By Isaiah Cordova
18 year old African American Michael Brown was shot and killed Aug. 9 by white police officer Darren Wilson while walking home from the store. Riots and protests broke out in Ferguson against police brutality and militarized police equipment.
The program that provided the Ferguson Police Department with military gear has been supplying state and local police departments with military gear since it was signed in 1997. The Department of Defense’s (DoD) program is called the 1033 Program. In a recent transaction, Colorado law enforcements have received more than 22 million dollars in military equipment. Greeley received 71 M-16 assault rifles, two bomb robots, and one Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected, and Eaton police have received 4 M-16s out of the program.
However, the most recent transaction between the DoD and city police in Colorado is Mountain View, a city of 550 people, has received 10 M-16 assault rifles for the 12 on-duty police officers. Mountain View is notorious for giving out more traffic citations than Denver, Aurora, and Boulder combined. For comparison, Eaton a population of about 4,500 people in 2012.
The incident in Ferguson isn’t an isolated incident. Recent examples include Roshad McIntosh in Chicago, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, and Jonathan Ferrell in North Carolina. Each of the listed incidents include an unarmed Black man who have been fatally shot by police after little to no provocation.
This situation is being scrutinized by countries like Egypt, Syria, and China. Syria and Israel have provided advice to citizens in Ferguson on how to deal with tear gas. President Obama has made one statement based on the incident in Ferguson, with one of the most prominent lines in it being, “When something like this happens, the local authorities–-including the police-–have a responsibility to be open and transparent about how they are investigating that death, and how they are protecting the people in their communities.”
The protests in Ferguson are winding down now, but there is a trial underway.
