In his speech Friday to graduates from an FBI training program, President Donald Trump wondered how anyone could defend his predecessor’s decision to prohibit local police from accessing surplus military equipment.
“Never understood that one,” said the president, whose administration rescinded the 2015 ban by President Barack Obama. “Anybody want to stand up and explain it? It’d be tough.”
In fact, that decision by the Obama Administration, while criticized in some quarters, reflected a growing movement in the country concerned over a seemingly widening gulf between local law enforcement and the communities they serve.
A key catalyst for the ban was a botched drug raid one year earlier in Habersham County, when a 19-month-old baby was badly maimed and nearly killed after a flash bang grenade was mistakenly lobbed into his playpen. The heavily armed SWAT unit, which carried out the raid in the middle of the night, was seeking to apprehend a suspect who had sold $50 worth of crystal methamphetamine. That suspect was not in the house at the time.
"People saw that and concluded there needed to be changes," said attorney Mawuli Davis, who represented the parents of Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh, soon to turn 5 years old and still facing several major surgeries. "There was bipartisan support for it. People want more community policing, They don't want to see a military occupation of their communities."
When the ban was enacted, Georgia law enforcement agencies had received $70 million of decommissioned military gear, including grenade launchers, bayonets and tank-like vehicles. The need wasn't always clear, such as in the southeast Georgia town of Bloomingdale —- population, 2,745 —- which had acquired a grenade launcher to shoot tear gas, two M14 single-shot semi-automatic rifles and two M16 military-style rifles converted from automatic to semi-automatic.
“To the extent police are using military-style vehicles, tanks and armored, that stuff often sends the wrong message, especially to the minority community, ” Marietta Police Chief Daniel Flynn said at the time. “The message that the police are sending to the minority community is we want to go to war against you, and that’s inappropriate.”
Trump repeated a familiar refrain in his speech Friday, telling the the officers, “America’s police will have a true friend and loyal champion in the White House — more loyal than anyone else can be, I tell you.”
“Police departments are overstretched, they’re underfunded, and they’re totally under appreciated — except by me,” the president said.
Trump's full-throated support has won him considerable support among officers on the street, many of whom have said they feel under siege for just doing their job. In 2016, 63 U.S. law enforcement officers were killed by gunfire in the line of duty — 22 more than the previous year. So far in 2017, 43 officers have been fatally shot.
“There was a fundamental lack of understanding about how police operate, ” Cobb County attorney Lance LoRusso told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently. LoRusso is a former cop who has represented many police officers. “Now, they see an administration that has respect for the job that they do.”
But Atlanta lawyer Chris Stewart, who has represented several families who lost loved ones after confrontations with police — including relatives of Walter Scott, an unarmed motorist fatally shot in the back by a North Charleston, S.C. police officer — said he worries about the tone set by the president.
“The anti-police sentiment he references is way overstated,” Stewart said. “He never mentions what may have caused it. You’re not at war with the citizenry.”
Davis said he is troubled by the president’s refusal to address police accountability.
“These policies, this atmosphere, is going to create greater suffering in black, brown and poor communities,” he said.
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