But of course they are:
Police associations are beginning a major lobbying push to protect their access to the military equipment that was used against demonstrators in Ferguson, Mo.
Law enforcement groups argue a Pentagon program that provides surplus military gear helps protect the public, and they are gearing up for a fight with lawmakers and the Obama administration over whether it should be continued.
“We are the most vigorous law enforcement advocacy group, and we intend to be at our most vigorous on this issue,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police organization in the country.
The Fraternal Order and other groups told The Hill that they are already meeting with lawmakers’ offices in an attempt to get a jump on the issue before Congress returns from the August recess.
Congress is facing a time crunch in September, with only a handful of legislative days on the calendar before members head back to their states and districts to campaign for reelection.
Police groups fear a stopgap bill to fund the government, which Congress must pass in September to avoid a government shutdown, could be used to stop the transfer of military gear.
Lawmakers in both parties have expressed support for curbing or defunding the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which provides police with weapons and equipment, such as rifles, grenade launchers, night-vision goggles and armored vehicles, such as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles for free. The Pentagon notes that only 5 percent of all equipment given to departments through the program are weapons.
Jim Pasco is the same asshole who recently had this to say in the wake of OBVIOUS police misconduct in Ferguson:
The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police criticized President Obama Thursday for his remarks about law enforcement in Ferguson, Mo.
“I would contend that discussing police tactics from Martha’s Vineyard is not helpful to ultimately calming the situation,” director Jim Pasco said in an interview with The Hill.
“I think what he has to do as president and as a constitutional lawyer is remember that there is a process in the United States and the process is being followed, for good or for ill, by the police and by the county and by the city and by the prosecutors’ office,” Pasco added.
Pasco harkened back to 2009, when Obama criticized a Massachusetts police officer for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, when he was attempting to break into his own home. Obama said the officer had “acted stupidly.”
“That is one where the president spoke precipitously without all the facts,” Pasco said, adding that the current situation “is a much larger and more tragic incident.”
He’s like the Wayne LaPierre for shitty cops.
BTW- how come the wingnuts never go after police unions?
chopper
Yeah, arrested cause you’re trying to get into your own fucking house. The actual facts were…well, he was trying to get into his own fucking house.
seabe
They do go after police unions, at least Scott Walker did. Either way, going after the unions isn’t the right track, and it’s not something I support…even if I hate cops.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@seabe: Actually, the Wisconsin law excepted police and firefighters unions.
charluckles
Authoritarians?
Roger Moore
They need the police on their side while they’re destroying the rest of the public employees’ unions. Once that’s done, the police will discover that they aren’t so untouchable as they think. First they came for the teacher’s unions, but the police didn’t say anything because they weren’t teachers…
Belafon
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Except Walker’s new budget includes police.
seabe
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Correct, they were originally spared during the initial fight. But now that solidarity was broken, he’s been open to destroying them as well
Link
Belafon
Davis, CA, rejected their police department’s acquiring an MRAP, and are trying to figure out how to get rid of it. (Daily Kos link)
ETA: Changed to better reflect what happened.
Professor
Because the Catholic Church has captured the Police Departments of the USA. The police departments are generally staffed by Catholics.
MrChaz
That article has a blatant falsehood contained within it:
“…Pasco harkened back to 2009, when Obama criticized a Massachusetts police officer for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, when he was attempting to break into his own home. Obama said the officer had “acted stupidly.”
According to the Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063001356.html)
“…When Crowley arrived, he found Gates in the house (the driver was gone) and asked him to step outside. Gates refused. When Crowley went into the house, Gates showed his Harvard identification card and his driver’s license, which included his address. According to police, Gates then became angry and followed Crowley outside. He was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct, which was later dropped.”
The depiction in this article is significantly more favorable to the police than: “A Harvard professor accosted in his own home by a police officer without a warrant was lured outside and arrested on a trumped up disorderly conduct charge”, but then it would make the police department look bad.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@seabe: Yeah, Walker has made some noise that way, but the legislature is not prepared to go along. Too many GOP types depend on law enforcement support for reelection.
@Professor: Quoi?
cleek
i checked to see what goodies my county has purchased under this program. 8 items: five pistols, two shotguns, one rifle.
Petorado
Not buying the “public safety” argument when police are using these military items expressly on the public who have convened in groups to protest for their liberties.
Military-grade tools are for harshly imposing “order” and for subduing dissent. Cops need to be using more reason and operating less as the ultimate authority, operating with impunity and forcing all citizens to pliantly submit to their every demand.
qwerty42
Yeah. They need the “tanks” (MRAPs) because the War on Drugs/Terror/whatever need a battle of Kursk.
wmd
Maybe we should ask the Attorney General for vigorous implementation of a law passed back in 1994:
AG Holder could tap Joe McNamara to lead an FBI task force to tabulate this data and assure that the reporting continues into the future.
Villago Delenda Est
I do believe it’s time to take the toys away from the boys, and if they sass back, deal out appropriate corporal punishment on them.
Villago Delenda Est
@qwerty42:
War on Blahs. Let’s get real here.
Villago Delenda Est
@Petorado:
The public has picked the wrong amendment to assert.
Amir Khalid
Some 25 years ago, when the Malaysian military was phasing out M-16s, the Defence Ministry tried giving them to the Home Ministry for use by the Royal Malaysian Police — which quickly found out that rifles can be quite awkward to carry, and a police officer is better off with a revolver. As I recall, that experiment only lasted a few months. As for the M-16s themselves, maybe the cops gave them back, maybe they’re still collecting dust in police arms depots.
If it isn’t a good idea to give this surplus military hardware away to local police departments, as we have seen, then what is the Department of Defense to do with it? And what about the stuff already given, and being overused, misused and abused all over the country? Should the DoD ask for it back? That would sound like a very big administrative headache..
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: First they came for the machinists, but I wasn’t a machinist. Then they came for the teachers, but I wasn’t a teacher. Then they came for the police, and there was no one left to help us ax the Xe stormtroopers prepared to gun us down.
I guess we’re fucked.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Give them away to friendly governments as an aid package.
When I was in Honduras in the mid 80’s, rumors were everywhere that the El Salvadoran rebels were armed with M16s that were lost in the fall of Vietnam a decade before, which had been ARVN arms but the victorious North didn’t see a need for, so they donated them to the various leftist factions in El Salvador.
indycat32
As the sheriff of Pulaski County (population 13,000) Indiana said about the MRAP they obtained: it’s a lot more intimidating than a dodge, and the U.S. has become “a war zone”. So you see they need that equipment, they’re fighting a war, people.
TheGoogly
Because they wear an American flag patch on their uniforms?
Villago Delenda Est
@indycat32: The only people these guys actually “protect and serve” are the parasites of the 1%.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Most of this crap can be melted down and made into other far less deadly and and maybe not so useless crap. All it takes is a will to do so. So that’s right out.
ETA Of course we could also make the decision not to spend so much making so much crap in the first place but the will to do that has gone missing as well.
boatboy_srq
They do sometimes, with sadly predictable results. Governor Voldemort (a/k/a Rick Scott) tried fairly early on. His plan: dissolve the FHP and merge its duties into the various sheriffs’ offices as an efficiency and cost-cutting measure. The result: a two-pronged backlash, with one attack from the soon-to-be-unemployed FHP troopers and the other from the soon-to-be-overworked sheriffs – with each attack making much of the law-and-order angle. The plan was quickly shelved.
Wingnuts don’t go after the cops because the cops are doing the wingnuts’ work: they lock up all Teh Others and they make sure life is good for the right kind of people; and in turn, the wingnuts don’t question their salaries/benefits/pensions/infractions/etc. it takes front-page or first-five-minutes coverage of things like one department’s officers letting another departments’ people off for DUI/speeding/reckless-endangerment to get any traction there. Add to all that the likelihood that cops are at least as likely to be wingnuts like the pols.
boatboy_srq
@wmd:
… and stopped there because 9/11 and Mooslim and Terrrrrruh. Thirteen years ago – right after this body’s one and only report – nineteen idjits with box cutters tore up all rights and privileges for non-White, non-Xtian, non-hetero, unpatriotic unAhmurrcans, and put the rest on notice that they could have their Freedumb back only when
OthernessTerrrrrrruh was vanquished for all time. Weren’t you paying attention?Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, rebel forces in El Salvador obtained weapons from Vietnam, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Ethiopia, the PLO, and elsewhere.
Sondra
3 things come to my mind after reading this post.
1. “The Pentagon notes that only 5 percent of all equipment given to departments through the program are weapons.” What is the other 95% if only 5% is weapons?
2.“That is one where the president spoke precipitously without all the facts,” Pasco said…” NO, he didn’t. All of the facts were that the Professor was arrested on his own front porch because he was a black man on his front porch. Had he been a white man the police would not have noticed him.
3. they do go after the Police Unions. They just do it more quiety at home in their States and thru their Republican Governors and State Representatives.
Everytime you here about Governors like Chris Christy raiding their State Pension Funds, they are dipping into the funds of the Unions of the Police and Firefighters as well as Teachers and every other state employee.
Or when they plead poverty on the State level and force the Police Union to accept less money and pay raises for their members because they must give more dollars to millionaires and corporate “job creators”.
Avery Greynold
In CA, the strong unions are police/fire/prison/teachers. Republicans want to privatize and bust prison/teacher unions, but they can’t privatize police and fire. Sure, in the libertarian utopia, police/fire can be privatized, but in real life they would become corrupt corporate armies and fire departments running mafia-like protection rackets.
AnonPhenom
Because they need their help ‘maintaining order’ while they strip everyone else of their unions first. This has been another edition of SATSQ…
Though in truth, like this Fox contributor , they don’t hide their intentions. I gotta figure the cops today are thinking a lot like the mortgage brokers and derivative traders of a few years ago. You know that “you’ll be gone, I’ll be gone” thing, so who the fuck cares if what we do today is just, right or even legal.
Motivated Seller
The right wing doesn’t see the Police as a “Union”. Unions are just a bunch of
blahsthugs. In contrast, the Police is a Force that is to be respected…at least until they become a threat to their taxes, and then Police = tyranny.shelley
The public begs to differ.
CONGRATULATIONS!
The smarter of our overlords never go after the police unions, they’re the muscle that enable the 1%ers to rape and pillage us with impunity.
Kaisch went after them in Ohio but early on, and it failed and it looks as though all is forgiven – he’ll be re-elected. He’ll do it next term, to the utter shock of those same unions who didn’t get it last time, and succeed this time. Walker, having gotten his way on everything, is now going to take the police and fire unions out as anyone with a quarter of a brain could have told those unions was inevitable, but hey, they voted for him and they get to reap the whirlwind. Or not. He may lose.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sondra:
They’re probably using the term “weapon” very selectively, as in small arms. An MRAP isn’t a “weapon”, it’s a vehicle. Never mind the entire fucking thing is used as a weapon.
A lot of the aid is in the form of body armor, helmets (milspec Kevlar ain’t cheap), more vehicles, accessories for weapons (like the stands we saw being used in Ferguson to steady an AR-15, scopes, other sundries), sleeping bags for “going to the mattresses”, There’s a great deal of military paraphernalia aside from actual firearms that could be passed on to the police.
Mnemosyne
@Sondra:
IIRC, they also donate things like bulletproof vests, which are the kind of thing that it makes sense to donate since many police departments can’t afford them and officers end up having to buy their own.
Roger Moore
@Sondra:
Other tactical gear: body armor, helmets, load-bearing vests, vehicles, etc. There’s also some potential looseness in how that 5% and 95% are defined. If you define them in terms of total number of items rather than value, then it could be pretty easy to wind up with that kind of ratio. A gun is just one item, but the rest of the kit is a whole bunch.
Amir Khalid
@Sondra:
Is that 5% of all equipment by value, so that 1 MRAP = 1,000 rifles? By item count, so that 1 APC = 1 rifle? By weight?
Roger Moore
@Avery Greynold:
You make it sound like that’s a barrier to libertarians. Evil 0.001% assholes like the Koch brothers want corrupt corporate armies and mafia-like protection rackets.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: I was constantly informed that captured El Salvadoran rebel arms were traced by serial number back to weapons that were under ARVN control in 1975.
AnonPhenom
@Professor:
OMG, is that from your new book “Protocol of the Elders of The Vatican”?
Tell us is it’s true what they say about the banking/finance sectors and the … um, ahem – well, You Know Whos…
ChrisH
Maybe a compromise is in order. The program remains, but any police force that accepts any federal aid has to equip every officer with cameras to record their policework.
Villago Delenda Est
@AnonPhenom: Just look at the US Supreme Court, and who voted for what in the Hobby Lobby case.
Not looking good.
Hunter Gathers
Because police unions will fight tooth and nail to make sure that cops who murder black people will never face any consequences.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Avery Greynold: I hate being in hock to these people, as their members are pretty much 100% thugs, but the CA prison guards union is the largest in the state and has helped quite a bit in keeping California safe for unions.
They have also helped keep the state spending more on prisons than on colleges, I don’t know how you fix that.
Sterling
BTW- how come the wingnuts never go after police unions?
Because a large part of their function is protecting and enforcing property rights. Though I suppose the wingnuts would prefer to see private security firms handle law enforcement if they could make it work politically.
AnonPhenom
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
When Jay Gould spoke of “hiring one-half the working class to kill the other half” he had these guys in mind.
Of course, Gould likely planed to then divide that surviving half in half again and use them to kill the remaining half, and then divide that half of a half in half again and … well, you get the idea.
Tommy
This might get you shot in some towns. But I walked up to the cop in my town. Tapped him with my fore finger. Asked if that was his vest. He said yes. Police in my town are cool. I don’t know how to explain it.
scav
They want the toys, they accept federal oversight and have to enforce Federal laws. no nullification bullshit. Also, tools come with training. Training with grades and oversight. Misuse the toys, they get taken away. Damn toddlers with badges wailing loudly when they don’t every single thing they want, instantly and with sirens on.
C.V. Danes
This in no way is to protect the public. This is to protect the police, specifically from a public with access to 300,000,000 firearms.
C.V. Danes
@Tommy:
If you’re brown, this would likely get you shot in most towns.
Cacti
And why wouldn’t police need camouflage fatigues for law enforcement activity in a suburban setting?
smh.
AnonPhenom
@Villago Delenda Est:
So all of those Catlicks voted in lock-step? Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.
Mnemosyne
@AnonPhenom:
All the white male Catholics did. The Latina female Catholic, not so much. But people tend to forget that when they complain about the Catholics on the court.
(The primary problem is that they’re old, white, conservative men. The Catholic thing just gives them cover to screw people for “moral” reasons.)
Calouste
@Sondra:
One gun with 19 bullets.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: As you point out, the male Papists (to use an inflammatory protestant term) did indeed vote in lock step. Mind you, not on the orders for the Pope, by any stretch of the Protestant imagination vis a vis John F. Kennedy.
Still, there’s a mind set there that isn’t much in consonance with Madison’s take on church and state.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Or, if you prefer to see things that way, all the Justices appointed by Republicans voted one way and all the ones appointed by Democrats voted the opposite way. That seems like a more reasonable way to view things, since political leanings seem to be more reliable that religious background in predicting votes on other measures on which the Catholic Church has strong teachings, like capital punishment.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: The most avid “cafeteria Catholics” seem to be those of the Scalia flavor.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
They aren’t cafeteria Catholics. They’re people who know more about Catholicism than Pope Francis.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: I sit corrected.
Aunt Kathy
Unfortunately, they don’t need the big guns to terrorize Americans. The charges were dropped, and it’s being “investigated.” But this made me sick. Make sure you keep your phone recording at all times, especially if you’re a black guy waiting to pick up his kids from daycare. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/27/sitting-while-black-in-minnesota-cops-tase-man-for-not-stating-his-name/
Aunt Kathy
and an update… http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2014/08/28/st-paul-man-cellphone-assault-video-identified-claims-charges-dropped
rikyrah
National Guard troops in Rio Grande Valley using food bank because they haven’t been paid
By Kolten Parker, San Antonio Express-News
August 29, 2014 11:37am
SAN ANTONIO — About 50 National Guard troops deployed to the border by Gov. Rick Perry are using food and gas assistance from a food bank in the Rio Grande Valley because they haven’t been paid in weeks.
The troops were deployed weeks ago — state and local officials were tight-lipped about an exact deployment date — and told RGV Food Bank employees in Pharr that they won’t be paid until Sept. 5, according to a report from KGBT.
“To have any of our men and women in uniform having to be in a food bank line is embarrassing for Texas,” state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, told KGBT, adding that it is “disrespectful” and blamed poor planning.
http://www.chron.com/news/local/article/National-Guard-troops-in-Rio-Grande-Valley-using-5721181.php?cmpid=twitter-mobile
Chickamin Slam
The final home game for a local minor league baseball team had some police military vehicles parked at the stadium for First Responders Night. No sign of a fire engine, even vintage, but there was a police military vehicle sitting there on the concourse.
Waiting in line to enter I heard a fat white man, late 30s, wearing flip flops talking about how “we need these vehicles as the protesters are so much more violent now than they were in the past.” Further Fox News drivel frothed out from his lips as he continued his conversation with friends.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
I think we’ve found the source of the stupidity …
wmd
@boatboy_srq:
So lets agitate to get this reporting done – events in Ferguson and elsewhere make it a hot issue. Bring it up with your congressperson, don’t let the FOP lobby be the only ones they hear from… bring it to President Obama too.
negative 1
@Roger Moore: The police don’t frequently vote with the rest of us. They do go after firefighters, here in RI they call them greedy and imply every worker’s comp case a firefighter files is fraudulent. But police unions vote republican almost every time, don’t endorse candidates or openly endorse republicans. The antipathy runs both ways, however, I personally wouldn’t care if they broke the FOP tomorrow.
wmd
@wmd:
I created a petition to get the DoJ to collect the data and publish the report.
Pogonip
@MrChaz: I read the mention of this above and thought, “WHAT? They arrested the PRESIDENT for trying to get into the WHITE HOUSE?!?”
A society in which that can even pass through your mind is a society in deep trouble.
pluege
just ask Ohio Governor kasich who did and it blew up in his face.
LongHairedWeirdo
The thing is, the cop who arrested professor Gates didn’t act stupidly. He very carefully plotted out what actions were needed to arrest him for creating a disturbance.
Okay, that’s a bit of a cheap shot.
No… no, it’s not cheap, it’s dead-level accurate. But they actually went after Obama for that – as if it’s anything *but* stupid to arrest a person who’s doing nothing more than hurting fee-fees in his own house. Let’s stipulate Gates was being an asshole – I don’t *agree* but let’s take it just to argue. You don’t arrest a man for being an asshole, and if you do, and he’s actually semi-important, you did act stupidly. And it’s a sick situation in this country where doing a stupid thing wins you a White House invitation.
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): For now. I fully expect them to remedy that “oversight” should Walker be re-elected.
Barbara
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I live in Ohio and was about to say what you just said. Of course the police (and fire) will vote to reelect Kaisch, even though they ought to remember what he tried doing to them and as a result, ought to know better.
Doesn’t help that the Democratic candidate has turned out to be very, very weak. I mean, I don’t even want to vote for him, but of course I will.
The whole thing makes me extremely depressed.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Perry was told they were volunteers, so how was he supposed to know they expected to be paid, too?
/snark
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Barbara: It is maddening and saddening. I had a canvasser for a congressional candidate stop by Saturday and after I assured her I was still in, she asked what I thought of the statewide ticket. I was candid, and I told her I’d like it a whole lot better if Ed hadn’t stepped on his dick, repeatedly. I notes that though I’ve known and liked Eric K for many years, WTF was anybody thinking putting him on as Lt. Gov with his tax issues, It’s been a comedy (an unfunny one) of errors in an election that could be winnable with GOTV and the right reminders of Kasich’s behavior.
Mnemosyne
A few more details in the story about the guy in Minnesota who was arrested and tased for Loitering While Black — apparently the security guards of the bank he was waiting outside of were the ones who called the cops.
AnonPhenom
@Villago Delenda Est:
@Mnemosyne: ( )*
A final thought;
SCOTUS votes and it’s disproportionate representation of a single religious group in composition aside, @Professor: ‘s laughable comment was regarding members of law enforcement not the judiciary. Interesting how you readily and seamlessly (accepted the) morph(ing of) the two.
Gee, wonder why?
Villago Delenda Est
@AnonPhenom: Well, it WAS a laughable comment, because Catholics are anything but monolithic, just like Muslims or Jews, and ESPECIALLY Protestants, who are all over the map from seriously great people to assholes who need to be shot into the sun.
Although those five dicks with dicks need to be removed from the USSC and locked in a dungeon somewhere. They’re all fascist dogshit who should never be anywhere near any lever of power.
I just hope you understand why some people will make comments like that when you’ve got an example of a bunch of assholes shoving their religious sensibilities up the birth canals of women everywhere.
PaulW
Because police can and will shoot back.
al coholic
@Villago Delenda Est: Love this comment. Religious folks are just like atheists, some are assholes and some are not.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Professor: Give me a break. Irish Catholics were hired as police because they didn’t have other employment options. They were paid dreadfully and police unions were illegal. It’s not surprising that the police formed secret fraternal societies (some of which later became police unions in states where public employees can unionize) and that a culture of corruption, originally centered around extortion and bribes, was inculcated in these police forces. It’s also kind of sad but true that Irish Catholic police families (and firefighter families) have a proprietary attitude towards those jobs, which extends to finding ways to exclude other ethnic groups from becoming police.
If you want to look at dysfunctional cultures, don’t start with African Americans, start with the American Irish. I’m lucky, my family didn’t stick around in the cities, but became farmers after benefiting from the Homestead Act.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Meh, old school WASPs have their own issues.
pseudonymous in nc
As John Oliver said, if the cops can go a month without shooting an innocent black man, then maybe, maybe, they can get their fucking toys back.
There need to be two different police forces with two different numbers: the one you call when you want a situation to end peacefully, and the one you call when you really just want someone shot.
And if you call the second number, the first police force comes round and arrests you.
My Truth Hurts
Good ol boy cops, always telling the black President what he “needs” to be doing. Asshole.
Electricgrendel
So- we have to cut SNAP funding, but we don’t mind giving the Pentagon enough money to arm the police forces of America with its surplus of military materiel. Priorities!