On August 28, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Trump Administration would lift a two-year ban on the transfer of surplus military equipment from the Pentagon to police departments across the United States.

In an address to the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, the attorney general said that the President’s Executive Order would make it easier for police officers to protect themselves and their communities. “We will not put superficial concerns over public safety,” he said, calling the equipment — which includes grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and bayonets — “lifesaving gear.”

The program — known as 1033, after Section 1033 of the 1997 Defense Authorization Act of 1990 — was put into place under President Bill Clinton. Since then, it has provided more $6.6 billion worth of excess military equipment and supplies to thousands of law enforcement agencies.

It met with heavy criticism in 2014, however, after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Images of police carrying high-powered weapons, dressed in camouflage, and walking behind armored vehicles during the ensuing protests, seemed to many to resemble a military battlefield.

President Obama responded with an Executive Order prohibiting the transfer of certain military gear, saying that it gave local residents the impression that the police “were a n occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of a community that’s protecting them and serving them.”

Civil rights groups have been quick to criticize the Trump Administration’s new Executive Order. Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division under Obama, said, “Our communities are not the same as armed combatants in a war zone. It is especially troubling that some of this equipment can now again be used in schools where our children are sent to learn.”

Many law enforcement officers have defended the 1033 program, however, saying that it enables them to acquire equipment that is useful in dangerous situations without stretching tight budgets.

For more background on this topic, see the February 2015 issue of Congressional Digest on “Law Enforcement and Community Relations.”