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A police tactical team moves in to disperse a group of protesters in Ferguson, Mo. on Aug, 9, 2014, that was sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown.(Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP)
President Obama's move to stop the flow of armored vehicles, grenade launchers and other military-style equipment from the federal government to civilian police comes with one substantial hitch: About 10,000 pieces of the now "prohibited" gear already are in the hands of police agencies coast to coast.
The U.S. government already has given hundreds of law enforcement agencies, from big metro police departments to small-town sheriffs to campus police, the kinds of militarized gear now on the president's "prohibited equipment" list, according to a USA TODAY review of data on transfers of military equipment by the Defense Logistics Agency from the early 1990s through March 2015.
Among some of the prohibited items already disbursed to police agencies before Monday's ban:
- At least 101 armored personnel carriers, including six to the Louisiana state prison system. Oceanfront communities along Florida's Atlantic coast have them, from Daytona Beach to Palm Bay to North Miami Beach. Many rural communities in middle America got the M113 "tanks" too, including Coshocton County, Ohio, home to about 36,000 people and where the sheriff obtained two of the now-prohibited tracked, armored personnel carriers.
- More than 6,600 bayonets and bayonet parts, which went to local, state and federal police from border patrol agents in El Paso to campus cops at Lincoln University in Missouri. Noblesville, one of the middle-class suburbs ringing Indianapolis, obtained more than 130 bayonet knives in the summer of 2013.
- Almost 200 grenade launchers to 104 law enforcement agencies in 32 states, including big-city departments and much smaller ones like the city police in Opelousas, La., and the campus police at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
The new ban will prevent civilian law enforcement from getting the military-style equipment through transfer programs or buying the gear using federal grant money. However, it doesn't stop departments from buying military-style gear outright from private vendors, which some big-city departments do.
USA TODAY
Obama bans some military equipment sales to police
The rules released Monday do note the government is working to identify law enforcement agencies that already received the equipment now prohibited and whether it would be possible to recall any of it.
Additional kinds of military-style equipment — including helicopters, boats, sniper rifles and automatic weapons — can still be given to local police under the new rules, but only with added layers of review. For instance, a city getting such equipment would need approval of city council, after justifying why it's needed, and may have to file reports about incidents in which the specialty equipment got used.
Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former New York City police officer, said some agencies clearly took whatever they could with little regard for particular needs, which was "an obvious flaw in the program."
"The criteria going forward is going to have to be better than lavishing equipment on those who simply ask for it," he said.
However, O'Donnell also questioned the rationale behind some of the equipment banned. Some of the vehicles now prohibited from distribution, he said, have been used to respond to natural disasters such as hurricanes. And recent events in Baltimore have shown it can be unwise to bring ordinary law enforcement vehicles to riots.
"Policing is a local enterprise," O'Donnell said, and reconciling federal oversight and local control "is not going to be easy or without controversy."
Among the agencies with one of the tracked, armored personnel carriers is the Chiefland Police Department, which serves a city of about 2,000 in North Florida.
Chief Robert Douglas said the agency acquired the carrier in 2012 with the idea that it could be used as a rescue vehicle in an incident involving a barricaded gunman. "It was free, why not?" he said.
The department's officers have never had to use the vehicle, Douglas said, and it has sat unused in the agency's barn for the past three years. "If they want it they can come get it, that's fine" he said. "It's just a piece of equipment that I thought would be good."
Leaders of other agencies, however say their personnel carriers have been invaluable.
Calhoun County Sheriff Larry Amerson said his northern Alabama agency acquired one of the armored personnel carriers after a 2000 incident where a barricaded gunman shot three officers of a neighboring agency, resulting in a dangerous rescue effort.
Since then, he said, the vehicle has been used multiple times to help capture armed suspects hiding in wooded areas, and has also been deployed as a rescue vehicle in severe weather.
"The question that needs to be asked is, as long as it's being used appropriately, why are they a problem?" said Amerson, a former president of the National Sheriffs' Association.
Peter Kraska, a professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, said the changes announced Monday can be seen as first steps toward reducing the militarization of police, but also as "piecemeal types of measures taken to appear as though something is being done, but substantively very little is going to change."
The prohibition on tracked, armored vehicles will affect only a small fraction of the overall number of military vehicles at police agencies, he said, because most have wheels. At the same time, thousands of military-style M-16 rifles — among the most visible symbols of the police militarization debate — will remain available to local police.
While certain moves like the ban on distribution of bayonets make sense, Kraska said, "I wouldn't say that that's actually accomplishing anything in terms of affecting the overall trend of police militarization."
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