Alameda County Board of Supervisors Meeting on Militarized Equipment – AB 481

Alameda County Board of Supervisors Meeting on AB 481Find the Zoom link for the Board meeting here!

The American Friends Service Committee has let us know that next week, the Board will be reviewing a military equipment use policy from Sheriff Ahern that would continue to authorize using his arsenal of military weapons for any purpose, including future pre-dawn raids on families. The sheriff’s military equipment inventory includes over 450 assault weapons, 3 armored vehicles, 162 drones, and much more. See the full toolkit from AFSC here, and make your voice heard on the issue on Tuesday!

This coming Tuesday, Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors will be voting for the first of two times on the sheriff’s draft policy on militarized equipment. Since AB 481 passed, all law enforcement agencies in California are required to list their militarized equipment (drones, robots, “less lethal” beanbag rounds, chemical weapons like flashbangs, tear gas, and pepper spray; armored vehicles, rifles). They’re also required to write policies dictating how each piece of weaponry is to be used. These policies must be approved by a governing body (a county board of supervisors, or a city council), and they must be presented at meetings where members of the public can comment.

The sheriff’s office has done all right at listing the equipment. They’ve done remarkably poorly at writing useful, restrictive policies, even though restrictive policies save lives. (To wit, they haven’t ruled out using their tank-like BearCat as a shooting platform, even though all the uses of it they enumerate in the policy are defensive. They haven’t ruled out using flashbangs when children are likely to be present. They haven’t ruled out aiming less lethal ammunition at the parts of the body where they are likeliest to cause death or permanent injury.) And in fact, they’ve used this policy implementation process to lobby for *more* militarized equipment (four pepperball launchers, to be used in Santa Rita Jail).

On Tuesday, Aug. 9, Supervisors will be voting for the first time on the policy. American Friends Service Committee has– again!– written a helpful guide to writing a comment. You can share your comment with supervisors in writing before 3 pm Monday (send it to CBS@acgov.org), you can read it aloud during the meeting, or you can do both. All public comment at Tuesday’s meeting will come at the beginning, 9:30 am.

Zoom link for the meeting: Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting