UC approves new less-lethal weapons for its police force despite protests

By Mikhail Zinshteyn

Minutes after a UC regents committee began debating procurement This afternoon, pro-Palestinian students in the UCLA meeting room silenced rumors of additional less-lethal weapons and munitions.

“Why did you shoot us?” one of them shouted, referring to the less lethal bullets used in last spring campus troubles.

Regent Jay Sures, chairman of the compliance committee, has shown little patience with what has become a common protest tactic.

“If you want to disrupt the meeting, you can disrupt it,” he told them. “We’re going to clear the room. It’s not going to be productive. You’re all going to waste your time. What I suggest is that you listen. If you have any problems, you can send letters to the regents.”

He then asked UC police to declare an unlawful assembly and moved the committee to an adjacent room, where he quickly approved the purchase of drones and munitions such as pepper spray and foam bullets. There was no debate.

About an hour later, the full council approved the committee’s recommendation, also without debate.

The student protesters left the scene, obeying police orders to leave the area within three minutes.

It’s likely that the regents were preparing for a lengthy discussion about the inventory of weapons on campus, their usefulness and the need for new equipment for schools. Regent John Perez set the tone just before the compliance committee meeting began. But when the committee convened moments later, Perez was gone. Jody Stiger, UC’s director of security, was also not in the room, as he explained the use of weapons and equipment before students broke up the meeting. He was in the next room where protesters and police were clashing.

Below a 2021 state lawAll police agencies must seek approval from their boards of trustees to fund and use military equipment. The UC claims that the weapons and ammunition requested by its police force are all less-lethal, even though they are classified as military equipment by law. However, campus departments have dozens of rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition in their possession, the system disclosed in his report.

Several students spoke out against the gun purchases during the public comment period yesterday and today before the regents heard the issue in the afternoon, including members of UCLA’s undergraduate student government.

Graduate students also questioned the necessity of the guns.

“Everyone in this room knows that we need to rebuild trust in our community, but upgrading to military-grade crowd control equipment is not going to help that process,” Ryan Manriquez, president of the UC organization representing graduate students, told the board. “Because we know that at any event on campus, protests are the most likely to be subject to crowd control measures. And who do we think is most involved in protests? Students.”

Jonah Walters, a UCLA scholar who studies nonlethal weapons, told the regents today that “these munitions can and do cause serious injury, including death.”

In a brief interview after the incident, Walters said the pepper pellets cause “blistering of mucous membranes all over the body, which can simulate the experience of suffocation. It can cause temporary blindness. In some cases, it has been linked to more serious and permanent eye damage,” he said.

Walters noted that the product description for one of today’s weapons warns in its product manual “The user should never aim or shoot at the head, face, eyes, ears, throat, groin or spine. Impact to these areas could result in unintentional serious or permanent injury or death.”

Later, in an interview, he said that “it’s shocking and offensive” that UCLA gave him the award. a competitive scholarship “based on his recognition of the significance and importance of this research, and then, less than three months later, to turn around and demand the purchase of the very ammunition that I study and that my research has called into question.”

A spokesman for the office of University of California President Stett Holbrook wrote in an email that this was a routine agenda item that was not related to any specific incident. He added that “many requests are for replacements of items used in training.”

“UC’s use of this equipment provides UC police officers with non-lethal alternatives to standard firearms, allowing them to de-escalate situations and respond without resorting to lethal force,” Holbrook wrote. As for the use of drones, he said they can help detect shooters, other dangerous suspects and “reconstruct the crime scene by providing comprehensive aerial data.”

Stiger told regents that drones cannot be used to monitor peaceful student protests “unless authorized by the chancellor” of a campus.

Less-lethal weapons, Stiger said, are not intended for “crowd control or peaceful protests,” but for “life-threatening circumstances.” He added that such weapons can be used during protests that turn violent and “when law enforcement and campus leadership have determined it is necessary for law enforcement to use force to defend themselves, others, or to make an arrest, which is consistent with state law” and the Small Arms Act. system police intervention procedures.

In a written report to the board of directorsThe UC Police Department also detailed its use of weapons and ammunition for 2023, a year before protests against the Gaza war erupted on campus. Data on equipment used last school year, a period that included UC Police clearing protest encampments, will be released next fall.

Also today, a coalition of faculty groups said they are filing an unfair labor practice complaint against the UC with the state Public Labor Relations Board. At a news conference ahead of the regents’ meeting, they said the system’s responses to last spring’s unrest violated their rightsincluding the use of police force to clear the encampments. A UC labor relations spokesperson said the system is treating the faculty group’s case as it does a similar case filed in July by a UCLA faculty association: “totally devoid of merit.”

This article was originally published by CalMatters.

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