A discussion at Tuesday night’s council meeting about how police track their use of military equipment exposed tensions between a department that says it’s too busy to do extra reports and city officials who say their efforts to lighten officers’ workload are being stonewalled by the police union.
As police leaders pushed back against the council’s request that they provide more detailed information about when military weapons, such as rifles, are “displayed,” on duty, at least one council member said she’s frustrated that the city’s effort to help — by establishing a crisis team to respond to non-violent calls — has been thwarted by the police union.
The issue arose when the council, in reviewing the Richmond Police Department’s 2023 report detailing how often it uses its military equipment, discussed having officers track how often they display military equipment such as rifles, flashbangs, drones and chemical agents.
The goal was to better track how often police use certain equipment and the scenarios which it’s used in, For example, what constitutes a barricaded suspect? The council wants to broaden the scope of reporting when such equipment is used to include when it is displayed by a police officer.
According to Asst. Chief Tim Simmons, who presented the report to the council , adding the word “display” to the police department’s policy on military equipment use would expand what’s already required by California’s Assembly Bill 481, established in 2022.
Chief Bisa French, who also spoke during the presentation of the report to the council, said Richmond police are in compliance with the current state policy as well as the department’s policy 707.
The state law requires police departments to get approval from their governing officials — in this instance the Richmond City Council — before buying or using military equipment and requires they have a policy and track when these items are used.
Currently, the Richmond Police Department’s website tracks monthly statistics regarding each deployment and use of military equipment — categories such as rifles, drones, chemical agents and armed vehicles — in accordance with AB 481. In 2023, there were 185 instances where Richmond police used military equipment while in 2024 there were only 103 recorded instances, according to department data.
Only two uses were recorded in 2023 in the category of Patrol Rifles and Ammunition and zero in 2024, according to department data. There were 120 incidents where drones were used in 2023 and 59 in 2024.
According to RPD, the department’s current definition of “deployment” consisted of “the actual use or activation of a piece of equipment. This means that the equipment is not just visible or carried by the officer but refers to its operation action.” This signifies that if an officer points a rifle, but does not discharge it, the department does not record it as a “deployment” or “use.”
“AB 481 focuses on the deployment and the discharge of military equipment, not its display,” Simmons said. “Adding ‘display’ requires documenting every instance where equipment is visible. This would involve extensive tracking of the equipment’s location, duration and purpose, and this leads to another subsequent issue that would require enhanced reporting requirements. Implementing this expanded definition of display would necessitate significant resources for documentation monitoring, including additional staffing.”
Simmons said that this policy change would not be feasible due to the city’s budget and would place “undue administrative burden on the department,” including taking time away from responding to calls. He currently estimates that it takes officers 30 minutes to an hour to complete a police report for a single incident.
“With the current limited staffing — including 121 sworn personnel — additional documentation would detract from our current operations as it relates to patrol services,” he said, adding that the department would need to create a data management reporting system, an additional crime analyst position, more training for officers and would need to increase its overtime budget.
French said that when officers respond with rifles or military equipment, it is usually because there’s an increased threat of violence.
“Most of these times when an officer is displaying a rifle it is because it is kind of a major incident,” French said. “We are encountering someone that we believe to be armed.”
French added that in those scenarios, multiple officers will be called to the incident with each officer having to make a report afterward. This means anyone calling for help at this time will wait longer for an officer to respond.
“That is time away from that officer being on their beat. That’s what my concern is,” she said. “So if we are adding this element where we are having to write a report, we just want you all to be clear about what that would mean for our service time and our response time.”
Council member Claudia Jimenez said she supported the added detailing of when military equipment is displayed and not just deployed or used and that transparency is needed to ensure the weapons are used within policy.
“The service that you provide is with guns. I value the service because we need it, I believe that we need police in our communities for some instances,” Jimenez said.
Council member Claudia Jimenez blames police union for crisis team hiring delays
Jimenez pushed back on the department’s claims about its high call volume, saying that the city has tried to lighten officers’ workload through its Community Crisis Response Program, which would allow social and mental health workers to respond to non-violent calls. She said the Richmond Police Officers Association is stalling the hiring process.
“If you are saying that we have this block of 911 calls and we are saying that we also want to support that by getting (the crisis team for) the non-violent calls for other services but at the same time the union is blocking this hiring, then it’s like,‘What are we talking here about?’ ” she said. “That is something that I’m very frustrated about.”
The CCRP, now known as ROCK (Reach Out with Compassion and Kindness), was established as a result of the City Council voting in 2021 to reallocate $3 million from unfilled police department positions to fund the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommendations of which the CCRP was one.
Michael Romero was hired as the executive director of the CCRP in May 2024 but so far ROCK has only hired Associate Administrative Analyst Joan Binalinbing.
According to the “State of the City” address given by Mayor Eduardo Martinez last month, ROCK responded to “over 60 calls for service” from when Romero was hired in May 2024 to Nov. 26, 2024.
French said RPD’s leadership doesn’t belong to the police union, which represents the department’s rank and file.
“Nobody up here (at the council meeting) is on the RPOA. We are not the Police Officers Association. We are management and executive management. We run the department. We have no control over what a union does,” she said. “I’m here to run the department within the confines of what I can do.”
District 5 council member Gayle McLaughlin told French that while she understands that police department leaders aren’t RPOA members, the hiring delay has been a barrier.
“This council has been saying that we want to take some of the work away from police officers, and here we are today still repeating that,” she said. “We want to get the CCRP fully staffed. It’s a problem.”
RPOA President and RPD Sgt. Ben Therriault told Richmondside in a phone conversation on Thursday that both Jimenez and McLaughlin should be aware about the contract and city processes for establishing new city job classifications.
“The city violated the correct process to create a new classification and the RPOA is asserting its labor rights,” Therriault said. “We are abiding by normal labor law practices. It’s all grandstanding politics.”
Therriault added that he thought it was odd Jimenez brought up the union during the discussion and believed the council members should know which union represents what city employees.
“They are very well aware of which rank of police officer is a part of what union,” he said. “Especially when they are asking for a raise, they should know which bargaining units represent which members.”
Therriault also said that he believed the line of questions bordered on harassment of the police chiefs at the meeting and might have been retribution for the POA leading other unions to support Measure J.
“It’s misplaced. The questions during the item were unprofessional and scattered,” he said. “Many of the questions they asked were answered in the council packet.”
The council ultimately approved the 2023 military equipment use report with McLaughlin amending the resolution to accept the policy changes to include “display” and to ask the police department to return with a plan to track the display of military equipment for the 2025 report. (The 2024 report will be presented next month.) The item passed with Jimenez, McLaughlin, Martinez, District 1 council member Willis and District 4 council member Soheila Bana voting “yes” and District 2 and 3 council members Cesar Zepeda and Doria Robinson abstaining.
Robinson said she was conflicted between the need for transparency and the potential negative impacts on the department’s efficiency.
“I feel like I’ve been on both sides of the equation,” she said, adding that some of her nonprofit Urban Tilth youth volunteers had guns drawn on them while police were looking for a suspect in the area of the organization’s North Richmond garden and that she separately was a victim of a robbery at gunpoint years ago. “I feel like we need to think more about this. I’m not convinced that what we need is more paperwork to achieve the goal for more safety.”
French said she agreed with Robinson and said if a citizen believes an officer displayed a weapon improperly there are already established methods for residents to report such an incident.
“There’s a complaint policy, we have CPRC (Community Police Review Commission), we have our own OPA (Office of Professional Accountability) where people can make complaints,” she said.
Jimenez said without a paper trail of reports detailing when military-grade weapons are displayed, deployed or used, the issue becomes a “he said, she said” situation.
“If we don’t use (military equipment) that much then it should not be that much work,” she said. “If it isn’t reported in a way that we can look at then it becomes the resident’s word versus the police’s word and that’s what we are trying to avoid here.”
