Montgomery County’s police chief this week said he supports President Barack Obama’s executive order that bans some military-style equipment from going to local police departments.
Chief Thomas Manger, who’s serving as president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said the move will “ensure that we can acquire and utilize needed equipment in a manner that ensures transparency and maintains public confidence.”
The order will also require extra assurances from police departments that some common military-style equipment will be used responsibly.
County police received a new armored vehicle last July from the defense department’s Excess Property Program.
The police department’s two other armored vehicles, which are used only in hostage, barricade, active shooter or bomb situations, are the type of tactical vehicles that Obama’s order will still allow to be transferred to police departments.
But the vehicles, as well as explosives and riot equipment, will now require extra assurances from police that the equipment will be used responsibly.
Obama’s order banned tracked armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, ammunition of .50-caliber or higher and some types of camouflage uniforms from being transferred to police departments.
The police response to protests following the shooting of Mike Brown last August in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked new interest in the militarization of local police forces. Manger said the White House included input from the Major Cities Chiefs Association in the new regulations.
Obama on Monday also launched the Police Data Initiative. The Montgomery County Department of Police is one of 21 departments around the country that is participating.
Departments participating in the initiative have committed to release more than 100 datasets that have not yet been released to the public, including a report on the use of force by police officers, police stops of pedestrians and vehicles and information on officer-involved shootings.
In April, the Montgomery County police department released a report detailing its officers’ use of their firearms and tasers in 2014.
“The events last August in Ferguson, Missouri, began a nationwide discussion on police use of force, especially the use of deadly force. That conversation only intensified after three more uses of force that resulted in deaths that occurred in New York, Cleveland, and North Charleston,” Manger wrote in the report. “Today, the public—all segments of our community—is paying much closer attention to the actions of their police department.”
