Pepper-balls, rifle rounds, drones: UC police get green light for more weapons

[ad_1] SAN FRANCISCO — College of California police might be replenishing and growing their stockpile of weapons and tools — together with drones, bullets and hundreds of pepper ball rounds — as a part of an annual request accredited Wednesday by the governing board of regents.

As UC’s dealing with of protests and campus safety comes beneath 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 most important request got here from UC San Diego, which stated it wanted 5,000 new 5.56-millimeter caliber rifle rounds to switch 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 regulation enforcement companies are required by state regulation to make annual stories on the acquisition and use of weapons that qualify as army tools. The definition contains munitions, explosives and long-range acoustic gadgets, that are recurrently utilized by U.S. regulation enforcement and will not be unique to the army. Some tools beneath the definition, comparable to drones, will not be 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 options to standard-issue firearms, enabling officers to de-escalate conditions and reply with out using lethal drive,” UC spokesman Stett Holbrook stated in a press release. “The requested objects are important for sustaining operational readiness, supporting ongoing coaching packages, and above all, making certain public security.”

A report from the workplace of UC President James B. Milliken introduced Wednesday to the board of regents, which accredited the requests, added that the instruments “will not be 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 drive.”

The report stated “no UC campus makes use of or receives items from the U.S. Division of Protection and Legislation Enforcement Help Workplace program for surplus army tools.”

Underneath the state regulation, police departments additionally should 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 workouts.

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 stories of those rounds immediately affecting any particular person.” A single sponge foam spherical was additionally fired. Police have been responding to a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.A protracted-range acoustic machine was used for crowd administration 71 instances. The report described the machine as “a transportable speaker used to supply elevated sound and readability over public handle methods, bullhorns, or megaphones so officers can successfully talk with crowds and supply emergency instructions to individuals in massive areas to allow them to take rapid actions comparable 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 instances for “patrol and particular occasions,” and UC Santa Cruz additionally used a long-range acoustic machine for crowd administration at the very least as soon as.

California Meeting Invoice 481, which requires the disclosures, was signed into regulation 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 have been faulted in inner and exterior stories, together with one compiled by a congressional schooling committee, for a failure to coordinate and shortly reply to a violent assault on a UCLA encampment on April 30 and Might 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 put up, 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 college,” stated Shover, who works within the medical and public well being faculties. In an interview, she added, “I've no confidence military-grade tools will make the campus safer, as final yr’s UCLA campus protests made clear.”

Along with calls for President Trump has made just lately 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 drive that injured college students and college” through the June 10, 2024, campus protest that resulted in 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 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 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.”