No. I believe that the militarisation of law enforcement is a significant factor in the current ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ mentality, which is a major factor in the problems between law enforcement and ‘civilians’.
I assume any municipal police chief can be fired and replaced by the city council / mayor / city manager if they get too far out of line with the desires of their bosses. In the case of sheriffs, they answer to their constituents like all elected officials. I’m not sure what the chain of command is for most state police organizations, but I’m confident they have to answer to someone as well.
The bayonet thing is a red herring. A modern military bayonet is essentially a knife and are useful for any number of things.
As for the militarization of police, I see the arguments against it. However, whether we like it or not, the police do at least need some heavy equipment to respond to incidents in Dallas and Orlando. They are going to get it anyways, and it makes financial sense to use Army surplus equipment. Removing a bureaucratic burden also makes sense unless we have some reason to think it was doing something useful.
In practice, bayonets nowadays mostly are used as utility knives, not as weapons. But if that’s what you actually use them for, then it’s probably more practical to just get utility knives (which I’m pretty sure most police already have anyway), not bayonets. They stick around in military use mostly just out of inertia, inertia which police departments don’t have.
I suppose that I don’t see any problem in principle with police getting military surplus equipment at a steep discount or free, but in order for it to make sense, it has to be equipment that the police would actually have use for. And the police would have use for a number of military items: Rugged radios, phones, and other electronics, or body armor, or light arms come to mind. But tanks? Why?
Give them a utility knife that cannot be used to double as a bayonet then. Do the police need bayonets? Do you believe that police will restrict the use of bayonets and NOT end up sticking people in the gut?
BY the way, just because a weapon can be used for a secondary purpose does not negate the fact that it can also be used for its primary purpose: bayonets can still stab people, grenade launchers can still launch grenades, and tanks…well, I cannot even come up with a supposedly reasonable secondary use for a tank that does not involve rampant destruction.
The military weapons are more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself.
The problem is a warrior mindset employed against a community that doesn’t trust the police, and generally employed in a way that is ineffective at reducing violence where that is most needed. Military weapons reflect that problem, and to some extent make community trust worse, but it’s a pretty marginal factor in the problem.
Of course, the very fact that it’s symbolic is why Jeff Sessions wants to do it. It is the Jefferson Davis statue of police policy.
I think that military weaponry facilitates the warrior mindset, and are not merely a symptom.
Personally, I pin the start at the North Hollywood shootout in 1997, where police needed to borrow AR-15s from (now-closed) B & B Sales. There’s definitely a case to be made that the police need to outgun the bad guys. Prior to that, the old .38 Special was, for many departments, good enough. In the '60s and '70s there were SWATs to deal with more intense situations, and the teams were made popular in the 1975 TV series. I think that after the shootout, and with the War on Drugs, police departments wanted all of their officers to be virtual SWAT members.
In my experience the vast majority of equipment obtained from the military is not weaponry. Vehicles, helmets, uniforms (BDUs), surveillance equipment, load-bearing equipment etc. made up the bulk of what local agencies received. The whole “militarization” argument, IMHO, is based on how the cops LOOK when there are large scale disturbances. Almost all of that “look” is defensive in nature - helmets, shields, shin guards, armoured trucks and so on. I don’t recall seeing rocket launchers and belt fed machine guns but maybe I missed something.
Longer answer: The militarization of the police has led to a more Us vs Them / Military Occupation mindset in American police. This is contrary to civilian rule of law.
How much does this order actually change, with respect to that practical equipment, though? The police probably doesn’t have that hard a time making a case for why they need helmets, and I imagine that most city councils would approve them, so they were already able to get them fairly easily. All this changes is for the equipment that the police can’t make a good case for, or that city councils wouldn’t approve.