The New York Times - USA (2020-07-22)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALWEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020 N A

Struggle for Racial JusticeLaw Enforcement

WASHINGTON — The Senate
on Tuesday rejected a bipartisan
bid to bar the Pentagon from
transferring a wide range of mili-
tary-grade weaponry to local po-
lice departments, effectively
killing the last remaining initia-
tive before Congress this year to
address the excessive use of force
in law enforcement.
With policing overhaul legisla-
tion stalled on Capitol Hill, the
measure, which lawmakers
sought to attach to the must-pass
annual defense bill, was a last-
ditch attempt to begin to demilita-
rize law enforcement after a na-
tionwide uproar to address racial
discrimination and distrust be-
tween the police and the commu-
nities they serve.
But despite the outcry in favor
of sweeping changes, lawmakers
declined to place limitations on
some of the most controversial
military-grade equipment pro-
vided to local police departments,
rejecting a proposal by Senator
Brian Schatz, Democrat of Ha-
waii, to prohibit such items as tear
gas, grenades and bayonets.
The vote, 51 to 44, which failed
to reach the required 60-vote
threshold to pass, underscored
how fraught and often fruitless at-
tempts to rein in the program
have become, allowing such
matériel to flow to law enforce-
ment in America’s cities and
towns with few restrictions.
The Senate did approve a meas-
ure that would reinstate some re-
strictions originally imposed by
the Obama administration and
rolled back by President Trump.
That amendment, led by Senator
James M. Inhofe, Republican of
Oklahoma and the chairman of
the Armed Services Committee,
would prohibit the Pentagon from
supplying law enforcement with
tracked combat vehicles, drones
that carry weaponry like tear gas
and rubber bullets, and other
equipment that the Defense De-
partment has said it does not cur-
rently provide to local police de-
partments. It would also require
agencies that receive the equip-
ment to undergo de-escalation
training.
But the limits are unlikely to de-

crease the amount of military

equipment that goes to police de-

partments around the country or

materially constrain the type of

weapons made available to them.

An analysis by The New York

Times shows that despite Presi-

dent Barack Obama’s efforts to

rein in the program after the

killing of an unarmed Black man

by the police in Ferguson, Mo., in

2014, the restrictions did little to

reduce the amount of weaponry

available to local police depart-

ments through the program,

known as 1033. Nor did Mr.

Trump’s move to unravel Mr. Oba-

ma’s policies make a significant

difference.

“Trump came in and said, ‘I

have undone all the reforms,’

which in the first place hadn’t

done anything, anyway,” said Pe-

ter Kraska, a professor at Eastern

Kentucky University who has

studied police militarization for

decades. “There’s just been this

whole political game done.”

“Consequently,” he added, “the

spigot has stayed on even post-

Ferguson.”

Lawmakers in both parties, led

by Mr. Schatz, announced their in-

tention to restrict the program

last month, after officers wearing

riot gear were documented in cit-

ies across the country using pep-

per spray and rubber bullets on

demonstrators protesting the

killings of unarmed Black Ameri-

cans by the police, often without

warning or seemingly unpro-

voked.

“The last month has made clear

that weapons of war don’t belong

in police departments,” Mr. Schatz

said. “Our communities are not

battlefields. The American people

are not enemy combatants.”

Mr. Inhofe’s narrower measure,

approved on Tuesday in a 90-to-

vote, was an attempt to head off

Mr. Schatz’s more sweeping re-

strictions. Mr. Inhofe argued that

the program was an “effective use

of taxpayers’ money,” but cast his

amendment as “strong oversight

of the program.”

“We want to make sure that the

wrong kind of equipment doesn’t

get in the hands of people who

cannot properly use it,” Mr. Inhofe

said.

The program, created by Con-

gress in the early 1990s to offload

surplus military equipment to lo-

cal law enforcement to fight the

war on drugs, has furnished over

$7.4 billion worth of supplies to po-

lice departments — mostly mun-

dane items like coffee makers and

socks, but also assault rifles and

heavily armored trucks. Propo-

nents argue that the program

gives underfunded police depart-

ments access to crucial equip-

ment to protect their officers that

they would not otherwise be able

to afford, and police unions for

years have feverishly lobbied

against attempts to curtail it.

It is just one of many federal ini-

tiatives that help police depart-

ments obtain weaponry and other

equipment, but the program has

singularly captured the attention

of lawmakers.

“It just speaks so loudly to a di-

rect causal connection between

the U.S. military and the police,”

said Mr. Kraska, who advised the

Obama administration on the pro-

gram. “The U.S. military is send-

ing its war discards from Afghani-

stan and Iraq, and bringing them

to the streets of America.”

There has historically been lit-

tle appetite in either party to legis-

late significant changes to the pro-

gram. Even House Democrats,

who included a measure targeting

it in their policing overhaul bill,

declined to allow a vote on adding

such language, proposed by Rep-

resentative Hank Johnson of

Georgia, to their version of the de-

fense bill.

Mr. Johnson has tried without

success to place restrictions on

the program since 2013, after he

marched in a Christmas parade in

his district and was shocked to see

the town’s mayor riding in a mili-

tary-grade utility vehicle ahead of

him. On the heels of the Ferguson

protests, Mr. Johnson said, he

hoped his colleagues would seize

the moment and back his biparti-

san bill, which would require local

governments to sign off on the

equipment before a police depart-

ment tried to obtain it. But he

found little support.

“I don’t think what people saw

in Ferguson was a wake-up call,”

Mr. Johnson said in an interview.

“That picture of police officers

with riot gear and helmets on and

assault weapons and military ve-

hicles — I don’t think people took

note of it. I think they just as-

sumed, that’s the way policing is

in America.”

Changes to the program instead

have largely been mandated by

presidential orders. Struck by im-

ages of heavily armed police offi-

cers in armored vehicles con-

fronting unarmed protesters in

Ferguson, Mr. Obama signed an

executive order in 2015 prohibit-

ing the transfer of certain weap-

ons and equipment, including

tracked armored vehicles, bayo-

nets, grenade launchers and cam-

ouflage uniforms. Even then, ad-

ministration officials resisted

more expansive changes, arguing

that the program helped bulk up

law enforcement’s counterterror-

ism efforts. Even so, police unions

condemned Mr. Obama’s restric-

tions as a threat to officer safety.

When Mr. Trump took office he

rolled back the curbs, fulfilling a

campaign promise he had made to

the Fraternal Order of Police, a

powerful national law enforce-

ment union that for years had lob-

bied against restrictions to the

program. Jeff Sessions, then the

attorney general, announced the

move at the union’s headquarters

in Nashville. Mr. Trump heralded

it as a significant change to mili-

tary policy.

“You know, when you wanted to

take over and you used military

equipment — and they were say-

ing you couldn’t do it — you know

what I said? That was my first

day: ‘You can do it,’ ” Mr. Trump

told law enforcement officers in a

2017 speech. “In fact, that stuff is

disappearing so fast, we have

none left.”

Some equipment that was

banned by the Obama administra-

tion has since made it into the

hands of local police officers fol-

lowing Mr. Trump’s rollback. The

Cypress-Fairbanks police depart-

ment in Texas serving a K-

school district, for example, ob-

tained 60 bayonet knives through

the program in 2019, according to

a Pentagon database. A spokes-

woman for the school said in a

statement to The Times that the

bayonets “did not have functional-

ity and are scheduled to be re-

turned to the military.”

But a RAND Corporation study

found in 2018 that the defense and

state officials running the pro-

gram “reported little change in op-

erations or in the equipment” that

police departments obtained from

the program as a result of the ex-

ecutive order. And Pentagon offi-

cials overseeing it groused that

many of the items that the Obama

administration prohibited, like

grenade launchers, had not been

distributed through the program

for years, anyway.

A spokeswoman for the Penta-

gon agency that oversees the pro-

gram said Mr. Trump’s executive

order had “minimal impact” on

the program’s management, as

did Mr. Obama’s, adding that

many of the 2015 executive order

requirements “already existed or

were codified.”

Senate Rejects Ban on Transfer of Military-Grade Weaponry to Police

By CATIE EDMONDSON

More than

1,

returned

under

Obama

At least 137

distributed

under Trump

Military Equipment in the Hands of the Police

Trump BANNED ITEMS

The Pentagon has supplied state and local law enforcement with military gear during both the Obama and

Trump presidencies. Some gear, deemed inappropriate for police use, was banned in 2015 by an executive

order, which President Trump revoked in 2017.

Obama

10,000 items

5,

’07 ’08 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’19 ’

Source: Defense Logistics Agency ELEANOR LUTZ / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Note: Items shown are aircraft, weapons, armored vehicles, camouflage, night vision pieces, sights, armor and

weapon training equipment, as well as parts and accessories for these items. Other equipment dispersed by the

Defense Department’s 1033 program is not included. Banned items included bayonets and grenade launchers.

Down goes the last

initiative to combat

excessive force.

In recent years, cities like Chi-
cago, Baltimore and New York
have turned to Washington for
help in combating gun violence
and other crime, arguing that only
the federal government has the
resources to tackle problems like
guns being traded illegally across
state borders.
Now as President Trump has
threatened to send federal agents
to clean up what he called “totally
out of control” crime and disorder,
some big-city mayors and police
officials are pushing back on such
federal involvement, suggesting
that the president is using their
cities as props in a political game.
Portland has become a caution-
ary tale. Several Democratic may-
ors have said they don’t want un-
identified officers dressed in cam-
ouflage patrolling their streets
and battling protesters. If the fed-
eral government wants to bring
resources to bear on violence, said
mayors and other officials, it
should help with issues like gun
crimes, rather than dispatching
officers who will make an already
tense summer worse.
“The deployment of unnamed
special secret agents onto our
streets to detain people without
cause and to effectively take away
their civil rights and civil liberties
without due process — that is not
going to happen in Chicago,” May-
or Lori E. Lightfoot said at a news
conference on Tuesday.
Instead, Ms. Lightfoot said, Chi-
cago will be receiving resources
from the F.B.I., the D.E.A. and the
A.T.F., agencies the city has
worked with regularly in the past
“to help manage and suppress vio-
lent crime in our city.”
It’s this type of help that many
mayors say they need.
In Chicago, the deployment will
be coordinated with local officials,
unlike in Portland where the city’s
wishes were ignored, Mayor
Lightfoot said, adding, “What
happened was not only unconsti-
tutional, it was undemocratic.”
The spectacle of homeland se-
curity agents in unmarked uni-
forms ringing federal buildings
like the courthouse in Portland —
and occasionally arresting pro-
testers — in the name of protect-
ing them from nightly vandalism
attempts is unusual. But it is com-

mon and generally apolitical for

local and state police to work hand

in hand with law enforcement offi-

cials from the Justice Department

in combating criminal networks.

In 2017, for example, the Chi-

cago police created a joint strike

force to try to reduce the import-

ing of guns into the city, consisting

of 20 officers each from the Chi-

cago police and the Bureau of Al-

cohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Ex-

plosives. Across the country, local

law enforcement agents routinely

team up with the F.B.I. and the

Drug Enforcement Administra-

tion to hunt terror suspects and to

investigate drug trafficking.

Kansas City, Mo., has found it-

self struggling with a wave of

shootings this year, and its Police

Department asked for federal

help.

Rick Smith, the police chief, said

that his department had applied

for a grant for federal assistance

and that officials in Washington

quickly offered federal resources.

“We said, ‘Of course,’ ” Chief Smith

said. “We’d just come off four

homicides, two police officers be-

ing shot, a 4-year-old being killed.

We were looking for some sort of

help, any way we could get it.”

But the city’s mayor, Quinton

Lucas, a Democrat, was caught by

surprise when Washington sud-

denly mapped out an entire

project called Operation LeGend

after LeGend Taliferro, the 4-

year-old boy who was killed. Mr.

Lucas said he learned about the

operation on Twitter. He sup-

ported receiving help in solving

crimes but was worried that the

federal agents might end up being

used for more intrusive purposes.

“When you have a president of

the United States who talks about

cities as if they’re his enemies, as

if they’re lawless hellscapes, that

gives me concern that a federal

government-led program may de-

scend into that,” he said. “I fear

that there may be an expanded fo-

cus.”

More than 200 agents from the

F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Ad-

ministration, the Marshals Serv-

ice and the Bureau of Alcohol, To-

bacco, Firearms and Explosives

have begun helping with police in-

vestigations in Kansas City. The

federal prosecutor in Kansas City

on Monday promoted the opera-

tion’s first arrest and charged a

20-year-old man with being a

“drug user in possession of fire-

arms.”

The federal agents will not pa-

trol or help to control protests,

Chief Smith said, adding that the

city does not need that type of as-

sistance. “It’s a very surgical look

at those who are involved in vio-

lence,” he said. As of Monday,

there had been 110 murders in

Kansas City this year, 31 more

than at the same time a year ago,

according to The Kansas City Star.

The city is on pace to shatter its

previous high of 155 murders in

2017.

This summer has seen an in-

crease in murders and shootings

in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and

elsewhere. That, combined with

continuing protests over police vi-

olence prompted by the killing of

George Floyd in police custody in

Minneapolis, has left many cities

on edge. Even with violent crime

down over all, some statistics are

startling.

In New York City, there were 42

murders in the 28 days before July

19, and 323 shootings. That was an

increase of more than 13 percent

for murders and 199 percent for

shootings during the same period

the previous year, said Christo-

pher Herrmann, a professor at

John Jay College of Criminal Jus-

tice who analyzes crime statistics.

In Chicago, there were 116 mur-

ders over those 28 days, nearly a

200 percent increase, while there

were 559 shootings, up more than

100 percent, he said.

Mr. Trump has made threats

earlier in his administration to de-

ploy federal agents to address ur-

ban unrest, which critics have dis-

missed as posturing.

“This president blusters and

bluffs and says he’s going to do

things, and they never materialize

on a regular basis,” Mayor Bill de

Blasio of New York said at a news

conference on Tuesday. “So first

we should not overrate his state-

ments — they are so often not

true.”

Detroit’s leaders unequivocally

rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal to

send in federal law enforcement

agents to quell protests.

“Detroit, unlike New York, un-

like Philadelphia, Chicago, Los

Angeles, just to name a few cities,

didn’t have looting, buildings be-

ing burned,” said the police chief,

James Craig. “We have not experi-

enced the same level of violence,

and that was handled by the De-

troit Police Department and our

community.”

The city has struggled with

crime this year, seeing a 7 percent

uptick in violent crime, Chief

Craig said. Detroit is part of Oper-

ation Relentless Pursuit, a Justice

Department program started in

December that provides federal

law enforcement personnel and

resources to help cities tackle

crime. Chief Craig said he wel-

comed that support, but that it

was not to be confused with Mr.

Trump’s suggestion that federal

agents be sent to quell protests.

It’s not just Democratic-led cit-

ies that are struggling. In Jack-

sonville, Fla., the venue for the Re-

publican convention, the city’s Re-

publican mayor, Lenny Curry, said

at a news conference on Tuesday

that there was no need for federal

law enforcement to help calm vio-

lent protests there because local

police had been more aggressive.

Still, the city is facing one of its

deadliest years in decades, with

more than 100 homicides as of

Monday, according to the Jack-

sonville Sheriff’s Office.

In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim

Kenney said he opposed any fed-

eral intervention in response to

the protests and Larry Krasner,

the city’s progressive district at-

torney, said in a statement on

Monday that he would prosecute

anyone, including federal agents,

who broke the law by assaulting

or kidnapping people.

In Oakland, Mayor Libby

Schaaf, a Democrat, has accused

Mr. Trump of trying to distract

people from the abysmal job the

federal government has done in

containing the coronavirus.

“I don’t need law enforcement

in Oakland,” Mayor Schaaf said. “I

need testing, I need personal pro-

tective equipment, we need direct

income support for people who

are out of work, that’s what we

need. This president seems to con-

fuse a political bent — obviously

Oakland is a proud diverse, pro-

gressive city, and that is not a

mess, nor is it hell.”

Yet, regular cooperation hasn’t

always worked.

In Chicago this year, the police

have already confiscated 5,

guns, Mayor Lightfoot said. Still,

she said, the A.T.F. is too con-

strained by the gun lobby to tackle

serious problems like guns pour-

ing into Chicago from Arkansas,

Indiana and elsewhere.

Analysts also say there has

never been a public accounting of

what was accomplished by the co-

operation between the Chicago

police and the A.T.F. in the Crime

Gun Strike Force.

“It was pure theater,” said Tracy

Siska, the founder and director of

the Chicago Justice Project. “It

was Trump playing to his base to

show them that he was being

tough.”

The real issues behind the

crime and unrest — poverty, seg-

regation, racism — are never ad-

dressed, he said.

Federal agents that deployed in

Portland lacked training in crowd

control and other police tactics,

analysts noted. It would be even

harder for them to operate in Chi-

cago, a far larger city with en-

trenched gang activity, they said.

“It is hard to believe that 150

federal agents out on the street

will have much public safety bene-

fit,” said Jens Ludwig, director of

the University of Chicago Crime

Lab, adding that it would just

“pour gasoline on a lot of the ten-

sions that we currently have in cit-

ies all across the country.”

Cities Say Federal Help

Is Sought to Fight Crime,

Not to Fight Protesters

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that a deployment of anonymous federal officers to police the streets “is not going to happen in Chicago.”

PAT NABONG/CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

This article is by Neil MacFar-
quhar, Charlie Savageand John
Eligon.

Lucy Tompkins, Juliana Kim and
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs con-
tributed reporting.