MONTEREY — A first-time town hall forum on the use of military equipment by the Monterey Police Department was marred by inappropriate and racist remarks by the public earlier this week.
The town hall was presented at Monterey City Hall on Monday, providing an update on what kind of military equipment the Monterey Police has and how it was used in the last year. There was an opportunity for public comments and a question and answer period with police, but nearly every online caller was skipped for making inappropriate remarks, many of them attempting to call out specific races and ethnic groups for crimes in the city.
The police answered questions where they could but ultimately decided to quickly move past comments from the public.
“Those comments were abhorrent, many of them had nothing to do with what we were here for. All of us in Monterey absolutely do not agree with many of those comments. It’s unfortunate that people feel the need to utilize this platform to state such things,” Monterey Police Chief Dave Hober said.
It was the first time the Monterey police presented this information in a town hall format, although the information has been available to the public in the past. Last year, the department presented this information to City Council. This year’s report and previous years can also be found at https://monterey.org/
The equipment listed in the annual report included:
In their summary, police said they did not receive any complaints or comments regarding the military equipment, all equipment was accounted for, there were no violations of the usage policy, and all funding for the military equipment came from the existing department budget.
The department also reported one instance where they needed to use their military equipment in November 2023 during “a high-risk search warrant” in Monterey, where the suspect brandished an assault rifle at a neighbor. The warrant was served by a local SWAT team and they used an unmanned robot, a rescue vehicle and a workhorse commercial van.
There were no other cases of military equipment usage over the past year, according to the department.
In the future, the department reported they will go to the city council to request purchases for 13 semi-automatic patrol rifles to replace the 13 they have, which are over 24 years old. This would come out of the department’s budget. They will also be seeking a Crisis Negotiating Team Command vehicle to use with the Monterey Peninsula Regional Special Response Unit through a grant.
The increased militarization of local police has been an emerging issue for several years as more police departments have acquired military-style weapons, vehicles and practices.
As a way to provide more transparency and give people the opportunity to share their concerns, California Assembly Bill 481 was signed into law and went into effect January 2022.
The Military Equipment Use Town Hall Meeting is part of AB481, which requires law enforcement agencies to create an annual military equipment report. The report should include a description of each type of military equipment the department has, how many of each item are in their inventory, what the equipment’s capabilities are, who is authorized to use it and the costs of each piece of equipment, among other factors.
The Monterey Police will show this report again to the city council.
