Comments on: Obama curtails police military surplus program

By: MattS

MattS — Wed, 20 May 2015 18:26:46 +0000

“The 1033 Program was created by the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1997 as part of the U.S. Government’s Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services (DLA) to transfer excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_program

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Wed, 20 May 2015 15:59:39 +0000

Under what legislation are police forces authorized to possess and use military weapons?

By: Muddy

Muddy — Wed, 20 May 2015 04:44:19 +0000

In reply to Jay. Duh. That's kind of the point of any government agency. When you're a small agency it's too easy to blame one person and people get fired. Make it large enough and the blame gets spread around but only in an internal document that creates no real consequences but also means that you get to create an investigations department so... Yay, more jobs?

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 19 May 2015 20:17:16 +0000

My only point of concern now is the creation of a new federal agency to oversee all this. It could go very well, and just be an auditing agency with periodic reviews of a sampling of agencies… But with the number of police forces, the amount of equipment out there and the desire to be thorough, my cynical side says it’ll be a huge agency with branches all over the country leading to the need for local governments to spend more money to hire compliance interface officers and spiraling in to a huge bureaucracy.