Overview

• Five campuses secured approvals for new gear—UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and UC San Francisco—while Berkeley, Davis, Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz made no requests.
• UC San Diego requested 5,000 rounds of 5.56mm rifle ammunition and two drones, and UC Irvine sought five pepper-ball launchers and 1,500 projectiles.
• UCLA requested a smaller set of less‑lethal items, including pepper-ball launchers and sponge rounds, according to the UC report presented to regents.
• The UC report says departments primarily used such equipment for training in 2024 and states no campus receives surplus gear from the Defense Department’s LESO program.
• Documented non‑training uses included UCLA’s deployment of 240 pepper‑ball rounds on June 10, 2024, repeated use of a long‑range acoustic device at UCLA, drone patrols at UC Davis, and a crowd‑management acoustic device at UC Santa Cruz, drawing faculty objections and renewed scrutiny following last year’s protests.