Can Obama curb police militarisation?

Six years after Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia decrying the "racial stalemate", it seems "more entrenched than ever", says Josh Lederman in the Associated Press.

Earlier this week, the president took a two-day break from his summer holiday to "plead for calm and understanding" in Ferguson, Missouri, where the unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a police officer on 9 August.

As he made his speech, the president seemed "trapped" between a need to stand up for law and order, and an inclination to empathise with those who say that blacks are treated differently by the police.

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Brown was shot dead by an officer from a police force of 53, serving a population of 21,000. Just three of those policemen are black, although 70% of the population is African-American.

There has been unrest in Ferguson since his death, with police using tear gas and stun grenades, says Dan Roberts in The Guardian. In his speech, Obama urged restraint and called for a reassessment of the militarisation of local police departments. It's about time, says Jon Swaine in The Guardian.

The policeresponse has resembled the "deployment of an army in aminiature war zone", with large armoured units carryingofficers with sniper-style rifles.According to the American CivilLiberties Union (ACLU), there are no meaningful limits on theequipment local police forces can acquire.

In June, Alan Grayson, a liberal Democrat congressman fromFlorida, sponsored an amendment to the National DefenseAuthorization Act, that would have forbidden the Departmentof Defense from transferring so much military equipment tolocal police.

It failed, says The Economist: "not a single Houseleader of either party voted for it". Why? Since the September11th attacks, police forces have been awash with cash. TheACLU put the value of military equipment used by Americanpolice departments at $450m in 2013. In 1990 it was just $1m.

"America's defence industry donates millions of dollars topoliticians and spends even more on lobbyists. Those whoopposed Mr Grayson's bill received, on average, 73% more indefence-industry donations than those who voted for it."