Black Lives Matter (BLM) took to Twitter on Tuesday to express displeasure with President Joe Biden for “sending more military equipment” to local police than did former president Donald Trump.
“Biden’s first 100 days are up in 10 days,” they wrote. “By then we need him to #End1033, which transfers military equipment into the hands of police across the country — including school & campus police. Another example? The military you see out on your streets ahead of the Chauvin verdict.”
The group is referring to the National Guard deployed to cities such as Minneapolis, where the trial for ex-cop Derek Chauvin was held. Should the jury have reached a “wrong” verdict, BLM leaders had promised to burn the city to the ground.
“Biden is currently sending more military equipment to our neighborhoods than Trump did. You read that right. Our communities are being terrorized at a greater rate than they had been under Trump,” added the organization.
The BLM website blatantly states that the clock is ticking for the president, and that he needs to meet a “major demand” before his 100-day deadline: “Demilitarize our neighborhoods and end 1033.” The group goes on to explain that the Law Enforcement Support Office, known as the 1033 Program, allows the transfer of surplus military-grade equipment to local law-enforcement agencies across the country. It appears BLM is deeply concerned about the accelerated flow of military equipment to police under the Biden administration, and that they believe the police “might just receive even more” military equipment, while “state-sanctioned violence against Black people” continues.
According to the Defense Logistics Agency, the 1033 Program started in 1990-91, and was implemented in 1997, when Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allowed law-enforcement agencies to acquire property for bona fide law-enforcement purposes — particularly those associated with counter-drug and counter-terrorism activities. The plan’s title, “1033 Program,” refers to the numbered section of the 1997 NDAA that granted permanent authority to the secretary of defense to transfer defense material to federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies.
Black justice organizations, such as Black Alliance for Peace, see military equipment as a threat to black lives. They are outraged that “The Pentagon’s weapons and tactics developed for their occupations, coups and wars on Africans and other colonized people around the world also are used to terrorize and control African/Black people and our uprisings in the United States.” They endlessly quote out-of-context statistics, such as “Black people were 25% of those murdered by police, yet 13% of the population,” failing to mention that, according to the FBI, black people also commit more than a third of all violent crimes in America, while black males who represent just 5.5 percent of the population, constitute 54 percent of all arrests for robbery, and 53 percent of arrests for murder.
These “racial justice warriors” fail to acknowledge that of the blacks who were killed by police, 68 percent were allegedly attacking the officer. Among the 32 percent who were not actively trying to assault police, there were those resisting arrest, holding weapons they wouldn’t drop, or attacking other people. It was not the military equipment that took the lives of numerous African Americans, it were the individual’s poor life choices. People worried about being mistreated by the police would do well to follow famous black comedian Chris Rock’s simple recommendations, in which the first rule of not getting in trouble is to “Obey the law.”
So why do police need military-grade weapons anyway? Because of the violent crime rate that is surging. Police use this gear to protect themselves and to protect the lives and property of others, maintaining law and order amid mayhem often incited by left-wing organizations such as BLM and Antifa. Riots that swept across America in the name of “black lives” made cities such as Minneapolis and Portland into war zones. Local law enforcement, de-funded by leftist state legislatures, naturally turn to the 1033 Program. And the Biden administration is happy to assist, as now the crimes are happening “on his watch, under his leadership, during his presidency.”
Risking a drop of support among black Americans is something the Democrats will try to avoid at all costs. Ironically, however, they would probably still fail, because if they halted the program, the crime would rise even more. If they continue the program, BLM will shriek even louder about “Biden terrorizing black communities.” If only there was a simple remedy for keeping crime at bay — such as providing more employment opportunities, lifting people out of poverty, not demonizing the police, and dropping the race-bait narrative of victimhood — but that sounds too much like something “racist” Donald Trump would do.
