‘Militarization’ Critics Want to Review a Pentagon Program After Ferguson. But Police Get Gear This Way, Too.

President Obama has led a chorus of cries for a review of a Pentagon program supplying “excess” weaponry and equipment to state and local police following events in Ferguson, Mo., but it turns out that another federal agency is a major player behind the “militarization” trend. The Department of Homeland Security offers grants designed to increase the preparedness of state, county and local law enforcement agencies in the event of a terrorist attack or other hazards. Besides equipment, the grants cover planning, organization, training and exercise. In fiscal year 2014, DHS awarded more than $1 billion in “homeland security grants” to states and local governments through three channels: the State Homeland Security Program, the Urban Areas Security Initiative and Operation Stonegarden. Missouri participates in the first two. The Show-Me State first signed up for the State Homeland Security Program in October 2003, Mike O’Connell, communications director for the Missouri Department of Public Safety, told The Daily Signal. More than three dozen jurisdictions around the nation got grants in fiscal 2014 under DHS’ Urban Areas initiative, David Inserra, an expert in homeland security at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. Cities are picked through an analysis of “relative risk of terrorism.”...more