Palo Alto's arsenal of military equipment includes shotguns, rifles and flash-bang grenades and Sage launchers that fire rubber bullets.

So far this year, however, the local Police Department has not had to use any of this equipment at any point, aside from training. According to its newly released annual report, the only piece of military equipment — as defined by state law — that the department utilized this year is its mobile command center, which was deployed in June when President Joe Biden came to town.

The report, which the City Council is slated to approve on Nov. 13, is required under a law that state legislators adopted in 2021. Known as Assembly Bill 481, the law required every city to track 15 categories of military equipment and to publicly disclose what equipment it possessed, how much it had cost and how it was used.

The department is also exploring one change in the coming year, a shift from rubber to foam projectiles. Police Capt. James Reifschneider said at a recent public hearing that the goal is to further minimize potential for injury while still maintaining an effective less-lethal option.

The department is now evaluating the effectiveness of foam and has tasked its range team to make sure that it is as accurate and effective from a distance as rubber bullets, he said.

"There's a point at which it could become less injurious but no longer effective," Reifschneider said at the Oct. 11 meeting. "That's why we want to vet that. We can probably find something that would shoot, for instance, marshmallows and they wouldn't ever injure anyone but at the same time it would be completely ineffective, so there would be no use for us to own it."

Much like the rubber bullets, the foam projectiles aim to cause discomfort and can cause significant injury if they hit a sensitive area like someone's eyes. Reifschneider said officers are trained to aim for specific areas and to avoid the neck, face and groin.

"The idea is that the impact of the round is going to either distract the person long enough for us to interfere and get our hands on them or to pause and say ‘Hey, they mean business. I'm going to drop my weapon,'" Reifschneider said.

The reports from elsewhere along the Peninsula point at the different approaches that jurisdictions take when it comes to military equipment. Menlo Park takes a particularly light touch. The city doesn't have a military-grade command vehicle and its AB 481 report lists equipment from just two of the 15 weapons categories that each city is required to report.

The Menlo Park arsenal includes launchers for less-lethal munitions such as "bean bag" rubber bullets, 40-mm projectiles and special impact munition (SIM) weapons. The purpose, according to the city, is to "provide a less lethal option for law enforcement use where the employment of lethal force is prohibited or undesirable. The use of impact munitions provides "a safer alternative to gaining compliance where allowed by policy law," according to the report.

Menlo Park also has "flash-bang" grenades, pepper ball launchers and tear gas, according to the report, weapons that are also reserved as an alternative to lethal force.

Mountain View, by contrast, has equipment in eight of the 15 categories, according to its AB 481 report. Its arsenal includes two drones, which the city purchased in 2020 and which it used in 2022 on at least three different occasions to look for suspects, including one who shot a police officer. It also has a Robotex Avatar Robot, which the department deployed during a search warrant relating to a homicide investigation (it went in before the human officers did).

The Mountain View Police Department has both a mobile command control vehicle, which occasionally gets deployed to large concerts, and a SWAT command vehicle, which according to the city's report was used in 2022 to execute a search-and-arrest warrant relating to a gang-related murder investigation.

Overall, Mountain View reported 14 different types of military grade firearms, including shotguns and pistols. These include an HK MP5 9mm submachine gun, a Remington 870 breaching shotgun and Barrett .50 caliber rifle. The city also reported 11 different types of non-lethal firing equipment, including Sage projectile launchers (which fire rubber bullets), guns that fire 40 mm "sponge" rounds and "bean bag" launchers.

The Redwood City Police Department also has equipment from eight of the 15 categories, according to a special report published last year by Palo Alto Online's sister publication, the Redwood City Pulse. This includes, among other things, drones, robots, a mobile command vehicle, launchers and shotguns for kinetic, foam and beanbag rounds; and diversionary devices such as flash-bangs, pepper balls and tear gas. Its arsenal includes a baton launcher, a less-lethal weapon that shoots sponges, bean bags, wooden and plastic projectiles, according to the Pulse.

Palo Alto falls in between its two neighbors, with equipment in five of the 15 categories, according to its newly released 2023 report: command-and-control vehicles; Taser Shockwaves, microwave weapons and long-range acoustic devices (while Palo Alto doesn't have any Taser Shockwaves, modular units that combine deploy multiple electric currents, the city included this category because it owns a long-range acoustic device -- effectively, a large megaphone); specialized firearms and ammunition with less than .50 caliber; noise-flash diversionary devices and munitions with tear gas; and "kinetic energy weapons."

A new report from the Police Department, notes that many of the items on the list, while deemed "military equipment" by the new state bill, are commonly used by local law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Palo Alto has been using such equipment for years, in some cases decades, and it is designed specifically for law enforcement – not military – application, according to a report approved by Chief Andrew Binder.

Furthermore, much of this equipment is reserved for extraordinary circumstances rather than routine police duties, according to the report.

"Many of the pieces of qualifying equipment possessed by the Palo Alto Police Department are specifically designed for the safe resolution of critical incidents, as opposed to everyday routine patrol deployment; as such, some are used exclusively by members of the specially-trained PAPD Crisis Response Unit (which includes the Special Weapons & Tactics (SWAT) Team and the Crisis Negotiation Team), who receive additional specialized training in the use of the equipment," the report states.