In his first speech as attor­ney gen­er­al last month Jeff Ses­sions sig­naled that he intends to ​“pull back” on fed­er­al over­sight of local law enforce­ment, revers­ing course on a key police reform strat­e­gy of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. ​“We need, so far as we can, in my view, help police depart­ments get bet­ter, not dimin­ish their effec­tive­ness,” said Ses­sions in remarks to the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Attor­neys General.

The announce­ment hard­ly came as a sur­prise to police account­abil­i­ty activists, who warned from the out­set that Ses­sions’ nom­i­na­tion could weak­en police reform efforts. Anoth­er devel­op­ment, fly­ing below the radar, could spell fur­ther trou­ble for efforts to reign in poten­tial abus­es by local police.

In Jan­u­ary 2017, Con­gress­man John Rat­cliffe (R‑TX) intro­duced a bill would make it eas­i­er for local police to get their hands on sur­plus mil­i­tary equip­ment. The bill now has 16 co-spon­sors in the House and was referred last month to the Sub­com­mit­tee on Crime, Ter­ror­ism, Home­land Secu­ri­ty, and Investigations.

Since the 1990s, the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD) has been giv­ing away excess gear through a fed­er­al pro­gram known as 1033. Most of the equip­ment is fair­ly mun­dane — office com­put­ers, tread­mills and the like — but 1033 also makes weapons and tac­ti­cal vehi­cles avail­able to local police for just the cost of ship­ping. The pro­gram became the sub­ject of nation­wide scruti­ny in 2014, when police used rifles and armored vehi­cles to con­front pro­test­ers in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri fol­low­ing the killing of Black teenag­er Michael Brown.

Grow­ing con­cern over police mil­i­ta­riza­tion led Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to announce, the fol­low­ing year, that law enforce­ment agen­cies would be banned from receiv­ing cer­tain items — includ­ing armed heli­copters, grenade launch­ers and tracked armored vehi­cles — through fed­er­al pro­grams. A new set of guide­lines also des­ig­nat­ed gear such as mine-resis­tant ambush pro­tect­ed vehi­cles (MRAPs), 15-ton vehi­cles that can with­stand road­side bombs, as ​“con­trolled” items sub­ject to addi­tion­al restric­tions. The restric­tions apply to the 1033 pro­gram, as well as pro­grams admin­is­tered by fed­er­al agen­cies such as the Depart­ments of Jus­tice and Home­land Secu­ri­ty, which also pro­vide sup­port to local law enforce­ment through grants or excess equip­ment transfers.

The ​“Pro­tect­ing Lives Using Sur­plus Equip­ment (PLUS) Act” would essen­tial­ly undo Obama’s 2015 exec­u­tive order, which is deeply unpop­u­lar among law enforce­ment asso­ci­a­tions and police unions. Such groups have charged that the restric­tions put police offi­cers’ lives at risk — even though, as In These Times report­ed last year, the changes have done lit­tle to stem the over­all flow of sur­plus gear to cops. The most recent fig­ures, pro­vid­ed to In These Times by Defense Logis­tics Agency (DLA) spokesper­son Susan Lowe, show that $544 mil­lion worth of excess DOD equip­ment was trans­ferred to police depart­ments in 2016. This actu­al­ly rep­re­sents an increase from the pre­vi­ous year’s total of $518 mil­lion. (Lowe stress­es that these rep­re­sent the orig­i­nal acqui­si­tion val­ue of the property.)

Police depart­ments in some states were able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly bulk up their armories after the Oba­ma-era changes went into effect. In Mis­sis­sip­pi, sev­en of the eight MRAPs cur­rent­ly in use by police in the state were acquired in the 2016 cal­en­dar year. In North Car­oli­na, eight of that state’s 13 MRAPs were deliv­ered to local agen­cies between Octo­ber and Decem­ber 2016. And 13 of the 14 law enforce­ment agen­cies with MRAPs in New Jer­sey obtained their vehi­cles in the sec­ond half of last year alone. Togeth­er these are just a frac­tion of the more than 200 MRAPs that were shipped to local police in cal­en­dar year 2016, accord­ing to the DLA’s Lowe). Even Amer­i­can Police Beat, a respect­ed trade jour­nal, can­did­ly observed in a March 2016 report that fol­low­ing Obama’s exec­u­tive order, ​“it was back to busi­ness as usu­al in a mat­ter of months.”

In an inter­view with In These Times, Jim Pas­co, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police (FOP), the nation’s largest police union, said this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was ​“non­sense.” Instead, he charged, small­er police depart­ments have endured finan­cial stress dur­ing the past year as a result of the changes, giv­en that they now have to pay for ​“vital” equip­ment out of their own budgets.

Pas­co acknowl­edged that armored vehi­cles were still avail­able to local police depart­ments, but crit­i­cized the new require­ment that all such acqui­si­tions go through a civil­ian review process. To receive restrict­ed items, law enforce­ment agen­cies must sub­mit a request out­lin­ing why the items may be need­ed. The request must be approved by a may­or, city coun­cil or oth­er elect­ed body. That amounts to a judge­ment ​“being made by a per­son who has absolute­ly no law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence,” said Pasco.

The FOP was an ear­ly endors­er of Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy, and Pas­co is hope­ful that the orga­ni­za­tion will have the ear of his new admin­is­tra­tion. In the pre-elec­tion sur­vey giv­en by the FOP to all pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, Trump described 1033 as an ​“excel­lent pro­gram that enhances com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty” and promised to rescind Pres­i­dent Obama’s exec­u­tive order. ​“We take him at his word,” said Pasco.

Until a vote is sched­uled on the PLUS Act, the FOP will be ​“talk­ing to any­body who will lis­ten about the prob­lem with the exec­u­tive order,” said Pas­co. While he hopes that bill will sail through, he also invokes a pos­si­ble exec­u­tive action by Pres­i­dent Trump. One way or anoth­er, he says, ​“the sit­u­a­tion will be remedied.”

This sto­ry has been updat­ed to clar­i­fy the scope of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s exec­u­tive order.