The Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1981 that allowed the military of the United States to cooperate with law enforcement. Operations in support of law enforcement include assistance in counterdrug operations, assistance for civil disturbances, special security operations, combatting terrorism, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and similar activities. Constitutional and statutory restrictions and corresponding directives and regulations limit the type of support provided in this area.
The Act is cited in the 1992 essay The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 as having set a precedent that the author, a United States Air Force officer, considered dangerous.
The Act was known as Public Law 97-86 and is codified at title 10 of the United States Code, Chapter 18.
Famous quotes containing the words military, cooperation, law, agencies and/or act:
“War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“While it is generally agreed that the visible expressions and agencies are necessary instruments, civilization seems to depend far more fundamentally upon the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings—upon the spirit that animates mankind.”
—Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)
“The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)