This continues a series of articles looking at different ways Trump’s election might have an impact on law enforcement.
As I noted in my last post, the transfer of military equipment to local police departments has been a subject of scrutiny and controversy in recent years, and the Trump presidency looks to be conducive to that transfer.
A quick background: After the Ferguson Police Department responded to unrest following the killing of Michael Brown with armored vehicles and other military and military-looking equipment, a little known program called the 1033 program began to get attention.
The 1033 program was created by the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997. It provided for the transfer of surplus and used military hardware to state and local police departments. Most (in)famous are armored vehicles, but many medium-sized agencies have relied on U.S. government equipment to supply their officers with rifles. Many other items between and beyond these are included. You can read the wonky details here.
In response to this criticism, President Obama issued Executive Order 13688, which categorized this equipment as “controlled” or “prohibited.” Prohibited items would not be transferred to police departments, and ones that were already in police hands would need to be returned to the feds.
The prohibited items are as follows:
- Tracked armored vehicles
- Weaponized Aircraft, Vessels, and Vehicles (meaning they have guns mounted on them)
- Firearms of .50‐Caliber or Higher
- Ammunition of .50‐Caliber or Higher
- Grenade Launchers
- Bayonets
- Camouflage Uniforms (with some exceptions)
What all these items have in common is they are not really common police equipment. I previously mentioned the usefulness of tracked armored vehicles, and grenade launchers can also be used to launch tear gas. But departments aren’t reliant on these items. As for the rest…. police have no use for a machine gun mounted to a helicopter. And bayonets? Really?
In fact, the vast majority of equipment transferred under the 1033 program wasn’t on this list anyway. Only one of these items was even transferred under the program in recent years (source). In other words, it would seem Obama’s executive order was largely for show.
President Trump stated that he would reverse this order. But as you can see, that’s not going to change much. Weaponized aircraft and bayonets are out. I may be wrong, but I do not see a real law enforcement application for .50 caliber weapons, either. Before Obama’s executive order, 87% of armored vehicles transferred under the program were wheeled, not tracked. So what might change is that a very few departments–probably larger ones–may get slightly different armored vehicles, possibly some uniforms for SWAT teams operating in rural areas, and maybe grenade launchers for use with tear gas–again, in SWAT operations.
The TL;DR here is that any 1033-related changes under President Trump will be rare, negligible, and incredibly hard for the average citizen to notice. The changes won’t make police more “militarized.”