A man who randomly joined demonstrators protesting the shooting death of Michael Brown kneels in the middle of an intersection as he is surrounded by police officers in riot gear and taken away on Nov. 30, 2014 in St. Louis, Missouri. Brown, an 18-year-old black male teenager, was fatally wounded by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer on Aug. 9, 2014. Photo: Joshua Lott/Getty Images WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama has issued what are being described as timid regulations designed to rein in police militarization in the wake of violent protests that followed the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9.
He also spent Monday holding a series of meetings with cabinet, law enforcement, church and civil rights officials and young black community leaders to discuss a broad range of issues surrounding the deteriorating state of police and community relations particularly with minorities.
“Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area and is not unique to our time and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of colour,” Obama told reporters after the meetings. “Young people of colour, do not feel as if they are being treated fairly.”
Ferguson, he said, also raised the broader issue of “whether we are militarizing domestic law enforcement unnecessarily and is the federal government facilitating that.”
U.S. police are perceived as having become increasingly militaristic. Part of this is due to how police dress and to the fact that since 1996, the Pentagon has funnelled $4.3 billion US in surplus military equipment to the nation’s 18,000 police forces in what are called 1033 grants.
The list of equipment includes 92,443 small arms (mostly automatic weapons), 44,275 night vision goggles, 5,000 Humvees, 617 mine resistant ambush protected vehicles and 616 aircraft. In addition, there are armoured vests, helmets, goggles and gas masks.
This militarization suddenly burst onto the nation’s TV sets after protests broke out following the shooting death in Ferguson of Michael Brown, 19, by a white police officer named Darren Wilson, 28.
The shooting followed an altercation that began when Wilson asked Brown to walk on a sidewalk and not down the middle of a residential road. Wilson resigned from the force Saturday, saying his presence endangered the lives of fellow officers.
Police in full battle garb backed by armoured vehicles, sharpshooters and helicopters confronted protesters with a show of military force that appeared to turn the streets of the Midwestern suburb into something resembling a war zone.
Over a span of several days, the confrontation turned increasingly violent as tear gas filled the air, a building was torched, shots rang out and one person was injured by the gunfire. There were no deaths.
The violence and use of military equipment sparked the creation of a task force by Obama to study the militarization of U.S. police forces.
On Monday, he released a report that made modest recommendations, but did not reduce the flow of military equipment.
Obama promised to issue an executive order that will increase oversight and impose tighter controls over the police use of military equipment. He said the regulations will be designed “to make sure that we are not building a militarized culture inside our local law enforcement.”
He also promised $75 million to purchase 50,000 body cameras for the 626,942 police officers patrolling U.S. streets so police can videotape confrontations with the public.
Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarization at Eastern Kentucky University, said Obama had taken only a “minor step in addressing the overall militarization trend.”
“There’s an entire for-profit police militarization industry that wouldn’t be affected,” he said. “At the end of the day, what really needs to be addressed is a 25-year-long process of militarizing the culture of military police. There needs to be a focus on the demand side rather than the supply. As long as there is a high level of demand for heavy military equipment by local law enforcement, you’re not really fixing the problem.”
Obama also created a second task force to look into police training and community relations. Police associations have long complained that there is no consistency in hiring standards and training of officers from one police force to another.
Noting that previous task forces to improve policing had come up empty, Obama promised that “this time will be different and one of the reasons this time will be different is the president of the United States is deeply invested in making sure this time is different.”
Federal law forbids the deployment of the U.S. military to enforce state law. Some experts believe the equipping of police forces has been a quiet effort to arm and train police in the event of a terrorist attack.
Obama has been under pressure from civil rights groups to travel to Ferguson. But White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he “has no specific plans.”
wmarsden@postmedia.com
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