After the Alameda County Board of Supervisors
Remarkably, it wasn’t until Assembly Bill 481 became law in 2022 that every California policing agency was required to publicly report their once-murky inventories, adopt policies for deployment, and ask elected officials for explicit permission before obtaining any new hardware. Agencies are also required to report annually how they used their stockpiles over the past year, with the first of those reports due in May.
But across the Bay Area, many police contend the equipment — albeit expensive — is vital to ensuring the highest levels of public safety in a timely manner. The acquisitions can include nonlethal, military-grade items — from binoculars to coffee makers — but more often police target equipment that was originally designed for convoys during operations in Iraq or Afghanistan, and can be redeployed to rescue hostages, analyze crime scenes andA SWAT team from the Oakland Police Department leave the scene of a mass shooting on an armored truck at the Oikos University on Edgewater Dr. in Oakland, Calif. on Monday, April 2, 2012.