Senate panel to review Pentagon program arming police departments

A US Senator plans to review a Pentagon program that transfers surplus weapons to law enforcement agencies, amid calls for America’s police to be demilitarized following the use of military-style tactics and equipment in Ferguson, Missouri.

Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said he intends to review the program that allows local police agencies like the Ferguson Police Department to acquire for free surplus military equipment ranging from blankets and bayonets to tanks and armored carriers.

“Before the defense authorization bill comes to the Senate floor, we will review this program to determine if equipment provided by the Defense Department is being used as intended,” Levin said in a statement Friday.

“Congress established this program out of real concern that local law enforcement agencies were literally outgunned by drug criminals,” he added. “We intended this equipment to keep police officers and their communities safe from heavily armed drug gangs and terrorist incidents.”

Levin’s move comes after police officers in Ferguson, a predominantly African-American suburb of St. Louis, used military vehicles and equipment provided by the Pentagon to quell protests following last week’s shooting death of Michael Brown, a black teenager, by a white policeman.

US Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, announced on Thursday that he is also drafting a bill to limit the Pentagon program. “Our Main Streets should be a place for business, families and relaxation, not tanks and M16s,” Johnson said.

“Militarizing America’s Main Streets won’t make us any safer, just more fearful and more reticent,” he added.

Johnson also expressed concern that the trend toward militarizing police has moved beyond city police departments and sheriff’s offices, saying Ohio State University recently acquired a MRAP, an armored fighting vehicle used by armies. “Apparently, college kids are getting too rowdy,” Johnson said.

Images of police riding atop armored personnel carriers and dressed in camouflage in Ferguson, led critics on both the left and the right to press Congress to end the Pentagon program.

“Is this a war zone or a US city?” US Representative Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan tweeted Wednesday evening, as reports emerged of police using smoke bombs and tear gas to disperse the crowds.

“We need to demilitarize this situation, this kind of response by the police has become the problem instead of the solution,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, who was in Ferguson on Thursday.

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and possible US presidential contender in 2016, blamed the disturbing militarization of police on the federal government. “There should be a difference between a police response and a military response” to street protests, Paul wrote in an article in Time magazine.

Civil rights activists say the US has a long history of police brutality against African-Americans, where blacks are frequently murdered by law enforcement agencies because violence is deeply rooted in the police culture.