McCaskill Taps Her State Auditor Experience for Local Police Militarization Inquiry
U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Missouri senator’s previous state investigations found problems with training and use of local police equipment.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — When U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill saw the pictures of the early local police response to the Ferguson protests following the shooting of Michael Brown last month, one word immediately came to mind: Militarization.
Soon after pictures and stories of a police response reminiscent to recent scenes in distant foreign squares, the second-term Democrat was on the ground in the St. Louis suburb that was reeling from the opening of deep racial fissures. McCaskill called for the mostly white local police force to de-escalate their law-enforcement response to the predominantly African-American protesters.
At the time, the senator said the situation in Ferguson needed to be “demilitarized.” Now, McCaskill’s leading a national effort to change the rules for local police departments in order to receive some of the former military equipment.
While police militarization is a new issue for McCaskill, investigating the spending practices of local police departments and the lack of associated training is not.
Prior to being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, McCaskill served for eight years as Missouri’s state auditor, a perch she successfully used to launch herself onto the national scene. She investigated the spending of a number of state agencies, from education to health.
But the audit McCaskill has been talking about a lot recently is one she conducted in 2005 on the Missouri Department of Public Safety.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, federal dollars began pouring into state and local police programs to provide them with a wide range of tools to prepare for potential terrorist threats. In Missouri, this included nearly $10 million in federal funds for brand-new “personal protective equipment” (PPE), otherwise known as hazmat suits. They came with all sorts of accessories, including breathing masks, gloves and boots.
“What the audit of the hazmat suits showed is a lot of these agencies were getting them because they were free, but they weren’t being utilized,” McCaskill said in a recent interview while visiting the University of Missouri. “The issue was, should we be offering things for free when it is not really necessary based on the size of the department or how often they’re utilized.”
In some cases, McCaskill’s audit found that they were “distributed to some local agencies that did not need or want the equipment” in the first place.
“One agency supervisor indicated he and his staff did not even know how to assemble the PPE components,” McCaskill wrote at the time. “At the police departments for the cities of Kansas City and St. Louis, as well as other locations, PPE remained unopened and stored in its original boxes.”
In addition to their lack of use, there was also little training associated with the distribution of the nearly 20,000 suits purchased by Uncle Sam. McCaskill’s audit found there were no statewide restrictions to guide local agencies, meaning there was ample room for improper equipment use. In one instance, her audit found just that: Some of the protective equipment was planned to be used for a personal hunting outing by a local cop.
Police respond to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 17. (Charlie Riedel / AP File Photo)
Eight years later, those issues are back at the forefront for McCaskill. Does a small police department really need to have multiple armored vehicles? Are they even being utilized? Who is being trained to use the other surplus military equipment these agencies have received? Those are just some of the questions McCaskill’s Senate Financial and Contracting Oversight Subcommittee has begun to review.
“I understand that the federal government has been able to assist law enforcement,” she said. “I don’t want that to end, but what I do think this has taught us is that there is no oversight of these programs.”
During a Senate hearing earlier this month, McCaskill found that the leaders of the three agencies throughout the federal government that are involved in the Department of Defense’s 1033 program for surplus property—the Defense Logistics Agency, the Departments of Justice’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Grant Program—had never even met prior to the events in Ferguson.
“Not good,” she responded.
McCaskill’s investigation found that more than a third of the equipment sent to local law enforcement was brand new—never used by the military. In 49 states, she found that local police departments actually had more Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles than the state’s National Guard. In many cases, the equipment is landing in the hands of local law enforcement free of charge up front, and they are using grants from the Department of Homeland Security to pay for transportation costs.
Police militarization concerns are not confined to St. Louis County, home of Ferguson.
In Utah, law enforcement agencies have stocked up on military style weapons, maintaining more than 250 M-14 rifles for its 412 state troopers . In California, a handful of school police departments received surplus grenade launchers and mine-resistant vehicles. Through the 1033 program, the Department of Defense has even distributed 12,000 bayonets and 27 cargo-transport planes to local police departments all across the country.
Little training is associated with the programs where the surplus military equipment is technically on loan to local departments. That’s why it’s free. But so far, the military has not asked for anything back.
McCaskill said she does not want to end any programs, but does want to look at requiring mandatory training prior to distribution , the possibility of requiring body cameras for law enforcement before they can receive federal funds, and requiring that any loan of military equipment is “proportional” to the receiving department, like a grenade launchers for school cops or, in one instance she found, two armored vehicles for a department with only one full time police officer.
“Some communities are training, some aren’t. Some are heavy on the military show of force instead of community policing. We’re going to continue to look at it,” she said.
Eli Yokley is editor of PoliticMo , a Missouri political news website. He is a regular contributor to the Joplin Globe and St. Louis Business Journal and is based in Columbia, Missouri.