Monterey County Grand Jury Report Addresses Militarization of Local Police Forces

The Grand Jury report found that the Salinas Police Department currently deploys its MRAP vehicle on all SWAT operations, but during 2014 it was not used for any rescue, barricade, or hostage situations.

The report includes the California Office of Emergency Services list of equipment obtained by California agencies and entities under the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, which is current as of June 24, 2014. Acquisitions by Monterey Peninsula area police departments to that date are as follows:

Carmel – no acquisitions
Del Rey Oaks – one mine resistant vehicle (MRAP)
Marina – no acquisitions
Monterey – no acquisitions
Pacific Grove – no acquisitions
Salinas – one mine resistant vehicle (MRAP) and 30 M-16 rifles
Sand City – two M-16 rifles
Seaside – one light armored vehicle and 20 M-16 rifles

The Grand Jury report noted that problems detailed in a American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) 2014 report on the miltarization of police have not been addressed by any of the police departments.

The ACLU report states:

"Even though paramilitary policing in the form of SWAT teams was created to deal with emergency scenarios such as hostage or barricade situations, the use of SWAT to execute search warrants in drug investigations has become commonplace and made up the overwhelming majority of incidents the ACLU reviewed—79 percent of the incidents the ACLU studied involved the use of a SWAT team to search a person’s home, and more than 60 percent of the cases involved searches for drugs. The use of a SWAT team to execute a search warrant essentially amounts to the use of paramilitary tactics to conduct domestic criminal investigations in searches of people’s homes." [p. 3]

See: https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-comes-home-excessive-militariza-tion-american-police-report


Monterey County Grand Jury
http://www.monterey.courts.ca.gov/GrandJury/Reports.aspx