9 out of 10 UC campus police departments fail to comply with state law around protest response

California law requires every law enforcement agency — from large city departments to campus police — to document any use of crowd-control weapons such as chemical agents or less-lethal projectiles during protest response.

That same law, Assembly Bill 48 passed in 2022, requires agencies to post their crowd-control reports online, and the California Department of Justice is required to gather and post those reports in a central location.

Despite this requirement, the DOJ’s website lists reports from just 32 of the 624 law enforcement agencies in the state. Among the agencies not listed on the DOJ’s website are nine of the 10 University of California campus police forces.

Some UC campuses told LAist they had no incidents to report. Others said a lack of resources and oversight have created a delay in complying with the law. The issue is not unique to universities. Civil rights and policing experts told LAist that many law enforcement agencies in general are out of compliance with the 2022 law.

Lack of compliance by campus police is noteworthy given contentious protests in recent years on UC and other college campuses. Still, attorneys and experts told LAist that holding law enforcement responsible for how they respond to campus protests can be difficult.

What we know about use of force at university protests

Last year, a UC Riverside police officer fired several rounds “at a person who was assaulting officers” while providing assistance to UC Berkeley police, according to UC Riverside PD lieutenant Jason Day.

Day told LAist his department has not reported that incident to the California Department of Justice — a step that’s required by California law.

“There’s obviously more work that we need to do,” he said.

Day said because UC Riverside’s police force is smaller, capacity issues interfere with their ability to fulfill all reporting requirements.

“A lot of times things are just going to have to get set aside,” he said.

Day said “sooner rather than later” the agency will look to update their website with the correct reporting requirements under AB 48.

“There's more homework on my part that needs to be done, but like I said, we’re aware of it,” he said. “It’s something that needs to be prioritized.”

UC Riverside is one of the nine UC campus police forces without public-facing reports on their use of chemical agents and less-lethal projectiles.

UCLA’s police department is the only UC campus to show up on the DOJ’s statewide AB 48 webpage. UCLA police documented one incident in June of last year when they used chemical agents and one 40mm sponge projectile during a protest response.

Jeff Chobanian, UCLA police department’s acting captain, says every agency must follow the letter of the law.

“The legal statutes are all there regardless of agency size,” Chobanian said. “We’re stewards of the public and we're part of the community, so the community needs to know what its police department is doing.”

This comes at a time that UC police departments are asking for more protest-control weapons.

UCLA, UC Merced, and UCSF collectively requested more than $10,000 worth of less-lethal munitions last September, including dozens of 40mm less-lethal projectile launchers. UC Merced and UCSF, to date, have not reported any use of less-lethal weapons.

What the data say

The public can get some insight into how crowd control weapons are used on UC campuses by viewing the UC police department’s use-of-force reports, which are aggregated into an online dashboard.

These reports cover all use-of-force incidents and are separate from the reporting requirements under AB 48.

But the dashboard has specific categories for impact weapons and pepper spray, which are considered riot-control weapons under AB 48.

Since 2022, the 10 UC police departments as a collective have documented 11 instances of impact weapon or pepper spray use. The dashboard does not indicate whether these uses of force occurred during protest responses.

The dashboard includes data on people injured by UC police but does not indicate what caused the injury. There is also an ‘other’ category under types of force, but the dashboard doesn’t specify what kind of force was used.

Carlena Orosco, an assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University, Los Angeles, told LAist in an interview that this data is a good attempt at transparency but has some gaps.

“If there was an injury sustained, we don't know the extent of injury,” she said, adding that the “other” category lacks details.

Orosco also looked at each of the UC’s individual use-of-force reporting policies. She told LAist that she felt some campuses were “a little more forthcoming” about their use-of-force incidents in their individual reporting than others.

“The overarching policy is very general,” she said. “It
places a lot of responsibility on each campus in terms of how extensive their reporting is.”

Looking ahead

Orosco said creating systemwide accountability measures and standardizing responses after uses of force to make sure all UC police forces are reporting the same information would be more effective.

She also said a UC-level use of force review committee made up of community members and members of law enforcement would help prevent future problems.

“I think that would be wonderful,” she said. “That group can look at high-profile incidents that perhaps we need to re-evaluate policy, or look at our responses to protest.”