Liberty Minute September 19 2014

 Idaho Republican Congressman Raul Labrador and Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson have co-sponsored a measure intended to limit a federal program that transfers war-fighting materiel to local police departments.

The Pentagon?s Law Enforcement Support Office, also called the 1033 program, was created twenty years ago in order to fight the so-called War on Drugs. The program, which operates through the Defense Logistics Agency, allows police departments to receive combat-grade weapons, body armor, night vision equipment, and armored vehicles on concessionary terms. According to Pentagon spokesman Fred Baille, each police department that applies for the equipment is treated ?as if they were a [Defense Department] organization? ? in other words, as war-fighters, rather than peace officers.

Among the reforms proposed by Representatives Labrador and Johnson would be restrictions on transfers of armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other battlefield armaments. They also seek to repeal a provision requiring recipient police agencies to use their Pentagon-provided equipment within a year, an arrangement that creates a perverse incentive for overkill.

The problem with the Labrador-Johnson measure is that it takes an incremental approach rather than simply abolishing a program that shouldn?t exist in the first place. And it doesn?t address the real issue, which is the very literal War on Drugs that makes police militarization inevitable.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.