Protesters Demand Defunding and Demilitarization of Police
The militarization of the police, according to the center-right R Street Institute, has been driven for decades by “the largely unsupported belief that American streets constitute a war zone and supplied by a steady stream of cast-off military equipment from the Pentagon” that have given local police forces a “police-against-the-world mentality.” President Obama limited the ability of local departments to access surplus military gear like grenade launchers and armored vehicles in 2015. This decision followed a nationwide debate over the use of force to quell protests after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. But in 2017, President Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, reinstated the program, saying the supplies constituted “lifesaving gear.”
Image credit: Halfpoint
