At-a-glance
The Richmond City Council has struggled to complete all of its business during its three meetings a month.
As a result, votes and/or discussions are often pushed off to future meetings.
Tuesday's meeting was no different, with the council running out of time to discuss a police equipment report and a proposed Nov. 3 ballot measure, among other topics.
The Richmond City Council once again didn’t have time for a critical vote, this time on how police document the use of military equipment, meaning a series of agenda items that have been continually delayed will have to be dealt with during its last two meetings before a summer recess.
The council, which usually meets three times a month, has struggled for several months to complete all of its agenda tasks. On Tuesday only one of eight action items was completed — a resolution to support a community cleanup plan at the United Heckathorn contaminated site. In fact, five of those eight topics were held over from June meetings, which ended up being dominated by budget discussions, requiring the council to schedule a fourth meeting that month to approve its budget on time.
About two dozen speakers, many of whom were affiliated with police-reform efforts, waving colorful signs, took up most of the meeting time Tuesday, offering their opinions on the police department’s 2025 equipment report.
Council member Cesar Zepeda made a motion to add a special meeting on July 14 to finish Tuesday’s agenda, but it was rejected by the Richmond Progressive Alliance-affiliated council members, Claudia Jimenez, Sue Wilson, Vice Mayor Doria Robinson and Mayor Eduardo Martinez, with Robinson saying she did not want to continue the discussion on the military equipment without Chief Timothy Simmons, who said he was unavailable for the July 14 meeting due to a schedule conflict.
Zepeda’s special meeting motion was not the only proposal that was swatted down by that contingent on Tuesday.
Zepeda had also attempted to restructure the agenda to ensure a proposed ballot measure ordinance he co-sponsored with council members Soheila Bana and Jamelia Brown would be heard on Tuesday. (The measure needs to be voted on in time to meet a county Nov. 3 elections office deadline.)
The measure proposes asking voters if the city can establish an ethics commission, the Richmond Government Accountability, Transparency and Ethics Act (GATE). Because the council majority declined to change the agenda, it won’t be heard until at least July 21. November ballot measures must be submitted to the county by Aug. 7.
During the open forum, Zepeda stepped down from the dias and addressed the council as a private citizen to share his disappointment at how the council isn’t following its own procedural guidelines.
“This council voted on rules that we don’t always follow to a ‘T,’ ” Zepeda said, adding that the council did not hold a regular closed session prior to the meeting. “If anybody paid attention to the agenda, it was a ‘special’ open session to hear public comment before closed session. That is going around the city council rules to start at 3:30. Instead, we started at 5.”
Zepeda told Richmondside Monday night that if the council followed some of the rules it routinely ignores it could help speed meetings up. For example, proclamations are supposed to be limited to the fourth week of the month and held to a five-minute per proclamation limit. Also, each council member is allotted 30 minutes of proclamations in a six-month period. On Tuesday, the first meeting of the month, the council heard a nearly 13-minute proclamation.
Ultimately, the mayor is responsible for setting agendas and holding speakers to their allotted time limits. In recent months, Martinez has occasionally set timers for council members during discussions, although it has not been consistent. In one recent meeting, when the council ran out of time to discuss the budget, Martinez exchanged heated words with council member Brown and ended the meeting by leaving the dias.
“I happen to know that no one has been tracking this,” Zepeda told Richmondside. “It’s not that I’m disagreeing with proclamations. I like being driven by process.”
Now, the council will have to pick up where it left off at its July 21 meeting, according to City Clerk Pamela Christian.
Police chief: Military equipment report took 500 hours last year
The 2025 military equipment report, presented Tuesday by Simmons, covered the department’s inventory, fiscal spending and deployments of certain weaponry as required by AB 481, which became law in 2022.
The bill, which requires California law enforcement agencies to get local governing bodies’ approval before acquiring or using “military-grade” equipment and to file annual public reports, followed the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent mass public demonstrations.
Last year, Richmond’s city council directed the department to track a number of additional details, such as when a rifle is displayed versus deployed. Police brass, including Simmons and then-Chief Bisa French, pushed back at the time, saying that collecting extra data would present an “undue administrative burden.”
Previously, RPD’s definition of “deployment” referred to “the actual use or activation of a piece of equipment,” versus the council’s direction, which asks police to also count the display or pointing of a rifle.
Since then, Simmons said, the department has logged an estimated 500 hours to track the additional data. Simmons said they would likely need to hire more personnel to track any additional data.
“If the reporting requirements continue to expand year over year, there will come a point where additional personnel will be necessary for the department to continue meeting the expectations without affecting other essential services,” Simmons said. “We are happy to continue meeting the high standards that are established. We simply ask that the goal posts remain consistent from year to year and so that we can continue delivering quality service in a sustainable manner.”
Richmond’s report ended up being 60 pages long, Simmons said, compared to neighboring cities such as Oakland (57), Berkeley (20) or San Francisco (13).
“Many other Bay Area agencies with significantly larger staffing levels produce reports that are substantially shorter than ours and less transparent and I understand and respect the desire to lead the way regarding police transparency,” Simmons said.
In the report, the police department “deployed” this military equipment 166 times in 2025, up from 103 uses in 2024 — a 61% increase — though still below the 185 uses reported in 2023.
Drones accounted for 104 of those deployments, or 63% of the total, followed by flashbangs (26), less lethal rounds (13), armored vehicle (nine), breaching shotguns (eight), chemical agents (five) and patrol rifles (one). The one patrol rifle deployment came in August 2025, during the fatal officer-involved shooting of Angel Montaño at an Iron Triangle home.
Richmond police 2025 military weapons inventory
The police department’s 2025 military equipment inventory included: 15 drones; one tactical robot; a mobile command center vehicle; four breaching shotguns with 325 specialized rounds used to destroy door locks, hinges, and deadbolts; 82 rifles with 50,000 rounds; 120 flashbangs; about 700 chemical agent and smoke canisters and 10 launchers associated those types of rounds; 17 less-lethal shotguns and 500 rounds of bean bag rounds; two shotguns configured for chemical rounds; and four additional less-lethal launchers.
The count of patrol rifle displays, instances where an officer removed or made a rifle available for potential use, whether or not it was fired or seen by the public, was tallied at 333 for the year.
The report also detailed the rollout of the department’s Drone as First Responder program, which flew 766 times in 2025. Roughly 79% of the year’s flights (606) occurred in a three-month stretch from June through August.
Also, as the council requested for the 2025 report, demographic data tied to deployments were tracked. Of the 141 tracked deployments, 46 involved Black suspects, 42 involved Hispanic or Latino suspects while race was “unknown” in 40 cases. Suspects were male in 99 of the 141 tallied incidents.
The department reported just over $405,000 in total military equipment expenses in 2025, the report said. The majority of the expenses were related to the department’s drone program, which cost about $46,000, and just under $300,000 for the drone program, accounting for about 85% of the costs.
Of the remaining costs, about $34,000 went to rifle maintenance and ammunition, about $16,000 was spent on chemical agents and $9,000 went to “diversionary devices” like flashbangs.
For 2026, the department is seeking to replenish equipment and/or expired supplies. The department is also exploring applying for grant funding to help pay for an armored vehicle. Currently, the department relies on outside agencies if it needs such a vehicle.
Some members of the public, such as Crescent Diamond of Reimagine Richmond, called on the council to reject the weapons report, in an effort to thwart the purchase of new equipment or supplies.
Diamond, who read a letter signed by a dozen community groups, including the RPA, Reimagine Richmond, Asia Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), said that the groups believe the money could be better used for community projects.
“If approved, the department’s bold request to grow its stockpile may well bring the 2026 fiscal impact of police militarization in Richmond to more than $1.6 million in funds that could be spent on ROCK, YouthWORKS, libraries, parks, and the Home Key and MetroWalk affordable housing programs. The department argues that these acquisitions will help it prepare for worst case scenarios, but the reality is that military weapons do not help keep our communities safe.”
Simmons and Richmond police Captain John Lopez clarified later that the department was not bringing any new purchase requests to the council and that all of the planned acquisitions, including 10 new rifles, have been included in the recently approved 2026-27 city budget.
When Bana asked if the equipment the department would need approval to buy was absolutely necessary, Simmons said yes because it’s used to train new recruits.
“They are all absolutely necessary because there are tools that we pivot to, councilwoman Bana, in moments where you have to have the right tool available,” Simmons said, pointing to a February 2024 incident in unincorporated Montalvin Manor where a suspect was shooting a rifle at residents in nearby homes. When Richmond police asked for an armored vehicle, it took three hours for one to arrive from a neighboring agency.
“We had no capacity at all to try to get to those neighbors to try to get them out of their homes,” Simmons said. “We tried with patrol cars. Our patrol cars took rounds and somebody mentioned (earlier) about bullets going through cars. Those rifle rounds went through our cars like Swiss cheese.”
Proposed ethics commission ballot measure also delayed
Another topic postponed until later this month will determine whether voters get a chance to change how the city addresses alleged unethical behavior in city government.
For decades, Richmond politicos on all side of the spectrum have accused one another of foul play in campaigns and of behind-the-scenes favoritism by elected officials.
According to the agenda report, Richmond remains one of the few Bay Area cities — and among the largest in California — without an ethics commission.
Under the proposed ordinance, the commission would be comprised of seven members appointed through a distributed process that would be designed to prevent any single official from controlling it: The mayor, with council confirmation, would appoint one member; the Personnel Board, one; general employee unions, one; and public safety unions, one. Those four appointees would then unanimously fill the remaining three seats.
The commission would be staffed by a full-time investigator — a licensed California attorney who would report solely to the commission rather than the city manager or city attorney, and who would have sole discretion to hire outside counsel if the city attorney has a conflict of interest. The commission would also have subpoena power enforceable through court contempt proceedings and the authority to open investigations on its own, without waiting for a complaint to be filed.
Its jurisdiction would extend beyond elected officials to appointed officials, board and commission members, candidates, lobbyists, city contractors, staff, and nonprofits and NGOs doing business with the city.
It would enforce existing rules around campaign finance disclosure, lobbyist registration, conflict of interest, gift limits, behested payments, post-employment restrictions, the city’s Sunshine Ordinance, the Brown Act and whistleblower protections — areas currently shared by the city attorney’s office, human resources and, in some cases, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) or the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office.
There are financial implications to holding an election and operating such a commission. Putting a measure on the November ballot costs between $165,000 and $240,000, according to figures from the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder Department.
The commission would be guaranteed to receive $1 million in city funding in its first year — to cover two staff positions and operating costs — a figure the agenda report describes as an “absolute” floor that cannot be reduced under any circumstance, including a declared fiscal emergency.
Beginning in year two, funding would increase to the greater of $1 million or 0.5% of General Fund revenue, an estimated $1.62 million based on the city’s projected 2026-27 revenue of $324 million. From the third year onward, the investigator — not the city manager or city attorney — would propose a budget of between 0.5% and 1% of General Fund revenue directly to the council, and any move to fund the commission below that request would require a five-of-seven supermajority vote, a public hearing and written findings.
Extremely selective reporting from last night’s city council meeting. Didn’t even mention the efforts to Support of the Community Cleanup Plan for the United Heckathorn Superfund Site.
That is mentioned in the story and links to our past coverage of the plan.