SAN FRANCISCO — College of California police will likely be replenishing and rising their stockpile of military-grade weapons and tools — together with drones, bullets and hundreds of pepper ball rounds — as a part of an annual request accepted Wednesday by the governing board of regents.
As UC’s dealing with of protests and campus safety comes underneath scrutiny from the Trump administration, 5 campuses — UCLA, Irvine, Santa Barbara, San Diego and San Francisco — requested for extra weapons, whereas these in Berkeley, Davis, Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz didn’t search to make new purchases.
The largest request got here from UC San Diego, which stated it wanted 5,000 new 5.56-millimeter caliber rifle rounds to exchange ones utilized in trainings. At UC Irvine, police requested for 1,500 pepper-ball projectiles. UCLA, which has a big weapons stock in comparison with different campuses — amongst it 39,500 rifle rounds and ammo — made comparatively few requests, together with 4 new pepper-ball launchers and 100 sponge foam rounds.
California legislation enforcement companies are required by state legislation to make annual stories on the acquisition and use of weapons that qualify as army tools. The definition consists of munitions, explosives and long-range acoustic gadgets, that are recurrently utilized by U.S. legislation enforcement and are usually not unique to the army. Some tools underneath the definition, equivalent to drones, are usually not conventional weapons however used for patrol and particular occasions.
A report from the workplace of UC President James B. Milliken introduced Wednesday to the board of regents, which accepted the requests, added that the instruments “are usually not used indiscriminately however with warning to guard the lives of UC group members/guests and UC officers when bringing an incident to a conclusion with the least quantity of power.”
The report stated “no UC campus makes use of or receives items from the U.S. Division of Protection and Regulation Enforcement Assist Workplace program for surplus army tools.”
Below the state legislation, police departments additionally need to disclose use of military-grade weapons within the final 12 months. In 2024, the report stated weapons had been primarily used throughout coaching and that new orders would assist replenish provides utilized in these workout routines.
There have been dozens of non-training exceptions at UCLA:
- On June 10, 2024, police deployed 240 pepper-ball projectiles “throughout an incident involving an aggressive crowd.” It added that not one of the rounds had been “aimed toward people and there have been no stories of those rounds straight affecting any particular person.” A single sponge foam spherical was additionally fired. Police had been responding to a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.
- An extended-range acoustic machine was used for crowd administration 71 occasions. The report described the machine as “a transportable speaker used to supply elevated sound and readability over public deal with techniques, bullhorns, or megaphones so officers can successfully talk with crowds and supply emergency instructions to individuals in giant areas to allow them to take fast actions equivalent to sheltering in place or evacuating.”
- A sponge foam spherical was fired “throughout an arrest when a suspect put their hand close to a police officer’s firearm.”
The report additionally detailed non-training makes use of at two further campuses: UC Davis deployed drones 11 occasions for “patrol and particular occasions,” and UC Santa Cruz additionally used a long-range acoustic machine for crowd administration no less than as soon as.
California Meeting Invoice 481, which requires the disclosures, was signed into legislation in 2021. However public scrutiny of UC policing has grown since 2024, when pro-Palestinian protests grew throughout the 10-university system and officers clashed with demonstrators at a number of campuses.
UCLA police, the LAPD and California Freeway Patrol had been faulted in inner and exterior stories, together with one compiled by a congressional schooling committee, for a failure to coordinate and rapidly reply to a violent assault on a UCLA encampment on April 30 and Could 1, 2024. The companies have additionally confronted criticism and lawsuits by pro-Palestinian protesters after officers shut down a number of demonstrations that 12 months.
Since then, UCLA has created a brand new prime campus security publish, put in new police management and instituted adjustments to protest guidelines, together with zero tolerance of encampments.
Talking Wednesday throughout a public remark interval on the regents assembly, UCLA affiliate professor Chelsea Shover inspired regents to reject the purchases.
“My concern is that will probably be used in opposition to college students and school,” stated Shover, who works within the medical and public well being faculties. In an interview, Shover added, “I’ve no confidence military-grade tools will make the campus safer, as final 12 months’s UCLA campus protests made clear.”
Along with calls for President Trump has made not too long ago to limit protests and speech freedoms at UCLA — in change for the discharge of frozen federal analysis funding — “this units a worrying and chilling impact on rights protected by the first Modification,” Shover stated.
Graeme Blair, a UCLA professor of political science who was a part of the 2024 encampment and extra pro-Palestinian protests, stated he believed Wednesday’s presentation “obscures a rare use of power that injured college students and school” through the June 10, 2024, campus protest that led to arrests.
Blair stated the police-fired projectiles ended up “hitting college students and school, leaving them bruised and with burning eyes.” Police reported solely utilizing one foam spherical. Blair stated he witnessed a number of rounds.
“The truth that UCPD fails to explain these harms calls into query whether or not they are often trusted with extra munitions and their deployment,” he stated. “Much less-lethal munitions like sponge rounds, rubber bullets, and pepper balls don’t have any place on a school campus, a lot much less to be deployed in opposition to college students and school exercising their proper to free expression.”
