What led to the creation of the LEEWG? What did the LEEWG find with regards to state and local police obtaining military equipment?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

After the response to demonstrations and violence in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, President Barack Obama created a task force to examine the processes by which the federal government provided military equipment to state and local police. The task force was called the Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition Working Group (LEEWG).
Composed of representatives from a variety of federal agencies, the LEEWG found there were several ways to obtain military equipment? there were no common procedures for getting it. The Department of Defense (DOD), with its own procedures, provided surplus equipment that included mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored combat vehicles freshly returned from battle zones. It also supplied sniper rifles, other weapons, and a host of other combat and noncombat equipment. The General Services Administration (GSA) used another set of procedures to provide military items through a surplus sharing program. Using yet another set of criteria, DOJ
and DHS granted money to buy equipment, and the Treasury Department and DOJ used still more different processes to provide money through asset forfeiture funds in drug cases (LEEWG, 2015). President Obama wanted to systematize and regulate the process, and some officials wanted to stop the distribution of military equipment altogether.