In the coming weeks, Alameda County will be putting forward for a public vote their inventory and usage policys for the county sheriff’s large arsenal of military equipment. ALCO, partially as a result of their operation of the large correctional facility at Santa Rita, is one of the most militarized police departments in California. This is not news to participants in Bay Area protests.
There are two particular areas for focus.
The first is scattershot munitions. The ACSO sheriff’s department keeps a large inventory of over 900 of these weapons, even though the State of California largely outlawed their use in crowd control in 2022. ALCO’s logs report that the weapons are currently used mostly in Santa Rita jail and mostly to enforce compliance from mentally ill inmates. You can see why this approach to mental health is dangerous and why Santa Rita is one of America’s most dangerous county jails. Scattershots, which cannot be safely targeted away from sensitive body areas like the head or groin, have been declared not safe for use in correctional facilities by the UN and are not used by sheriffs in many counties, including SF, Solano, San Mateo, Santa Clara and even San Joaquin. Why are we using them in Alameda County and why don’t we stop?
The second is drones. From its beginning more than a decade ago, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department drone program has grown and grown and grown. Moreover, limits on authorized uses and retention of footage without probable cause “appear” (we are still researching exactly when this happened) to have been removed from the policy circa 2021 – without a word. The proposed policy authorizes any use the sheriff approves and places no significant limit on the retention of drone footage. This shouldn’t fly.
Join us at the Alameda County Building at 1221 Oak Street or on Zoom to object to the use of scattershot munitions and the last minute changes to the drone usage policy.