Police union accuses White House of politicizing cop safety Obama administration has announced plan to restrict police forces’ access to military gear.

CAMDEN, N.J. - The nation’s largest police union is fighting back against a White House plan to restrict local police forces’ ability to acquire military-style gear, accusing President Barack Obama’s task force of politicizing officers’ safety.

The White House on Monday announced that bayonets, weaponized vehicles and grenade launchers will no longer be available to local police and that other equipment such as riot gear and other types of armored vehicles would be subject to a more onerous approval process.


The move came alongside the release of broader recommendations for “21st-Century Policing” and is part of the Obama administration’s response to a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police that has provoked a national debate about the relationship between police forces and the communities they serve.

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told POLITICO on Monday that he hopes to have a White House meeting as soon as Tuesday to discuss his concerns about how the plans could put cops at risk.

“The FOP is the most aggressive law enforcement advocacy group in Washington, and we will be at our most aggressive in asserting the need for officer safety and officer rights in any police changes that are to be effected,” Pasco said.

He said in particular he objects to a measure that would require police departments to get permission from city governments to acquire certain equipment, including riot batons, helmets and shields, through federal programs.

“We need to only look back to Baltimore to see what happens when officers are sent out ill-equipped in a disturbance situation,” he said. “Because you don’t like the optics, you can’t send police officers out to be hurt or killed.”

Yet Obama, announcing the policy in Camden, N.J., said the policies are the result of input from law enforcement.

“We’re doing these things because we’re listening to what law enforcement is telling us,” Obama said.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like it’s an occupying force as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” he said. “So we’re going to prohibit equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments,” he said, while for other items, the administration would ensure officers have appropriate training.

But the sharp response from the police union illustrates the challenge before Obama — cracking down on controversial police activities while not alienating the law enforcement community.

In recent days, Obama and his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, have taken care to honor fallen officers, while also being responsive to communities still simmering over a series of incidents of police brutality, including in Baltimore last month when 25-year-old Freddie Gray died after suffering severe injuries while in police custody.

Obama on Monday said the reform effort is everyone’s responsibility.

“We cannot ask the police to contain and control problems that the rest of us are unwilling to face,” Obama said while in Camden, which has a police force that is considered a role model of improved relations. He also said, “The overwhelming majority of police officers are good and honest and fair. They care deeply about their communities.”

Obama’s allies on Monday rallied around the administration’s reform plan.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill called the effort “a step in the right direction,” touting the similarities between the White House’s plan and the Democrat’s own Protecting Communities and Police Act.

“The White House working group recognized what we did — that this federal equipment and funding saves lives, but that these programs are in need of reform,” the former prosecutor said in a statement. “This is another step in the direction of needed change to better protect both police officers, and the communities those officers serve.”

But Obama himself has acknowledged the limitations of his reach in reforming local police forces.

“The challenge for us as the federal government is, is that we don’t run these police forces,” Obama said last month at a Rose Garden news conference. “I can’t federalize every police force in the country and force them to retrain. But what I can do is to start working with them collaboratively so that they can begin this process of change themselves.”

James Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he hopes to have a White House meeting as soon as Tuesday to discuss his concerns about how the plans could put cops at risk. | M. Scott Mahaskey

The militarization of police has been seen as one area where the federal government could have some say.

The images of police in armored vehicles and camouflage uniforms confronting protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer brought new scrutiny to federal programs that transfer military gear to local law enforcement officials. The outcry came not only from the traditional civil rights movement, but also Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho). Now, the Obama administration is making that camo off-limits for urban departments, and local cops will have to make the case that they really need those armored vehicles going forward.

The White House is also gearing up to temper the scenes of chaos in Ferguson and Baltimore with its plan for more dialogue and data. After Obama’s Camden visit, his cabinet will fan out across the country during the next few weeks to highlight other success stories, and Lynch will start her own Community Policing tour in Cincinnati.

A variety of federal programs had offered local police ways to get surplus military equipment or use federal funds to buy their own. The events in Ferguson, which had been a simmering concern for civil rights advocates, helped bring the issue into the mainstream, and Obama asked the departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security to reexamine the programs.

What they found were “no consistent standards” for local police who wanted this equipment, said Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz in a call with reporters Sunday. She added, “There wasn’t a single federal strategy.”

The ban on certain items — including tracked armored vehicles and firearms higher than .50 caliber — goes into effect immediately.

But local agencies can still acquire a list of “controlled items” — things like drones, Humvees and stun grenades known as “flash bangs” — if they meet an extensive set of new rules. Those will be phased in more gradually to let small departments catch up, Muñoz said.

Under the new standards, local police departments have to get sign-off from a civilian governing body, like a city council, and provide a “clear and persuasive explanation” for why the controlled equipment is necessary. They also have to commit to training officers on community and constitutional policing approaches, as well as collect data on when the equipment is used for a “significant incident.”

Data collection is a major element of broader administration recommendations on 21st-century policing, also released Monday.

A dozen cities have agreed to share data with academic-data scientists to help develop a sort of early warning system that would “[home] in on problems before they manifest themselves in the community,” Muñoz said. During his visit on Monday, Obama plans to visit Camden’s Real-Time Tactical Operational Intelligence Center and greet a group of volunteer tech experts who’ll spend a few days helping Camden shore up its internal data system.

The administration is also planning “hackathons” and other efforts to help agencies make the data accessible to their communities through visualizations and mappings.

The task force’s report centers on six broad areas—or “pillars”—for improvement: building trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education, and officer wellness and safety.

The report’s many recommendations include encouraging agencies to maintain transparency with regard to policies on use of force, as well as encouraging independent and external reviews of cases where police force results in death.

It also recommended that law enforcement agencies should promote safety and wellness at every level, as well as recommending the Justice Department encourage and help local police implement “scientifically supported shift lengths.”

The police slayings of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson and a fleeing man in North Charleston, South Carolina, have sparked calls for another sort of police equipment: body cameras. Obama’s task force has been reluctant to take a firm stand on them, noting potential privacy issues. But the Justice Department took a step toward fostering broader adoption Monday with a new online clearinghouse of information on the latest policies and research geared toward local agencies.

DOJ also announced $163 million in grants available to help local police departments implement the community policing recommendations, to be awarded in the fall.

Nick Gass contributed to this report.