to unilaterally jump-start an issue that is a top priority for a key constituency.

The executive actions would follow Biden’s uphill battle to advance voting rights legislation, and they could coincide with a similar effort by some Democratic lawmakers to revive the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which stalled on Capitol Hill after attempts to craft a bipartisan measure failed.

NBC spoke to two people "familiar with the discussions" and got nothing useful at all out of them.

The executive actions on policing are still being finalized, the sources said. They did not know how the actions would differ from steps the Justice Department took last year when it imposed new restrictions on chokeholds and “no-knock” warrants.

Really powerful reporting. Apparently a few senators have seen a draft of the proposed executive order and they've decided to peremptorily respond to something that may never happen or may be altered extensively before its issued. This is from Senator Chuck Grassley's site, which implies something horrible is coming and that he and other "Senate Republicans" aren't having any of it.

A group of Senate Republicans, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), today are expressing serious concern about a proposed executive order (EO) by the Biden Administration that would limit law enforcement access to nonlethal and lifesaving resources, and impose greater restrictions on federal grant dollars. The planned executive order comes amid a national surge in violent crime while the “defund the police” movement has eroded morale and curbed recruiting in police departments across the country.

Fortunately, the letter [PDF] these senators sent to the White House actually has a few details in it. Once again, we have no idea if, when, or in what state the executive order will arrive, but this is apparently what has been seen in the draft version.

Specifically, according to screenshots of a draft of such EO, the Administration would unilaterally impose the following new policies on law enforcement: restrictions to the 1033 program, expanding pattern and practice authority, planned expansion of 18 U.S.C § 242 prosecutions, and conditioning state and local law enforcement grants.

Leaked screenshots of the alleged EO can (barely) be seen here. But what's contained in these accusations (I guess??) doesn't indicate a wholesale disruption of law enforcement enterprise. In fact, most of this has already been done before, issued by presidents and rescinded by their successors or vice versa.

1033 restrictions have been tried before. They've never lasted. And those put in place are usually far from effective in preventing local law enforcement agencies from acquiring military gear. President Obama tried it about a human lifetime ago and that effort didn't even survive his term as Commander in Chief.

"Expanding pattern and practice authority" most likely means removing the handcuffs placed on federal investigations of local law enforcement agencies by President Trump. It's not an expansion. It's just a return to form for the DOJ, which has engaged in "pattern and practice" investigations for decades.

The same can be said for "expansion" of 18 USC 242 prosecutions. These "deprivation of rights under color of law" prosecutions have long been part of the DOJ's daily business. It's only in recent years -- under a very pro-law enforcement president -- that they've been dialed back. If anything, this will just be a regression to the mean, rather than the creation of some souped-up prosecutorial machine that goes after bad cops.

This all dovetails into some cherry-picked stats stripped of context and served up as a justification for allowing cops to do whatever they want and acquire whatever they want.

Such potential restrictions on the 1033 program would come at a time when law enforcement needs our support more than ever. We have spoken about the unprecedented 30-percent spike in murders that began in the summer of 2020. It continues to this day. In 2021, police officers recorded the highest number of on-duty deaths on record. According to the Fraternal Order of Police, 63 officers were murdered and 346 officers were shot. They also reported ambush-style attacks on law enforcement officers spiked 115 percent in 2021. Police officers will face a grim reality if this EO is enacted and their lifesaving equipment is restricted from them. Violent crime will continue to skyrocket when police officers are unable to stop these crimes and save innocent lives. We cannot understand why any elected official would want to stop law enforcement from safely doing their jobs other than to be able to tell their base of voters they are defunding the police.

There is no effort to defund local law enforcement agencies contained in this executive order. First of all, the federal government simply cannot do that. Funding is a completely local function. It can deny access to federal grants, but this is something that almost never happens. Grants earmarked for law enforcement agencies receive almost zero oversight, much like the 1033 program the Biden Administration may or may not alter. Grassley also appears to have forgotten the previous president threatened to withhold federal grants all the time if cities or their law enforcement agencies angered him.

A spike is not a trend and the reason more officers are dying than ever is because of COVID. And it will continue to get worse for officers since so many of them are involved in fighting vaccine mandates and other COVID-related safety measures. And if agencies are having trouble re-staffing, they might want to take long looks in the mirror to understand why that might be. Spending decades destroying trust and community relationships tends to cause recruitment problems. Playing the eternal victim while simultaneously rejecting common sense safety measures during a pandemic isn't going to win the hearts and minds of anyone worth hiring.

The letter wraps up with this incredible paragraph:

These hard-left policies are extremely ill-advised, dangerous to Americans, and would only further demoralize law enforcement. Along with the alarming rise in violence against officers, police departments continue to report low morale among officers that is directly related to the dangerous “defund the police” rhetoric. This is careless rhetoric that has lasting consequences to the men and women who risk their lives every day to keep our communities safe, and the EO’s policies are simply an extension of that rhetoric.

These are far from "hard-left" policies. The DOJ has engaged in plenty of what's being proposed while working for right-wing administrations. There's nothing about this that's dangerous to Americans. The only threat it possibly poses is to bad cops. Those are the people these senators are defending by calling any small change to current policies (or reversions to old policies) permanently damaging to law enforcement. To be sure, law enforcement is in mid-crisis. But it's not going to emerge from that crisis using a blend of hands-off oversight and zero accountability. These senators are just shilling for the worst of the worst while pretending it's nothing more than a left-wing power grab designed to grab the attention of Biden's voter base.

Filed Under: 1033, eo 1033, joe biden, police reforms, weaponized police

Two Studies Show Giving Military Gear To Cops Doesn't Result In Lower Crime Rates

from the law-enforcement:-we-would-like-to-continue-to-define-insanity-tyvm dept

One of President Trump's main goals while in office was to roll back anything his predecessor had put in place. One of his earliest executive orders removed the (minimal) restrictions Barack Obama had placed on the Defense Department's 1033 program. This program allowed local law enforcement agencies to acquire military gear at almost zero cost -- something that had been used and abused for years until the sight of an armored vehicle rolling up on protesters in Ferguson, Missouri proved to be a bit too much for Americans and their Congressional representatives.

Trump's reopening of the 1033 program was based on a couple of factors: his all-encompassing love of all things law enforcement and some dubious research that claimed giving cops access to war gear actually reduced crime.

That was the point made by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions ahead of the rollback.

President Trump is serious about this mission. He is doing all he can to restore law and order and support our police across America. And that is why, today, I am here to announce that President Trump is issuing an executive order that will make it easier to protect yourselves and your communities. He is rescinding restrictions from the prior administration that limited your agencies' ability to get equipment through federal programs, including life saving gear like Kevlar vests and helmets and first responder and rescue equipment like what they’re using in Texas right now.

[...]

Those restrictions went too far. We will not put superficial concerns above public safety.

Those "superficial concerns" included genuine concerns that deploying war gear against US citizens tends to make officers think they're soldiers in a war zone, rather than public servants who need a solid relationship with those they serve to make meaningful changes that reduce crime and increase public safety.

The push for more distribution of military gear was backed by a study by the American Economic Association, which claimed law enforcement agencies that utilized the 1033 program were more effective at lowering crime rates. That data has now been examined by two other sets of researchers, and the conclusions they've reached contradict the AEA's findings.

When Emory scholars read the studies, they noticed statistical flaws in the analysis. They set out to rigorously test those two previous studies’ claims by replicating them. They utilized the same 2014 NPR data and applied the studies’ same methods of analysis.

What immediately got the attention of the Emory scholars was that the studies were doing analysis at the county level, not the municipal level (i.e., the individual jurisdictions of cities). So, there wasn’t a way to directly compare which local agencies received SME and their specific crime rates. That’s because the federal government only reported the 1033 Program data at the county level.

Fortunately, there was more data available now to double-check the claims made by these earlier studies. Obama's 1033 program reforms mandated more reporting on acquisition, which gave these researchers more to work with. The granular detail missing from the first studies was included in the second examination.

It was only after Emory used the new, agency-level data in analysis that they determined the SME didn’t reduce crime.

“It crystalizes so many of the concerns and claims both pro and con about policing in the U.S. It raises the matter of funding the police and how do we provide resources to the police — through money or giving them equipment. It raises the matter of police militarization — that the police look and act like they are soldiers at war against citizens,” [Associate Professor Michael] Owens says. “And it raises questions about efficiency — costs and benefits."

It's not just Emory researchers arriving at this conclusion. A simultaneously-released study by the University of Michigan professor Kenneth Lowande says the same thing:

I use 3.8 million archived inventory records to estimate the magnitude of sources of bias in existing studies of the 1033 Program. I show that most variation in militarization comes from previously unobserved sources, which implies that studies that show crime-reduction benefits are unreliable. I then leverage recent policy changes to evaluate the effect of military equipment: the Obama Administration recalled property under Executive Order 13688, which resulted in a forced demilitarization of several hundred departments. Difference-in-difference estimates of agencies that retained similar equipment show negligible or undetectable impacts on violent crime or officer safety.

Of course, these studies have drawn some criticism. Law enforcement officials -- who've performed no research of their own -- dispute these findings.

"This is just a symptom of the larger defund the police movement and this has turned political," retired police Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith, a spokesperson for the nonprofit National Police Association, which educates the public on policing in America, told ABC News. "Obama took it away, Trump gave it back, and now we’ll probably see Biden take it away again so that they can say, ‘I took this away from the big bad police.'"

Wow. What a thoughtful counterpoint. On one hand, we have data showing handing cops military hand-me-downs doesn't reduce crime. On the other hand, we have a police union rep claiming math is politicized. At least the other police union rep quoted in piece makes a better point while still disputing the findings.

Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the world's largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers, also slammed the two studies as "convoluted logic."

"It has never been the contention of the FOP that surplus military equipment prevents crime, but rather that such equipment plays a critical role in protecting police officers and citizens in life-threatening situations such as active shooters at large, civil disturbances, and natural disasters."

But do cops really need war gear to make them safer? Crime rates in most of the country are still at historic lows. Officer safety remains at an all-time high. This last decade has been the safest time in history to be a cop and yet complaints like these are always offered up anytime someone points out the flaws in their logic.

So, military gear given to cops doesn't reduce crime. And it likely doesn't make officers much safer than they are already. What it does do is cultivate a warrior mindset that harms law enforcement's relationship with the public. And maybe that's all law enforcement really wants: more distance between them and those they've declared war on.

Filed Under: 1033, crime, defense department, dod, militarized police, military gear, police, warrior cops

Two-Person Police Department's Million Dollar Military Gear Grab Ends In Arrest Of Police Chief

from the Thetford-Township:-where-accountability-goes-to-die dept

A tiny unincorporated town in Michigan continues to draw national heat, thanks to the police department's apparent abuse of the Defense Department's 1033 program. This program allows law enforcement agencies to obtain military surplus -- which can include armored vehicles, aircraft, and weapons -- for next to nothing through its Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO).

This program has contributed greatly to the militarization of US police forces, allowing officers to dress up like soldiers while waging the War at Home on the constituents they supposedly serve. What happened in Thetford, however, wasn't a sudden ramping up of military gear/tactics. Instead, the Thetford PD -- which boasts two officers -- simply took the 1033 program for an extended ride. Chief Robert Kenny managed to obtain 950 items through the 1033 program, valued at over $1.1 million... at least according to his own, very conservative estimate.

Obviously, a two-person police force had no use for much of this equipment, much less the room to store it. So, vehicles and other items ended up on land owned by residents. After the town started asking questions, it quickly became clear the chief didn't know where all this acquired property was actually located.

Things went from bad to worse to farcical in a hurry. Town residents began dumping PD equipment previously stored on their property in the city hall parking lots. Town meetings were called. Accusations (and the occasional chair) were hurled and recalls were threatened. A nearby sheriff's office was called in to investigate and the Thetford PD's building was raided for 1033 records. Along the way, an envelope stuffed with cash was discovered among the PD's many, many stashes of 1033 goods. Chief Kenny said the money it contained came from the sale of equipment for scrap metal, but otherwise couldn't explain why it was located in a pile of stuff, rather than in a bank account.

Explanations will be forthcoming. The Genessee County Sheriff's Department seems to have its investigation of the Thetford PD almost wrapped up.

Thetford Township Police Chief Robert Kenny was arrested this week in connection with an investigation into surplus military equipment his department received.

Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell scheduled a press conference for Thursday morning to discuss "the arrest and charges" Kenny is facing.

Court records show Kenny is charged with embezzlement and obstruction of justice dating back to 2012.

Here's a link to the court records [PDF]. The embezzlement charge apparently stems from Kenny selling 1033 goods for scrap and depositing the payments into his personal account. The obstruction of justice charge would be everything Kenny did to cover up the embezzlement. Handily, the origin of both charges is explained in a single anecdote.

[Sheriff] Pickell said Kenny took several heavy-duty metal storage containers obtained through the support program to a Vienna Township scrapyard in 2012 and 2013.

Kenny allegedly received more than $5,000 in three different checks and deposited the money in his own account or took it in cash, Pickell said.

"Those three checks should have been placed in the Thetford Township banking account, not in Chief Kenny's personal account," Pickell said.

Kenny then gathered other Thetford Township officers and a journalist to go search a storage container at Dodge and Saginaw roads.

While moving the items, Kenny found an envelope containing cash with "LESO" written on it inside a container holding sleeping bags, Pickell said.

"Chief Kenny assembled what I believe to be unsuspecting witnesses to vindicate himself," Pickell said.

There was almost $4,800 in cash in the envelope that Kenny found, according to Pickell.

Now that the investigation has concluded, there's a far more accurate total for Chief Kenny's 1033 haul. Keep in mind, the Defense Department's LESO continued to approve requests for this 2-person police department, so it bears some responsibility for this debacle.

[Sheriff] Pickell said Kenny received almost 4,000 items that had a retail value of more than $2.7 million since 2012. Items included parachutes, mine-detecting devices, excavators, hydroseeders and other equipment.

The charges are worth about a half-decade each, but it's unlikely he'll serve more than a tenth of that if convicted. But it does put an end to his quasi-spending spree, which hoovered up goods taxpayers paid for and scattered them across the township when not being converted to scrap metal and Chief Kenny's walking around money.

Filed Under: 1033, defense department, genesee county, michigan, police, robert kenny, robert pickell, thetford

Two-Man Police Department Acquires $1 Million In Military Gear

from the and-you-get-a-truck-and-you-get-a-truck-and-everyone-gets-a-truck! dept

An ultra-safe Michigan town of 6,800 has claimed more than $1 million in military equipment through the Defense Department's 1033 program. The program allows law enforcement agencies to obtain anything from file cabinets to mine-resistant assault vehicles for next to nothing provided the agencies can show a need for the equipment. Most can "show" a "need," since it's pretty easy to type something up about existential terrorist/drug threats. Boilerplate can be adjusted as needed, but for the most part, requests are granted and oversight -- either at the federal and local level -- is almost nonexistent.

This has come to a head in Thetford Township, the fourth-safest municipality in Michigan, and home to more than $1 million in military gear and two (2) police officers.

The free material, received through a federal program, includes mine detectors and Humvees, tractors and backhoes, hydroseeders and forklifts, motorized carts and a riding lawnmower. The landlocked township also has gotten boat motors and dive boots.

While much of the gear worth $1 million has never been used by the township, some has been given to residents, township officials said.

The township supervisor and a trustee said the police have stymied their attempts to find out what equipment they have, where it’s located and why some of it has been given away. The police didn’t keep track of what they had or what they had given away, according to a township audit last year.

A belated, half-hearted audit by Police Chief Bob Kenny (supervisor of one [1] police officer) showed his department had acquired 950 pieces of equipment, including a couple of Humvees, three ATVs, a tractor, a forklift, and a number of other vehicles. More than 300 items are stored "off-site," which apparently means parked on private property and used by private citizens.

Town supervisor Gary Stevens has been trying to get to the bottom of this outsized stockpile. But he's running into resistance. Supporters of the town's two-person police force (and apparent beneficiaries of the federal program) have been pushing back. A recall campaign has been started by farmer Eugene Lehr, who has 21 pieces of military surplus equipment on his property.

A nearby sheriff's department has stepped in to perform an independent audit but has yet to release its findings. Equipment has apparently been given to citizens but no paper trail exists to track who ended up with what and how much may have been sold by the department. But what's left is still impressive. A two-man department somehow justified the acquisition of seven trucks and nine trailers over the last decade, in addition to everything else the department has stockpiled since Bob Kenny became chief.

While it may seem like most of the acquisitions are innocuous -- not the sort of thing one associates with a militarized police force -- the fact remains the program has almost zero oversight. Not until after more than $1 million in equipment was routed to a place that did not have a pressing need for the items did the DoD finally step in and suspend the department's participation in the program. Equipment that may have been put to better use elsewhere is parked on private property or has simply vanished into thin air. This is a waste of tax dollars that does nothing to make policing better or a safe township even safer.

Filed Under: 1033, defense department, michigan, military gear, military surplus, police, thetford township

Police Department With Eight Full-Time Officers Acquired 31 Military Vehicles Thru DoD's Surplus Program

from the closing-in-on-a-half-million-in-military-surplus-per-officer dept

The Defense Department's 1033 program has allowed law enforcement to muddy the water on the distinction between police force and military force. Given the right reasoning (most commonly cited: Wars on Terror/Drugs), police departments are allowed to pick up surplus military gear, often for free (utilizing DHS grants) and start pretending they're an occupying force, rather than public servants.

This came to a head following protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where viewers around the world were treated to the sight of local law enforcement rolling up on residents in mine-resistant vehicles while clad in gear that made officers look far more like soldiers than cops. This prompted a rollback of the 1033 program by Obama, limiting the sort of gear police departments could obtain to more innocuous surplus, like computers and furniture.

That has since changed. President Trump, showing his support for all things law enforcement, rolled back Obama's rollback, giving police departments access to assault vehicles and military weapons. With this comes a rollback in trust, as it has been shown giving military gear to cops makes them believe they're soldiers in a war zone, rather than public servants in a community.

Not everyone abuses this program, but those that do, do so spectacularly. An 11-member police force for a Delaware town with 400 residents has availed itself of more than $3 million in 1033 gear over the last five years. This first came to light late last year when documents obtained by Muckrock prompted town officials to wonder why they hadn't been notified of the department's stockpile.

When asked if the Dewey PD could account for all of the items by providing the physical location of items in their possession and paper trails for items sold, Sgt. Cliff Dempsey said, “We’re not going to comment on that matter at this time.”

On the agenda for a Nov. 11 Dewey Beach commissioners’ meeting is the discussion of three options for to the 1033 program:

1. require the DBPD to provide complete accounting for property received through any federal or surplus property program,

2. accept a recommendation from the town’s audit committee to utilize the town’s auditors, or

3. hire an independent consultant to conduct a more comprehensive review.

Some of the military equipment can be located. A recent report by the Milford Beacon contains a photo showing five military trucks and two ATVs parked in the department's storage lot. But that is only a small part of the Dewey PD's total holdings.

[A]mong hundreds of line items turned over between March 2013 and December 2017, the police acquired a total of 12 ATVs, 51 jackets or parkas and 13 space heaters, and 19 trucks of all kinds.

Dewey’s department has just eight full-time and three part-time officers, the town population is less than 400 people and the town itself is a just mile long and two blocks wide.

This includes a mine-resistant armored car and an armored Humvee -- all to oversee 400 people residing in a one-mile, two-block stretch. The justifications for even the more innocuous acquisitions are questionable, if not downright laughable. As the Beacon points out, the Dewey PD requested boats for water rescues, something already handled by a separate beach patrol and the Coast Guard. ATVs were supposedly handed to the department for something termed "homeland security patrols."

Many items were obtained to support the PD's private shooting range, including multiple tractors to shore up backstop berms and parkas to wear on colder days. The location of the range is kept secret by the department and the town was not (knowingly) involved in financing its construction. This secret range is mentioned more than 50 times in the PD's 1033 requests.

Despite this news surfacing last November, town commissioners have yet to receive any answers from the department it apparently can't oversee.

At their Feb. 10 meeting, Commissioner Gary Persinger lamented, “We’re three months down the road and we don’t have information in response to that request.”

As of March 1, [Mayor T.J.] Redefer said had not yet been privy to the departmental justifications of need.

On top of this, the department has apparently been selling some of the surplus it has received. Certain sales are permitted by federal law, but there has been no reporting by the police department detailing the amount of money received or what is being done with the funds. The extensive list of items obtained makes it appear the Dewey PD has stocked and furnished its office at federal taxpayers' expense while avoiding any sort of local accountability.

All of this is legal under state and federal law. In Delaware, law enforcement agencies aren't required to notify local governments about 1033 acquisitions and sales. And so they don't, apparently, even though it would make more sense in the long run to be upfront about it. When details about acquired military equipment remain solely in the hands of law enforcement recipients, the general assumption is something is being abused. After all, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide, right? But as is so often the case, details are uncovered years after the fact and often by unrelated third parties who apparently care more about police oversight than the local governments charged with overseeing their law enforcement agencies.

Filed Under: 1033, delaware, dewey, military surplus, police

Attorney General Jeff Sessions: Hurricane Harvey Is Proof We Need To Militarize Our Police Forces

from the say-what-now? dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions bringing back the Defense Department's 1033 program, which helped militarize local police forces with surplus military equipment. We've been covering all sorts of problems with the 1033 program over the years, and people like Radley Balko have written entire books on the problem. And the previous ban on the 1033 only put a fairly narrow limit on the practice of militarizing police -- but now even those modest limits are gone.

What's truly incredible, however, is the complete nonsense being used to justify this. Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech about this on Monday, in which he trotted out his standard misleading and out-of-context stats, falsely claiming that there's some massive new crimewave across the country, when there's really just been a tiny bump after decades of decline in crime rates (the use of percentages by Sessions shows the he likely knows the absolute numbers are so meaningless that he has to mislead with percentages working off a small base).

But, even with the usual misleading claims about violence and violence directed towards police, I still never expected him to... point to Houston and the impact of Hurricane Harvey as a reason for increased police militarization. But that's exactly what he did:

Those restrictions went too far. We will not put superficial concerns above public safety. All you need to do is turn on a tv right now to see that for Houstonians this isn’t about appearances, its about getting the job done and getting everyone to safety.

Wait. Law enforcement in Houston needs surplus military equipment to rescue people? Last I've seen it's been tons of good hearted people using boats of all kinds going around and rescuing people. I don't see much need for military equipment.

Once again, this looks like law enforcement using "any means necessary" to justify getting their military surplus toys, despite tremendous evidence of how this process is abused, how it harms community relations and how it leads to civil rights of the public being violated. To point to the disaster in Houston as a reason for restarting the program is not just frivolous, it's dangerous.

Filed Under: 1033, doj, hurricane harvey, jeff sessions, police, police militarization

Trump Rolls Back Ban On Transfer Of Military Equipment To Law Enforcement Agencies

from the police-statesmanship dept

As part of his ongoing effort to reverse everything President Obama ever did, President Trump will be rolling back the previous administration's 1033 program ban. The program allowed local law enforcement agencies to help themselves to Defense Department equipment -- often paid for with federal grants -- as long as they said the magic words (terrorism/drugs) on the application.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who led the campaign for the program's reinstatement, outlined the President Trump's new executive order Monday in an address at the annual meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union.

The administration's action, first disclosed by USA TODAY, would restore "the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources,'' according to a administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups.

"Assets that would otherwise be scrapped can be re-purposed to help state, local and tribal law enforcement better protect public safety and reduce crime."

Attorney General Sessions loves rolling things back. This will give police departments access to mine-resistant vehicles, grenade launchers, and firearms, which should "assist" them in fighting the Drug War 1980s-style and/or pitching in with ICE's efforts to pitch migrants back over the wall Trump can't seem to get built.

This is prime law-and-order stuff. Trump has made it clear law enforcement is on the right side of history. Everyone who doubts or criticizes cops is simply wrong. A ban put in place as a reaction to militarized police responses is being reversed because no one up top cares how police are perceived. AG Sessions has already killed off federal civil rights investigations of local law enforcement agencies. Now, police will find it easier than ever to dude up as war-fighters, rather than easily-identifiable public servants.

As Radley Balko pointed out on Twitter, Obama's rollback didn't put a huge dent in military gear acquisitions. But it did attempt to head off further development of law enforcement's "us vs. them" mentality by making it a bit more difficult to look and act like an occupying force, rather than law enforcement agencies. Balko notes plenty of gear can still be obtained from other sources, like the DHS, state agencies, and donations. But the ultimate point of the ban was to reduce the gap between public servants and the people they serve -- something explicitly noted by Obama's law enforcement guidance task force.

The Task Force on 21st Century Policing, chaired by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, a former assistant attorney general, called on law enforcement officials to "minimize the appearance of a military operation'' when policing mass demonstrations.

"Avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust," the task force urged.

The previously-banned equipment also included tracked armored vehicles, bayonets and grenade launchers.

Trump's ban reversal sends the opposite message. Combined with his public statements, proclamations, and executive orders, the future of policing will make cities and towns feel like occupied territory and turn citizens into civilians.

Filed Under: 1033, doj, donald trump, jeff sessions, militarized police, military surplus, police

Watchdog Stings Defense Dept., Obtains $1.2 Million In Military Gear With A Fake Cop Shop

from the 1033-open-air-bazaar dept

The Defense Department's 1033 program allows local law enforcement agencies to buy military equipment. Often, the purchases are made easier with sizable grants, meaning agencies can load up on assault rifles, grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and extra ammo at nearly no cost. (They can also get computers, office furniture, etc. through these grants, but if that were the extent of the program, there would be zero controversy.)

The 1033 program is supposed to be tightly controlled and every acquisition vetted to prevent high-powered military gear from falling into the wrong hands. We've already noted local agencies aren't performing much in the way of oversight, resulting in several agencies receiving suspensions for failing to account for the whereabouts of purchased gear.

The problem, however, isn't just on the receiving end. The Defense Department isn't doing much in the way of due diligence when adding new agencies to the list of military gear purchases. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) performed a sting operation, setting up a fake law enforcement agency to see if it could acquire used military gear. By the end of it, the fake agency had obtained $1.2 million in gear, all without ever having to speak directly with anyone at the Defense Department. From the GAO's report [PDF]:

[O]ur investigators, posed as authorized federal law enforcement agency officials of a fictitious agency, applied and were granted access to the LESO [Law Enforcement Support Office] program in early 2017. In late 2016, we emailed our completed application to the LESO program office. Our application contained fictitious information including agency name, number of employees, point of contact, and physical location. We also created mail and e-mail addresses, and a website for our fictitious law enforcement agency using publicly available resources. All correspondence, including follow-up questions regarding our application, was conducted by email with LESO officials.

The first application was sent back for fixes. The revised application -- still loaded with fake info -- sailed through. It even included fake legal authorization.

LESO officials also emailed us to request confirmation of our agency’s authorizing statute; in response, our investigators provided fictitious authorizing provisions presented as a provision in the U.S. Code. At no point during the application process did LESO officials verbally contact officials at the agency we created—either the main point of contact listed on the application or the designated point of contact at a headquarters’ level—to verify the legitimacy of our application or to discuss establishing a MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with our agency.

Not only were there no phone calls, there was no attempt by LESO officials to physically verify the existence of this fictitious law enforcement agency.

LESO’s reliance on electronic communications without actual verification does not allow it to properly vet for potentially fraudulent activity. For example, DLA [Defense Logistics Agency] did not require supervisory approval for all federal agency applications, or require confirmation of the application with designated points of contact at the headquarters of participating federal agencies. Additionally, at the time we submitted our application, DLA officials did not visit the location of the applying federal law enforcement agency to help verify the legitimacy of the application.

Since the DoD didn't perform any sort of prerequisite checks, it comes as no surprise it paid little attention to who was receiving the 1033 handouts.

Our independent testing of DLA’s internal controls also identified deficiencies in the transfer of controlled property, such as DLA personnel not routinely requesting and verifying identification of individuals picking up controlled property or verifying the quantity of approved items prior to transfer.

[...]

Using fictitious identification and law enforcement credentials, along with the LESO-approved documentation, our investigator was able to pass security checks and enter the Disposition Service warehouse sites. Personnel at two of the three sites did not request or check for valid identification of our investigator picking up the property.

From the GAO's description, acquiring controlled items appears to be no more difficult than shopping on Amazon.

Our investigators, after being approved to participate in the LESO program, obtained access to the department’s online systems to view and request controlled property. We subsequently submitted requests to obtain controlled property, including non-lethal items and potentially-lethal items if modified with commercially available items. In less than a week after submitting the requests, our fictitious agency was approved for the transfer of over 100 controlled property items with a total estimated value of about $1.2 million. The estimated value of each item ranged from $277 to over $600,000, including items such as night-vision goggles, reflex (also known as reflector) sights, infrared illuminators, simulated pipe bombs, and simulated rifles.

And, to top everything off, the DLA managed to ship this fake agency more items than it actually requested.

Furthermore, although we were approved to receive over 100 items and the transfer documentation reflects this amount, we were provided more items than we were approved for. The discrepancy involved one type of item—infrared illuminators. We requested 48 infrared illuminators but onsite officials at one Disposition Services site provided us with 51 infrared illuminators in 52 pouches, of which one pouch was empty.

The report goes on to note the DLA has never performed its own fraud audits, suggesting it has almost no interest in ensuring military gear only ends up in the hands of approved and thoroughly-vetted law enforcement agencies. Yes, all of this appears to be changing going forward, but considering the 1033 program has transferred billions of dollars of equipment already, there's really no telling how many others have obtained equipment with fictitious entities or simply ended up with a bunch of items they never ordered. That the weapons obtained were only simulators is of little comfort. They're simply modified versions of the real thing which could be made operable again with items obtained from non-government entities.

It's not that the DoD is only a few steps away from being logistically-bulletproof either. The GAO report notes the systems and controls used aren't even adequate -- which would be the minimum needed to ensure control of potentially-dangerous items. When presiding over the distribution of military gear, the DoD needs to implement controls far surpassing "adequate." So far, it can't even meet this very low bar.

Filed Under: 1033, controls, defense department, dod, gao, law enforcement, military gear, surplus

Administration's One-Year Experimentation With Reining In Police Militarization Apparently Over

from the good-times... dept

The administration's brief flirtation with converting occupying forces back into police departments is apparently over. In the wake of the Ferguson protests, the administration announced its plan to rein in police departments which had been availing themselves of used military gear via the Defense Department's 1033 program. This itself was short-lived. A year later, the administration mustered up enough enthusiasm for another run at scaling back the 1033 program, but it has seemingly lost some steam as Obama heads for the exit.

The images of police greeting protesters with assault rifles, armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and officers who appeared to mistake the Midwest for downtown Kabul apparently was a bit too much. It looked more like an occupation than community-oriented policing -- something every administration has paid lip service (and tax dollars) to over the past few decades while simultaneously handing out grants that turned police officers into warfighters.

That's all off the table now. Two recent shootings of police officers have effectively dismantled the dismantling of militarized police forces.

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.

The law enforcement lobbyists met with the President and Vice President, and it appears Obama has sent the administration's chief legal counsel to "review" the ban. The law enforcement organizations claim police need greater protections now, even though the recent clustering of officer deaths doesn't put the nation on track for anything more than an average year of on-duty deaths.

But, while the chance of being killed in the line of duty remains steady, agencies are pushing for a return to pre-2015 levels of military gear, including tracked vehicles and grenade launchers "to deal with riots." It doesn't appear that any words were wasted discussing the underlying causes of the protests officers are now facing -- none of which will be resolved with increased police militarization. Put someone in war gear and they're going to be pretty sure they're in a war, rather than serving the public as a trusted member of the community.

Filed Under: 1033, defense department, obama administration, police, police militariazation

Documents Show 1033 Program Still Resulting In Lots Of Lost Weapons And Other Abuse

from the surely-you-can-trust-a-few-thousand-cops? dept

The Pentagon's 1033 program is a case study in unintended consequences. The idea -- put military equipment back into service rather than simply scrapping it -- has some merit. The actual deployment has been a nightmare.

The Dept. of Defense wondered who could possibly make use of military weapons, armor and vehicles, and came to an almost-logical conclusion. Law enforcement agencies became the military's little brother, taking ownership of cheap/free hand-me-downs and putting them to use in the War at Home.

Of course, a militaristic mindset evolved to match the acquired gear. Police departments became armies and citizens, combatants. Worse, the program was badly mismanaged and subject to very little oversight. The DoD had no idea how much equipment it had dispensed and the agencies on the receiving end weren't much better at tracking their own inventories.

Shawn Musgrave has obtained two mostly-depressing spreadsheets from the Dept. of Defense listing law enforcement agencies which are currently suspended from the program, or have been in the past. He sent this "expedited request" during the Ferguson fallout, during which the DOJ itself expressed concern about the military aura the local PD projected. Not that the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency cared about the timeliness of its response. 14 months after issuing his "please hurry" request, the DLA has finally responded.

The lists contain plenty of suspensions for lost weapons, which possibly means military-grade weapons are in the hands of private citizens. The lists also contain intriguing redactions and a few moments of WTF-ness.

For instance, an Arkansas county coroner's office is participating in the program for reasons unknown. It could be that it only used the program to obtain harmless office equipment, but if so, it seems these sorts of acquisitions -- no matter how badly handled or poorly inventoried -- would not result in a suspension. The question of why it was suspended remains unanswered.

Reason can not be released at this per State Coordinators request.

And the state of North Carolina appears to have gone rogue. Among the many agencies listed as "terminated" by the DLA is the state's Parks and Recreation department.



North Dakota is possibly headed for a bloodbath, seeing as its Highway Patrol has misplaced a street gang's-worth of weapons.

DURING PCR ON JULY 23, 2013, 159 WEAPONS WERE UNABLE TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR BY A SIGNED CUSTODY RECEIPT

And one wonders how this sort of situation arises, considering the logistics required to make it happen in the first place. (Richland County Sheriff's Office, South Carolina)

Misappropriation of aircraft

The list of agencies no longer suspended from the program isn't exactly heartening. The Searcy (AR) Police Dept. is back in the DLA's good graces despite the ATF serving a search warrant for its (former) police chief.


And we discover that the Richland County Sheriff's Office isn't the only South Carolina agency to abuse 1033 aircraft.


Many of those on the "Unsuspended" list have never recovered weapons they reported as lost or stolen, but have been designated by the Office of the Inspector General as "cold cases." Once the trail goes dead, so does the suspension, apparently.

In other oddities, it appears the entire state of Montana took a year off from performing required 1033 inventories and the nation's biggest, baddest police force -- the NYPD -- faced (briefly) the threat of termination for reasons not detailed in the responsive documents.

So, in other words, it's business as usual for the 1033 program. Even those "responsibly" partaking in the program are loading up with military gear which they then deploy against combatants citizens in war zones their communities.

Filed Under: 1033, dod, lost weapons, militarized police, oversight, police, police militarization, weapons