Riot police in Ferguson armed with some decent equipment. Yahoo/Reuters
Obama has ordered a review into the federal program that sends money to police departments to buy military hardware. Yahoo/Reuters. The response comes after widespread outrage at the equipment to cops in Ferguson Missouri during the riots. The review will involve several federal agencies and will be overseen by the White House. The so called 1033 program has requirements for police to use their equipment and does not mandate training in things like crowd control.
My Comment:
Talk about some selective outrage by the Obama administration and the public in general. Back when the Boston bombing/manhunt happened only a few people, mostly libertarians and anarchists, complained about pictures of heavily armed and armored cops pointing their weapons at civilians. When the Cliven Bundy standoff happened, even fewer complained and some liberal commentators called for the Obama administration to bomb the whole protest, either tongue in check or legitimately. If the police using military style equipment was ok then, why is not ok in Ferguson? I hate to bring race into it but if you look at the demographics of the protesters, they are for the most part in the demographics that support the Democratic Party. The Cliven Bundy protesters were almost exclusively not in those demographics. Once again, it's not about who is wrong or right, but which team is getting screwed over.
As for my take on the militarization of police, I'm against it. I have no problem with cops having military style weapons because I believe everyone should be able to have them. I do have a problem when the cops have better guns then the general public. If we can't have fully automatic weapons then the cops shouldn't either. As for the body armor and MRAPs, these should be reserved for big city swat teams and not backwater towns with 4 cops. I don't see this review going that far, or doing much of anything really. Obama doesn't want demilitarized police.
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