Sen. Carl Levin's "weak sauce" review of the 1033 program that has increasingly put military grade equipment into the hands of police forces around the country is a little late, considering he and the rest of Congress had a good chance to do some effective reversal of the program back in June and overwhelmingly rejected it:
(A) revealing vote this past June shows just how uphill the battle is to stop the trend of turning police into soldiers. On June 19, progressive House Democrat Alan Grayson (FL) offered an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would block the “transfer” of “aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents, launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles” from the Department of Defense to state and local police forces.
The amendment attracted the support of only 62 members, while 355 voted against it (14 didn’t vote). Included among those voting against it was Rep. William Lacy Clay (D), who represents Ferguson. Clay was joined by every senior member of the Democratic Party leadership team, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi (CA), Steny Hoyer (MD), and Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (SC). Democrats did form the bulk of support for the amendment (with 43 votes in favor), with 19 Republicans supporting as well—led by libertarian-conservative Rep. Justin Amash (MI), who lamented that “military-grade equipment . . . shouldn’t be used on the street by state and local police” on his Facebook page.
Why was there such strong opposition to the Grayson-Amash amendment? In short, because the defense industry, and the police lobby both opposed it.
Another factor may be the fact that the person most responsible for the militarization of the police is none other than Joe Biden:
Biden was the author of the 1994 crime bill, which vastly increased the numbers of police on the streets, eliminated Pell grant access for prisoners, expanded the death penalty, and strongly increased Border Patrol presence. This criminalization and militarization of Americans’ public-safety concerns has continued under President Obama. As Radley Balko writes, the Obama administration has increased the budget for Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and Byrne grants, both of which finance local police departments in their efforts to wage heavy-handed drug and crime war operations.
Leading Democrats have clearly been major contributors to the problem. Now they're stuck between major lobbyists and campaign contributors and their major voting constituencies. It's a problem of their own making and their own political cowardice. They'd damn well better get going on fixing it, and being seen standing up for fixing it. Waffling and waiting for the problem of cops-gone-wild with camo-uniformed snipers perched on top of tanks on the streets of American small towns isn't going to go away by itself. Time for some political courage and some standing up for principles, not to mention for some basic common sense.