In another blow to Obama-era police reforms, Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday announced the White House is planning to renew a program that allowed police departments to receive military surplus equipment like grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and bayonets.
"The executive order the President will sign today will ensure that you can get the lifesaving gear that you need to do your job and send a strong message that we will not allow criminal activity, violence, and lawlessness to become the new normal," Sessions said at a law enforcement convention hosted by the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, in Nashville. "We have your back," he assured the attendees.
The order will reinstate a law signed in 1997 by former President Bill Clinton called the 1033 program, which allowed the Department of Defense to transfer surplus military gear to local law enforcement agencies. That law came under heavy criticism in 2014 when images of heavily-armored vehicles and officers in military-grade gear confronting protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, made international headlines and forced the country to confront the increasing militarization of local police.
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