The Sacramento Police Department’s proposed updates to its military equipment policy and associated annual usage report drew scrutiny in a public hearing on Tuesday.
Both residents and City Council members raised questions over demographic data, miscounting of equipment, and the status of requests either the council or Sacramento Community Police Review Commission previously outlined.
Despite the concerns, the law and legislation committee unanimously voted to send the policy and report to the full council for consideration. If the council does not approve the policy next month, police will lose the ability to use drones, flashbangs, armored vehicles and other items that government agencies decide need special oversight.
A state law passed two years ago — Assembly Bill 481 — requires police to get annual council approval to fund, acquire and use items classified as military equipment. Mackenzie Wilson, an organizer with Decarcerate Sacramento, said the policy only complies with the loosest interpretation of the law.
“We’re all very concerned about the harmful outcomes that will result from a policy that asks for additional funding with virtually no justification and doesn’t require tighter restrictions, doesn’t take into account the well-researched recommendations given by an expert commission and is not inspected by an independent oversight body,” Wilson said in the meeting. “These are all things that were named last year and here we are again having the same conversation.”
Before the council discusses the policy, Deputy Chief Norman Leong said police are planning to make a few revisions the commission requested last year. Planned changes include specifying police will not request equipment federally banned for law enforcement use and adding a reference to oversight from the Office of Public Safety and Accountability and the review commission.
But during the meeting, Leong did not discuss other commission recommendations, such as a request to limit how much military equipment the department can stockpile. In the new policy, the department is proposing to potentially buy roughly $360,000 worth of military equipment — including restocking and replacing the existing supply, along with adding new items — and would pay for it with either grants or the existing police budget.
Council member Katie Valenzuela also brought up previous council direction at Tuesday’s meeting. She requested the department follow through on September and January asks to provide detailed demographic data on whom the department used military equipment against and restrict the usage of armored vehicles — such as the Rook – to defensive purposes.
The report for May 2022 through April 2023 includes a chart showing which military equipment the department used on 18 suspects. While it lists the suspects by gender and race and gives a general age range, the report does not summarize each incident.
“I’m concerned that some of the next steps we named in the last cycle are carrying over to this cycle,” Valenzuela said. “And I’d really like to see those get finished out before we start talking about considering moving this forward again.”
The council has approved a military equipment use policy twice before: in December 2021 and September 2022. Valenzuela and Council member Mai Vang voted against the policies both times.
Like the September 2022 update, the proposed new policy includes equipment the department says it unintentionally left out in the previous version. Through its inventory audit process this year, the department found it underreported items including 200 rifles, 150 grenade canisters and more than 8,700 rounds.
Leong said police discovered the additional items because instead of relying on existing spreadsheets, a team physically audited the equipment together.
“We know that we could probably do it better,” Leong said. “...We actually have a meeting this week with the city auditor’s office to ask for a formal audit of how we conduct our inventory audits of military equipment. We’re hoping that they’ll provide some assessment that will make this an easier process.”
To prevent miscounts in the future, Leong said the department is considering quarterly audits instead of an annual one and centralizing where it stores some of the equipment.
All of the department’s military equipment is listed in the proposed new policy, which is on the city website.
The public can submit feedback on the policy and annual usage report through an online survey. The deadline to fill out the survey is Aug. 25.
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