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President Trump will sign an executive order to allow local police departments to receive or purchase military surplus equipment:
Police departments will now have access to military surplus equipment typically used in warfare, including grenade launchers, armored vehicles and bayonets, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Monday, describing it as "lifesaving gear."
The move rescinds limits on the Pentagon handouts that were put in place by President Barack Obama in 2015 amid a national debate over policing touched off by a spate of high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of the police, including the shooting death in 2014 of 18-year-old Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., by a white officer. Some local residents viewed police use of military equipment during the ensuing protests as an unnecessary show of force and intimidation.
In a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, Mr. Sessions said Mr. Obama had made it harder for the police to protect themselves and their neighborhoods. "Those restrictions went too far," Mr. Sessions said. "We will not put superficial concerns above public safety."
Mr. Sessions said that President Trump would sign an executive order on Monday fully restoring the military program, called 1033, and that the president was doing "all he can to restore law and order and support our police across the country." [...] The program was started in the 1990s as a way for the military to transfer surplus equipment to federal, state and local police agencies fighting the drug war. More than $5 billion in surplus gear has been funneled to law enforcement agencies.
Organized gangs get to play soldier.
Also at The Hill and USA Today.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:49PM (3 children)
The parent comment is obviously not trolling.
Chicago has had Democratic mayors since 1931. [wikipedia.org]
Chicago City Council currently has 49 Democrats and 1 Republican. [wikipedia.org] Many of the Democrats have held their seat for a decade or longer.
Detroit has had Democratic mayors since 1962. [wikipedia.org]
Detroit City Council has been predominantly Democratic since the late 1960s. [wikipedia.org]
St. Louis has had Democratic mayors since 1949. [wikipedia.org]
It isn't Republicans or even political centrists who are responsible for the problems in those cities.
They've been firmly under Democratic control for decades now, and things have only gotten worse during this time.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:10PM (2 children)
Having a D in front of their name does not make them good, or pursue programs that would actually help. Stop with the tribalism please.
The biggest issue has always been the War on Drugs. We now know that it was started with the express intention of cultural warfare, full stop. It has been wildly successful in destroying communities and it is time we reversed the trend. Prejudiced police are also a major problem, it is hard to get young adults to care about their community when law enforcement is actively working against them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:18PM (1 child)
That's exactly the point. Democrats have been in control over the multi-decade-long collapses of what were once some of the premiere American cities.
We shouldn't expect any sort of positive change to happen as long as the leadership of these cities remains ideologically the same.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:44PM
You seem to be suffering under some kind of delusion that the (D) or (R) in front of someone's name on TV has some kind of relation to their ideology or policy decisions...