WHAT WAS SAID

That is why, as I promised all along — that we are allowing local police to access the surplus military equipment they need to protect our officers and law enforcement agents and save their lives. And they are taking equipment at a record clip. Millions and millions of dollars of surplus equipment is going to our police departments.

— President Trump, in remarks on Tuesday at the National Peace Officer’s Memorial Service

THE FACTS

False.

Mr. Trump is referring to the Pentagon’s so-called 1033 program, which has been sending excess military equipment to the police since the 1990s.

In 2014, the shooting death of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., sparked a nationwide debate on the use of police force and the militarization of law enforcement across the United States.

The next year, the Obama administration prohibited local police departments from obtaining track armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft grenade launchers and bayonets, among other weapons, at the recommendation of a task force it assembled after the Ferguson protests.

Mr. Trump reversed those restrictions last August. But the weapons transfers have slowed under his watch — far from rising to a “record clip.”