July 4, 2022
Long Beach City Council
City of Long Beach
411 West Ocean Boulevard, 1st Floor
Long Beach, CA 90802
via email: [email protected]
RE: Agenda Item 28 (22-0753), July 5, 2022 - LBPD Use of Military Equipment (AB 481) Dear Long Beach City Councilmembers,
The LBPD’s AB 481 Military Equipment Use Policy is a joke that does not comply with State law—and so is the Long Beach City Council if you pass it.
The legislative intent behind AB 481 is that “legally enforceable safeguards, including transparency, oversight, and accountability measures, must be in place to protect the public’s welfare, safety, civil rights, and civil liberties before military equipment is funded, acquired, or used.” State law requires that any “proposed military equipment use policy will safeguard the public’s welfare, safety, civil rights, and civil liberties.”
Take a few minutes and actually read the policy before you pass it; it only pays the most shallow of lip service to civil rights and liberties. It mentions civil rights and liberties once in the introduction and then forgets they exist when it comes time to actually set the policy.
Approving this policy as written would mean you value the convenience of the police over the civil rights and liberties of your constituents.
This law completely undermines the legislative intent behind AB 481 and instead give the police a blank check to deploy military equipment against the people of Long Beach in any way they see fit.
AB 481 also requires the policy to have “mechanisms to ensure compliance with the military equipment use policy, including which independent persons or entities have oversight authority, and, if applicable, what legally enforceable sanctions are put in place for violations of the policy.” The LBPD’s policy does not do this. You, the elected City Councilmembers of Long Beach, have a role to play here and it involves more than rubber-stamping a flawed, legally-insufficient policy. Don’t approve a policy that fails to acknowledge your oversight authority. Even the Pentagon has civilian oversight.
Thank you for you time,
Greg Buhl
Lead Researcher at CheckLBPD.org
email: [email protected]