Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
23 July 2026.
State law requires every police department with military equipment to report once a year on its use, and requires the governing body to approve its continued use. It is one of Sacramento’s better ideas: a fixed date on which elected officials must look at the armored vehicle, the drones, and the patrol rifles, and say yes or no out loud.
In Richmond, the 2025 report was listed on June 16, heard on July 7, and decided on July 21.
On July 7 the Chief gave an overview, a captain presented, the public commented, and the Council asked one question for the record: the percentage of deployment of military equipment in minority communities. In a city where most residents are people of color, the honest answer may say more about the map than about the department. The meeting ran out before a vote.
On July 21 the Council took the item up right after the Consent Calendar and, without further public comment, did something more interesting than a rubber stamp. It approved the report 7–0, but asked the department to come back on the option of an armored sport utility vehicle instead of a Bearcat. The Vice Mayor offered a friendly amendment, accepted, that staff return with all vehicle types, “not limited only to SUV type vehicles.” And the Council directed the Chief to work with the Community Police Review Commission on an updated drone policy and patrol rifle policy.
So the yearly reckoning produced a shopping preference. Richmond does not object to the armored vehicle. It would like a more approachable one. Something that looks less like it is arriving from a war and more like it is arriving from a parent-teacher conference, armored.
I do not say this to sneer. Vehicle choice is a real policy lever; what a city buys tells residents what the city expects to do. Sending the drone and rifle policies to the review commission is real oversight, the kind the law intends. That part deserves credit.
But notice the shape of it. On license plate cameras the Council split 4–3 after months of argument. On the annual military report, the one place the law sets aside for exactly this argument, the debate came down to body style, and the vote was unanimous. The hard questions, how often each item was used, on what kind of call, and with what result, never appeared in the minutes.
Next year’s report will come around again; that is the point of the statute. The Council might decide in advance what it wants to know, and ask for it before the presentation. Otherwise the annual review will settle into what so many annual reviews become: a conversation about the car.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, July 28, 2026.
— Publius