Gearing up

The miles between Ferguson and Tulsa might just be inches on a map

The news from Ferguson, Mo. came dripping in slowly, like international news. We saw violence, armored vehicles, and tear gas and thought, oh, we’ll wait for the local broadcast. Then, we saw a QuikTrip, that smilingest symbol of Tulsa’s oil-boom howdy-do, wrecked. Punched out; people in the streets.

Six shots in the head and chest; an unnamed white police officer; a teenager named Michael Brown. We heard a young black man was down, his blood in the street. Reports said he was left in the middle-August sun for hours. His mother dropped velvet rose petals where her son lost his life. A prayer vigil turned into a violent, frustrated nightmare.

The gathering crowd wanted answers. Their questions were met with armored vehicles, assault rifles, rubber bullets, and tear gas.

Here, some vandals busted out windows and got rowdy. Scenes from a town 400 miles up I-44 suggested a war zone on American soil. These protesters—mostly peaceful, some violent—became the faces of a U.S. city in a post-Iraq world. President Barack Obama had to say, “Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs and inform the American people.” It was shocking, the standoff between the police and the people they’re sworn to serve and protect. These weren’t your hand-gun carrying cops, leftovers from the Wild West. These were soldiers on middle America’s front porch, leaving boot prints on our front steps, arresting journalists and sighting protesters with riot guns.

Cities can get military equipment as part of the 1033 program. Congress authorized the Department of Defense to shed decommissioned military equipment to federal and state agencies, originally as part of the War on Drugs. With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq winding down, the rhetoric goes, this stuff has gotta go somewhere.

But who gets to decide when and why our local police militarize? And what happens when we don’t see the tanks until everyone’s seeing red?

Bottomline: Five days into the Ferguson protests, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe released a gleeful statement about the return of the 1033 program, detailing the military surplus Oklahoma could receive from the Department of Defense. Our leaders touted the benefits of paramilitary equipment for rural fire departments and schools. But once it’s here, it can be used for whatever those in power decide. If all hell were to break loose, wouldn’t that be the last moment we’d want to be running from a cavalcade of Tulsa cops in camo?