Pasadena resident Ildefonso Carrillo made at least three big mistakes in 2022.
Sometime prior to the afternoon of June 10th, Carrillo decided to purchase a BB gun modeled after a Glock pistol. At the time, that probably didn’t seem like a major error in judgement to the 40 year old.
But he really blundered when he waved it at a man sitting in parked car.
We don’t know what motivated Carrillo to aim the business end of the Glock lookalike toward the vehicle during that 95-degree afternoon, but we do know what went through the mind of the individual sitting in it. The person in the driver seat phoned the Pasadena Police Department and reported that a Latino-looking man had pointed a gun at him.
When the cops arrived to investigate, Carrillo made a serious tactical error. He locked his apartment door.
About three hours later, after one of the most highly militarized municipal police departments in Southern California had sealed-off Carrillo’s neighborhood, he finally surrendered. Nobody was injured during the barricade situation and Carrillo was booked for assault with a deadly weapon.
Carrillo was lucky the incident ended the way it did. A few months later, in similar barricade situations, Pasadena cops would “stimulate” the surrender of Black and brown suspects in a considerably more aggressive manner using military-grade equipment.
If he hadn’t given up voluntarily, Carrillo would have faced the local police department’s arsenal of options that includes a $280,000 BearCat armored truck, three Bell OH-58 helicopters (plus two others considered non-military models), two drones, 40mm “beanbag” and wood baton round projectile launchers, flashbang grenades, a SWAT tactical robot, a mobile command post, a mobile operations center, a .50 caliber precision sniper rifle, CS and OC “tear gas” chemical agents, and enough specialized munitions to fill over 20 pages in the department’s inventory of military equipment.
And that is in addition to the AR-15 assault rifles carried in every Pasadena police cruiser.
What forced the Pasadena Police Department (PPD) and other cities throughout California to reveal how they have militarized to eye-popping levels is a 2022 state law, AB 481, which includes several annual disclosure directives.
At minimum, AB 481 requires California law enforcement agencies to summarize how each type of military equipment was used and the purpose of that use; document the quantity possessed of each type of equipment; detail the annual costs for each type of equipment, “including acquisition, personnel, training, transportation, maintenance, storage, upgrade, and other ongoing costs;” provide a summary of complaints or concerns received for each type of equipment; disclose violations of military equipment policies and actions taken in response, as well as the result of internal audits; and disclose plans to acquire additional military equipment in the coming year, and the quantity sought.
Compliance with the directives has been mixed.
For example, Pasadena’s neighboring City of Sierra Madre reports that its police department is “committed to responding to complaints, concerns and/or questions regarding its military equipment in a timely manner.” That includes assigning a “Military Equipment Coordinator” with a dedicated email account and a mailing address.
By comparison, the Pasadena Police Department refers “formal complaints or concerns” regarding the use of military equipment to its “Professional Standards Section.” That turns out to be the department’s personnel complaint investigations unit responsible for researching “any allegation of misconduct or improper job performance.”
In effect, the department’s current policy is: If a police helicopter continually orbits your neighborhood and you want to get your complaint on the record, you should somehow determine the name of the pilot.
PPD Commander William Grisafe, who developed the policy, says he may consider a rewrite of that section.
The Los Angeles Police Department makes it difficult to locate the department’s AB 481 reports. A Public Records Act request filed by Local News Pasadena for links to the mandatory information was acknowledged but, so far, the request has not been fulfilled.
However, the 94-page report is available as Intradepartmental Correspondence to the Board of Police Commissioners on the City of Los Angeles Web site. LAPD’s most recent annual equipment report contains a 30-page inventory of military hardware and munitions.
Making Urban Combat Palatable
British politician Philip Snowden once wrote, “Truth, it is said, is the first casualty of war.” In many cases it studied, a nonprofit social justice organization found that the truth about how military equipment is used by California police departments could also be considered a casualty.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), long associated with the Quaker religion, has documented why police in California claim that acquiring advanced military weaponry and equipment is necessary. Frequently, the reasons include “fear-based, worst-case scenarios such as active shooter events.”
In many cases it studied, the AFSC found the truth about how military equipment is actually used was far different.
“None of this is in the spirit of community policing. It just seems like poor people are considered the enemy.” – John Doyle
In a 2022 report titled “Equipped for War: Exposing Militarized Policing in California,” AFSC found that “law enforcement is unlikely to discuss the most common uses of military gear,” which includes “deployments at peaceful protests, or disparate uses and impacts on people of color.”
As if to illustrate the point, In March the Pasadena Police Department staged the department’s BearCat in anticipation of protests related to a City Council meeting when a resolution regarding Israel was on the agenda.
PPD says the rationale for prepping the armored vehicle to roll against protestors was “several incidents throughout LA County around the same issue were taking place.” PPD’s current SWAT leader, Lt. Anthony Russo, claimed at a public meeting that the bullet-proof truck is routinely deployed, “so we don’t have to go back and get it when it’s needed.”
An example of how police optimistically justify the acquisition and use of military equipment to local politicians and skeptical community members also involves the department’s BearCat.
The police version of the military’s ballistic engineered armored response vehicle is referenced on the manufacturer’s Web site as a “counter attack truck,” or CAT. When the department purchased the vehicle in 2009, it was listed on the Pasadena City Council agenda simply as an “armored vehicle.”
Today, the same truck is referenced by PPD in its military equipment inventory as a “BearCat Armored Rescue Vehicle (ARV),” and PPD refers to it that way when families tour it during community events. According to PPD officers, the most recent rescue performed using the truck was over a decade ago.
So how is the armored truck actually used according to PPD crime reports?
During 2023, the BearCat was used to provide “extra armor due to (the) elevated target” when PPD and Glendale police lowered multiple flashbang grenades through upper-story windows of a South Raymond Avenue residential building during a homicide investigation. The suspect in that case, Guary Lonnie Shuford III, is Black.
Later that year, the BearCat was used “as armor for (the) team to work from,” when flashbangs were used on North Bonnie Avenue by on-scene police officers to “stimulate the suspects” by launching the explosive munitions through a closed window.
In that barricade situation, several Latino suspects refused to exit an apartment after they were accused of striking a person on the head with a beer bottle.
Disturbingly, police records confirm that Pasadena’s military equipment was used principally, if not exclusively, against Black and Latino suspects during the previous year. That reflects the AFSC’s statewide finding that military gear is deployed by police departments disproportionately against minorities.
Yet, Pasadena police claim, “All our military equipment is used for de-escalation.” That description is also applied to the department’s .50 caliber sniper rifle, which police say was transported in the BearCat to large-scale public events, including the Rose Bowl Game.
When asked for an example how a large-caliber sniper rifle would be used to de-escalate a tense situation, PPD’s Russo offered it could be used to “stop a vehicle by shooting into the engine block.”
Have We Met the Enemy?
“What the heck are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on this stuff for?” said John Doyle, a commercial solar energy professional who ran for Pasadena City Council in March. “It’s a police department that has been anointed too much power from a community that has basically given up hope on alternative solutions that are more social related.”
“Since 9/11 there’s been a huge push within the Pasadena Police Department to do counter terrorism stuff,” Doyle continued. “The federal government is supposed to be handling that.”
“None of this military equipment is being used in the spirit of community policing. It just seems like poor people are considered the enemy,” said Doyle. “Unfortunately the police department is the biggest budget item of the city and not necessarily the best tool for helping communities, marginalized communities in particular, thrive.”
Doyle’s comments reflect those of others in California who feel intimidated, if not traumatized, by police use of military hardware.
In Oakland, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, 350 residents and community groups petitioned the Police Commission in 2021 to retire its BearCat. That was after the city paid the family of Joshua Pawlick $1.4M as a settlement when he was shot and killed by a police officer perched on the armored truck.
But change can be slow, especially when police are convinced they need to be prepared for virtually any contingency no matter how remote the odds of it happening.
Per the most recently published AB 481 inventory report for the Oakland Police Department, the intimidating BearCat is still garaged in the city.
