For the past two years, the Santa Ana Police Department has failed to comply with California’s Assembly Bill 481, which mandates law enforcement agencies to publicly document their use of military equipment. At a community meeting on Wednesday, Commander Mat Sorenson admitted, “We messed up. We dropped the ball, now we’re trying to fix it.” The law, passed in 2022, requires annual public reports detailing the deployment of military equipment, including summaries of complaints and investigations.
Police Chief Robert Rodriguez explained that reports for 2023 and 2024 were prepared but not shared publicly due to an “administrative oversight.” As a result, the department retroactively produced the reports and discussed them at the sparsely attended meeting. According to LAist, attendees expressed disappointment over the lack of detail and poor publicity of the meeting.
The report, covering May 2024 to April 2025, revealed that the department used military equipment 30 times in field incidents and 11 times at community events. The equipment included armored vehicles and a tactical robot, costing approximately $30,000 for maintenance. However, the report lacked specifics on the deployment’s impact, such as injuries or community complaints.
David Pulido from the Community Service Organization Orange County criticized the report’s brevity and lack of enforcement mechanisms in the law. He stated, “If it has no enforcement mechanisms, it’s not gonna get enforced.” AB 481 requires city councils or county supervisors to approve use policies, but without clear guidelines, enforcement remains challenging.
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