{"id":10770,"date":"2014-08-20T23:09:17","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T06:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=10770"},"modified":"2014-08-23T14:37:11","modified_gmt":"2014-08-23T21:37:11","slug":"kpfk-bradcast-rep-hank-johnson-on-ferguson-and-his-stop-militarizing-law-enforcement-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/?p=10770","title":{"rendered":"KPFK ‘BradCast’: Rep. Hank Johnson on Ferguson and His ‘Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was joined on this week’s KPFK<\/a>\/Pacifica Radio<\/a> BradCast<\/i> by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), to discuss his “Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act” [PDF]<\/a> which he plans to introduce when the U.S. House returns from their endless recess in September.<\/p>\n

He’s been at work on the bill long before the local “RoboCops” hit the streets when Ferguson, Missouri blew up<\/a> recently after the police killing of Michael Brown. As Johnson described the legislation in his March 2014 USA Today<\/i> op-ed, presciently headlined “Small town American shouldn’t resemble a war zone”<\/a>, the bill would “ban MRAPs, other armored personnel carriers, drones, assault weapons and aircraft” from being transferred to local police departments under the Pentagon’s “1033 Program” and “ensure that the Department of Defense undertakes an annual accounting of what’s been transferred, by whom and to whom to prevent military items from being auctioned on eBay or sold to friends.”<\/p>\n

“My main hope is to stop the flow of this military grade equipment to local law enforcement agencies throughout America,” Johnson told me during our interview today. “We’ve been flooding the streets with this surplus military weaponry, and I think the situation in Ferguson exemplifies what happens when you have too much powerful equipment in the hands of folks who don’t have the judgment or the training to utilize it properly.”<\/p>\n

But has the horse already left the barn on this issue? And does the Congressman stand a chance of getting his bill through our broken U.S. Congress, even with some apparent bi-partisan support for curbing police militarization from folks like Republican 2016 Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, who recently called for the same in a Time<\/i> magazine op-ed<\/a>? You’ll have to listen below to hear Johnson’s thoughts on those questions.<\/p>\n

After the Congressman left, I discussed a few other related items, such as the voter registration drive now taking place in Ferguson<\/a>, and took a bunch of calls on all of the above, including at least one amazing one, in which the caller named “Al” insisted that “minorities are in worse shape than they’ve ever been” in this country. He says that “since 1965 we have been going down hill as a nation.” Hmm… I wonder what might have happened<\/a> during that year<\/a> to make him feel that way?<\/p>\n

I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s program…<\/p>\n

\nDownload MP3<\/a> or listen online below…<\/i>
\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_RepHankJohnson_Ferguson_082014.mp3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was joined on this week’s KPFK\/Pacifica Radio BradCast by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), to discuss his “Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act” [PDF] which he plans to introduce when the U.S. House returns from their endless recess in September. He’s been at work on the bill long before the local “RoboCops” hit the streets when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[505,675,405,476,477,496],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea-party","category-bradcast","category-bush-legacy","category-hank-johnson","category-kpfk","category-rand-paul"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}