The Congressional Black Caucus Voted Overwhelmingly to Continue Militarizing Police

In the aftermath of the militarized police response to Ferguson protesters, observers are wondering what went wrong. According to a report in The Week, among the things that went wrong were the votes of a majority of Congressional Black Caucus members:

In June of this year, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)introduced an amendment to halt the Pentagon’s1033 program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of military-grade weapons and equipment to local police annually. The amendment overwhelmingly failed, and just seven out of 41 voting members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) supported it.

“We need to re-evaluate distributing this kind of war equipment to municipalities,” said Rep Emanuel Cleaver, according to theHuffington Post.  “And if we are going to do it, we must at least have other requirements, including something as simple as adequate training.”

Cleaver supports military weaponry being funneled to localmunicipalities. When you peel away all the qualifying words, that’s what he’s saying.

Of course, none of this should come as any surprise after a report revealed how the CBC uses backdoor channels to do the bidding of Wall Street:

A bombshell Huffington Post report published last week details the sheer cravenness and hypocrisy of many CBC members. As the report thoroughly lays out, even though Wall St. systematically targets African-Americans with its mortgage fraud schemes, members of the CBC have been actively doing Wall Street’s bidding, even working to upend legislation intended to rein in the worst offenses of the greediest banks.

You can find the full list of members who voted yay and nay on military weapons being given to police here. 

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