Laserfiche WebLink
ANNUAL MILITARY EQUIPMENT REPORT <br />Page 1 <br />Background On September 30, 2021, the California Legislature enacted Assembly Bill (AB) 481. The intent of the legislation was to increase transparency and community involvement in a local law enforcement agency’s purchase and use of military equipment, as defined in California Government Code Section 7070. In addition to section 7070, AB 481 also created California Government Code Sections 7071 and 7072. California Government Code Section 7071 requires a law enforcement agency to obtain approval of the governing body, by an ordinance adopting a military equipment use policy at a regular meeting of the governing body. On May 3, 2022, at the regularly schedule City Council meeting, the Santa Ana Police Department presented our Military Equipment Policy (Policy 707) to the Council and Community. At the May 17, 2022 City Council Meeting, the Council adopted the ordinance by a vote of 4 to 2 (1 member absent). Beginning on May 8, 2022, the Police Department began tracking its use of defined military equipment for the purpose of generating an Annual Military Equipment Use Report. The information contained in this report is based on that tracking for the purposes of informing our community regarding why and how we utilized the defined military equipment entrusted to us. This report includes data from May 8, 2022 to May 1, 2023. <br />Summary of Equipment Use During the time frame this report covers, defined military equipment was deployed to field-based incidents a total of twenty-one (21) times. Of the nineteen deployments, ten (10) involved deployments of the Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team, where specific criteria had to be met before the SWAT Team was activated/utilized. Each of the nineteen field deployments involved incidents where the defined equipment provided the community and our officers with a higher level of safety than would have been possible had the equipment not been utilized. For example, during each of the incidents, the suspect(s) involved were either believed to be armed with firearms, in a position of tactical advantage, or both. The chart below depicts each type of defined equipment deployed during the reporting period and the number of times a particular piece of equipment was deployed. While there was a total of nineteen incidents requiring the deployment of defined equipment, several of the incidents required multiple pieces of equipment, which is why the total number indicated in the chart exceeds nineteen.