Flip-flop.
An Orlando police officer’s life was saved Sunday, when a bullet was stopped by his Kevlar helmet, but if Hillary Clinton becomes president, future first responders may not be so lucky.
At a rally in Cleveland this week, notably held at a military-grade helmet manufacturing plant, Mrs. Clinton emphasized her commitment to supply law enforcers with the equipment to carry out their life-threatening missions.
“I will make sure our law enforcement and intelligence professionals have all the resources they need to get the job done,” she said.
“In Orlando, at least one police officer was shot in the head,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Thankfully, his life was saved by a Kevlar helmet, something here folks at Team Wendy know a lot about.”
But earlier in her campaign, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee came out in support of President Obama’s executive order curtailing a Pentagon program aimed at providing law enforcement officers with surplus military-grade equipment.
Chuck Canterbury, national president for the Fraternal Order of Police, said military-grade gear and vehicles were crucial in saving the lives of hostages and first responders at the Orlando nightclub massacre, but the president’s executive order makes it much more difficult for departments to obtain such equipment.
“Under the current executive order, the anti-ballistic helmet that saved the life of an officer responding to the terrorist attack at the Pulse nightclub is on a ‘controlled’ list and is much more difficult to obtain through Federal programs,” Mr. Canterbury said in a press release.
In justification of the executive order, which was issued in January 2015 after the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, President Obama said military-grade equipment “can sometimes give people the feeling like there’s an occupying force as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them.”
Mrs. Clinton backed the order in May 2015, but on Monday said we must “do more to support our first responders, law enforcement and intelligence officers who do incredible work every day at great personal risk to keep our country safe.”