SAN FRANCISCO — University of California police might be replenishing and growing their stockpile of weapons and gear — together with drones, bullets and 1000’s of pepper ball rounds — as a part of an annual request authorised Wednesday by the governing board of regents.
As UC’s dealing with of protests and campus safety comes below 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 interchange ones utilized in trainings. At UC Irvine, police requested for 1,500 pepper-ball projectiles. UCLA, which has a major 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 experiences on the acquisition and use of weapons that qualify as army gear. The definition consists of munitions, explosives and long-range acoustic units, that are frequently utilized by U.S. legislation enforcement and usually are not unique to the army. Some gear below the definition, corresponding to drones, usually are not conventional weapons however used for patrol and particular occasions.
“With the exceptions of UC San Diego, all the campus’s requests are for non-lethal alternate options to standard-issue firearms, enabling officers to de-escalate conditions and reply with out the usage of lethal pressure,” UC spokesman Stett Holbrook stated in an announcement. “The requested gadgets are important for sustaining operational readiness, supporting ongoing coaching applications, and above all, guaranteeing public security.”
A report from the workplace of UC President James B. Milliken introduced Wednesday to the board of regents, which authorised the requests, added that the instruments “usually are 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 pressure.”
The report stated “no UC campus makes use of or receives items from the U.S. Department of Defense and Law Enforcement Support Office program for surplus army gear.”
Under the state legislation, police departments additionally must disclose use of qualifying weapons within the final yr. In 2024, the report stated the weapons have 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 have been “aimed toward people and there have been no experiences of those rounds straight affecting any individual.” A single sponge foam spherical was additionally fired. Police have been responding to a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.
- An extended-range acoustic gadget was used for crowd administration 71 instances. The report described the gadget as “a conveyable speaker used to offer elevated sound and readability over public tackle techniques, bullhorns, or megaphones so officers can successfully talk with crowds and supply emergency instructions to individuals in massive areas to allow them to take speedy actions corresponding 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 extra campuses: UC Davis deployed drones 11 instances for “patrol and particular occasions,” and UC Santa Cruz additionally used a long-range acoustic gadget for crowd administration not less than as soon as.
California Assembly Bill 481, which requires the disclosures, was signed into legislation in 2021. But 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 Highway Patrol have been faulted in inside and exterior experiences, together with one compiled by a congressional training committee, for a failure to coordinate and rapidly reply to a violent assault on a UCLA encampment on April 30 and May 1, 2024. The companies have additionally confronted criticism and lawsuits by pro-Palestinian protesters after officers shut down a number of demonstrations that yr.
Since then, UCLA has created a brand new high campus security publish, put in new police management and instituted modifications to protest guidelines, together with zero tolerance of encampments.
Speaking 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 college,” stated Shover, who works within the medical and public well being colleges. In an interview, she added, “I’ve no confidence military-grade gear will make the campus safer, as final yr’s UCLA campus protests made clear.”
Together with calls for President Trump has made lately to limit protests and speech freedoms at UCLA — in trade for the discharge of frozen federal analysis funding — “this units a worrying and chilling impact on rights protected by the first Amendment,” 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 unprecedented use of pressure that injured college students and college” through the June 10, 2024, campus protest that led to arrests.
Blair stated the police-fired projectiles ended up “hitting college students and college, leaving them bruised and with burning eyes.” Police reported solely utilizing one foam spherical. Blair stated he witnessed a number of rounds.
“The incontrovertible fact 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. “Less-lethal munitions like sponge rounds, rubber bullets, and pepper balls haven’t any place on a university campus, a lot much less to be deployed in opposition to college students and college exercising their proper to free expression.”
