SAN FRANCISCO — College of California police can be replenishing and growing their stockpile of weapons and tools — together with drones, bullets and 1000’s of pepper ball rounds — as a part of an annual request authorized 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 largest request got here from UC San Diego, which mentioned 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 businesses are required by state regulation to make annual studies on the acquisition and use of weapons that qualify as navy tools. The definition contains munitions, explosives and long-range acoustic gadgets, that are often utilized by U.S. regulation enforcement and usually are not unique to the navy. Some tools beneath the definition, resembling 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 options to standard-issue firearms, enabling officers to de-escalate conditions and reply with out the usage of lethal drive,” UC spokesman Stett Holbrook mentioned in an announcement. “The requested objects are important for sustaining operational readiness, supporting ongoing coaching applications, and above all, making certain public security.”
A report from the workplace of UC President James B. Milliken offered Wednesday to the board of regents, which authorized 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 drive.”
The report mentioned “no UC campus makes use of or receives items from the U.S. Division of Protection and Legislation Enforcement Assist Workplace program for surplus navy tools.”
Below the state regulation, police departments additionally need to disclose use of qualifying weapons within the final 12 months. In 2024, the report mentioned 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 studies of those rounds straight 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 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 folks in massive areas to allow them to take speedy actions resembling 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 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 studies, 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 businesses 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 modifications 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 it is going to be used towards college students and college,” mentioned Shover, who works within the medical and public well being colleges. In an interview, she 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 mentioned.
Graeme Blair, a UCLA professor of political science who was a part of the 2024 encampment and extra pro-Palestinian protests, mentioned he believed Wednesday’s presentation “obscures a unprecedented use of drive that injured college students and college” throughout the June 10, 2024, campus protest that led to arrests.
Blair mentioned 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 mentioned 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 mentioned. “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 towards college students and college exercising their proper to free expression.”
