Labrador introduces bill restricting military surplus program

Idaho’s 1st District U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador wants to restrict surplus military equipment from going to state and local law enforcement agencies, saying local police shouldn’t be militarized.

“Our nation was founded on the principle of a clear line between the military and civilian policing,” said Labrador, a Republican, who introduced legislation Tuesday that would prohibit sending military surplus to the nation’s civilian police forces. “The Pentagon’s current surplus property program blurs that line by introducing a military model of overwhelming force in our cities and towns. Our bill would restore the focus of local law enforcement on protecting citizens and providing due process for the accused.”

In 2011, Labrador co-sponsored legislation to require 10 percent of military equipment being returned from Iraq that’s suitable for law enforcement work to be sent to federal and state agencies with a preference for using it for southern border security. Such equipment might include drones, Humvees and night-vision goggles. Labrador’s spokesman, Dan Popkey, said that program was “apples and oranges” and nothing like the one the congressman is targeting now. “The 2011 bill was specifically for border security,” Popkey said.

The 2011 bill, dubbed the SEND (Send Equipment for National Defense) Act, didn’t pass.

It had 18 co-sponsors, all Republicans.

“The congressman has always supported transfers of equipment appropriate for local law enforcement,” Popkey said. But he’s concluded that some equipment now being transferred isn’t.

The new bill, dubbed the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014, targets the Pentagon’s surplus property program that’s provided $4.2 billion in surplus military equipment to local and state law enforcement agencies without charge. That’s included everything from Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected Vehicles, or MRAPs, to grenade launchers and high-caliber assault rifles. The program has come under scrutiny since local police in Ferguson, Missouri, used tanklike vehicles and military-style weapons for crowd control during demonstrations following the police shooting of a young unarmed man.

Labrador’s bill, which he introduced with U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and a bipartisan group of four other co-sponsors, would exclude certain equipment including high-caliber weapons, long-range acoustic devices, grenade launchers, weaponized drones, armored vehicles and explosives from the program. It also would remove a requirement that police agencies use the equipment they get within a year, which Labrador said has been giving local police an incentive to use the military gear in inappropriate circumstances.

The bill also requires agencies to certify they can account for all equipment. In 2012, one Arizona sheriff was barred from the program after he couldn’t account for weapons and other equipment he’d received; and another Arizona county turned out to have transferred some of the equipment to nonpolice agencies like fire and ambulance units, in violation of the program’s rules.