Washington, DC — This week the Trump administration announced that they were lifting an Obama administration ban on certain military grade weapons being sold to state and local police for pennies on the dollar. While there is a growing awareness that local law enforcement has received massive amounts of surplus military hardware under the federal 1033 program, authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act, exactly what equipment local law enforcement agencies have been stockpiling has remained largely obscured from the public's view.

The public controversy over the militarization of the police, for many Americans, began during the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Images beamed across the media echo chamber revealed what looked like a war zone in Afghanistan or Iraq — with police kitted out in Marine-issue camouflage and military-grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in MRAPs (mine resistant armored personnel) vehicles — virtually indistinguishable from US soldiers abroad.

In addition to Ferguson, the extreme militarization of police was clearly on display during the Standing Rock protest, as police looked and acted more like a heavily armed military contingent than peace officers sworn to uphold the law.

Shortly after the American public became widely aware, and largely outraged, over the extreme militarization of their local police forces, President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) that blocked certain large-caliber weapons, armored vehicles with tracks, grenade launchers, bayonets, and other heavy military hardware from being re-purposed from battlefields across the globe to small town USA.

President Obama argued at the time, that police utilization of such weapons of war cast the police as an "occupying force," and only served to deepen the divide between police and the community.

"We've seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they're an occupying force, as opposed to a force that's part of the community that's protecting them and serving them," Obama said in announcing the ban in 2015.

The new Trump plan for the 1033 program goes into effect immediately and completely rolls back the Obama EO that blocked state, county, and local police depart from obtaining military weapons of war.

The surplus sharing agreement, also known as the "1033 program," was originally created by Congress nearly 30 years ago as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, and was intended to assist local law enforcement in drug investigations.

The program was expanded in 1997 to include all local law enforcement operations, including counter-terrorism. Since then, according to the government, more than $5 billion in gear has been transferred to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.