Nine of California’s 21 public school police departments own military-grade gear such as semi-automatic rifles, less-lethal launchers and smoke grenades. Under a 2021 law, Assembly Bill 481, those departments must publish annual reports detailing their inventories, document how the equipment was used, and give residents a chance to weigh in at a public forum. But CalMatters found that five of the nine districts — including Fontana Unified, San Bernardino City Unified, Apple Valley Unified, San Diego Unified and Los Angeles Unified — had not published current reports before being contacted by reporters.

San Diego and Montebello school police only released updated reports after CalMatters inquired. Twin Rivers Unified in Sacramento County and Santa Ana Unified issued their first-ever public reports this year, despite having owned military equipment for years.

Fontana Unified School District initially told CalMatters its police force owned no military equipment, then reversed course days later, saying it would update a 2024 report and present it to the school board this month. San Bernardino City Unified gave a similar response before producing documentation showing it does, in fact, have such equipment.

Apple Valley Unified’s 2025 policy lists tasers, semi-automatic rifles, sponge-round launchers and munitions as military equipment but contains none of the required details on training, costs or usage rules. The district said it has never filed an inventory report, arguing its rifles and tasers are exempt because they are “standard issue” — though watchdogs and the CalMatters review found several districts making similar claims despite state definitions saying otherwise.

The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was intended to rein in the militarization of local police forces, particularly in lower-income and minority communities, by requiring elected school boards to approve — and regularly reapprove — the use of such weapons. Agencies must show the equipment is cost effective, protects civil liberties and that no reasonable non-military alternative exists.

Los Angeles School Police Department, once stripped of Pentagon-surplus gear including grenade launchers and an armored vehicle after public backlash a decade ago, still maintains 112 semi-automatic rifles and 104 bean-bag shotguns, according to district spokesperson Christy Hagen. She said the equipment is used only in limited, high-risk emergencies to protect students and staff, but did not say whether the district intends to formally disclose the arsenal as state law requires.

In Sacramento County, the Twin Rivers Unified School District Police Department has held such equipment for more than two decades but did not adopt a formal use policy until this past May — several years after the law took effect. Police Chief David Lugo told the district’s governing board the new policy was simply about achieving compliance, not expanding authority. In April, before the policy existed, Twin Rivers officers deployed patrol rifles while responding to a shooting at a nearby high school where a teenager was killed.

The rollout of that policy sparked a heated debate among parents and staff. Some argued that campus police need access to rifles and less-lethal weapons to respond quickly to an active-shooter situation, especially in areas where outside law enforcement backup could take many minutes to arrive. Others countered that the weapons — some functionally identical to firearms used in combat zones — require far more training than school officers typically receive, and that arming campus police could alienate the Black and Latino families who make up more than half the district’s students.

A CalMatters review in July uncovered similar gaps in transparency among California’s public college and university police departments, finding many campuses were not properly disclosing their own military-style arsenals. The latest findings suggest the same pattern extends into K-12 education statewide, raising fresh questions about oversight of school policing at a time when some communities are pushing for greater investment in counseling and de-escalation training rather than hardware.

District officials in Santa Ana and Montebello also acknowledged their equipment-use policies omit legally required details, such as how the public can file complaints about weapon deployment. Montebello said residents can raise issues at police town halls or board meetings, while Twin Rivers pointed to complaint forms available by mail or in person. Santa Ana did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Elsewhere, districts such as Victor Valley Union High School, Clovis Unified and Hesperia Unified have adopted formal military-equipment policies but say they do not currently own, and have no plans to purchase, such gear. Compton Unified, which drew criticism in 2014 after authorizing officers to carry AR-15-style rifles, said it ultimately never purchased the weapons.

Following CalMatters’ inquiries, several districts — including Fontana, San Bernardino and San Diego — said they intend to publish updated reports and resume compliance with the law as the new school year begins.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Some California Schools Fail to Report On-Campus Military-Style Rifles as Required by Law appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

After state officials declared, under a 2023 transparency law, that California government agencies were not using any “high-risk” automated decision-making systems, it has now come out that at least six such systems are, in fact, in use. These tools help determine outcomes that can profoundly affect people’s lives — from whether a family qualifies for cash aid to whether someone can access housing assistance or necessary medical care.

For those who have followed the rollout of Assembly Bill 302, the revelation is hardly shocking. The law, signed three years ago, directs the California Department of Technology to compile an annual inventory of high-risk automated systems used or proposed by state agencies. Last year, after the department’s first report claimed no such systems existed, a public records request turned up remarkably thin evidence to support that conclusion — a single spreadsheet listing every agency with the word “no” typed next to a column asking whether automated decision systems were in use. There was no indication that state officials had dug any deeper.

This year, a handful of agencies finally acknowledged using high-risk systems after being interviewed by the technology department. But that shift only highlights a deeper flaw in the law: AB 302 relies entirely on state agencies to police and report on themselves, with no independent verification process and no consequences if they fail to disclose accurately.

Compounding the problem is a lack of clarity over which systems even qualify as “high risk” in the first place. The law broadly defines such systems as those that replace or assist human judgment in decisions with significant legal consequences — including those affecting housing, education, employment, credit, health care and the criminal justice system. Yet tools already known to shape major outcomes for Californians were left out of the state’s accounting. Among them is the Uniformity Assessment System, which has been tied to reduced In-Home Supportive Services hours for people with disabilities, and the Risk Segmentation, Stratification and Tier model used to predict health risks and service usage among Medi-Cal recipients.

This pattern isn’t unique to California. Similar transparency measures have stumbled elsewhere. In New York, the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act was intended to give residents insight into the New York Police Department’s use of surveillance tools. But watchdog groups and the city’s own inspector general have found that the NYPD routinely exploits vague legal language to avoid real scrutiny — including its use of unsettling robotic devices for policing.

Community oversight laws governing police surveillance technology across the country have run into similar walls. Because law enforcement agencies typically control how their own tools are described, such laws can end up reinforcing favorable narratives rather than fostering genuine accountability. As University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo has noted, this dynamic can cause lawmakers to focus narrowly on whatever technology is presented to them, rather than grappling with the broader implications of automated decision-making.

Perhaps the deeper issue is philosophical rather than procedural. Transparency-focused laws like AB 302 start from an assumption that government agencies should be allowed to adopt automated systems in the first place — then build costly bureaucratic apparatus to monitor their use after the fact. Rather than serving as a check on these tools, such frameworks often end up normalizing and entrenching their presence within government operations.

If California is serious about reining in high-risk uses of artificial intelligence by state agencies, transparency alone won’t cut it. AB 302 represented a well-intentioned but ultimately insufficient first step. It’s time for state lawmakers to move beyond disclosure requirements and pursue real safeguards that protect Californians from unchecked automated decision-making.

Original source: CalMatters

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