President Donald Trump last week rescinded Obama-era restrictions on local police agencies’ ability to acquire surplus equipment from the U.S. Department of Defense, a change that clears the way for school police to once again obtain military equipment through the program, known as 1033.
School district police agencies in at least 22 states used 1033 to acquire such equipment before the rules went into effect, public records show.
Those rules prohibited the transfer of tracked armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, large-caliber weapons, and ammunition to local law-enforcement agencies. While they allowed qualifying local agencies to acquire other equipment from the Pentagon, they prohibited such acquisitions by police departments that exclusively serve K-12 schools.
