OROVILLE — Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea and company once again made their way to the Board of Supervisors chambers on Tuesday to discuss the sheriff office’s yearly use of military equipment.
Each year, the Sheriff’s Office is required to report both its use of gear and equipment designated by the state of California as military equipment as well as its stock of these items. The term “military equipment” has been somewhat contested in previous reports both at the county and city levels.
” … Much of it is not military equipment, much of it is available to civilians on the civilian market,” Honea said in his report.
In 2022 the state passed Assembly Bill 481, which made it a requirement for local law enforcement agencies to report what equipment was being used and how it was being used on a yearly basis.
The office has one Lenco Bearcat armored vehicle that it shares with the Chico Police Department that is often used for incidents where SWAT is called in. It also had and used 31 40mm tear gas powder projectiles, four flashbang devices plus one 9-flashbang, two baffled tear gas canisters, one long-range acoustic device, two Penn Arms 40mm six-shot launchers, a Remotec Andros F6-A robot and three DJI Mavic drones.
The vast majority of deployments were of the drones, totaling 86 uses. Honea said the increased use of the drones was a positive.
“The fact of the matter is those are being implemented throughout law enforcement and often at the patrol level,” Honea said. “It is a good resource that allows law enforcement to very quickly put a drone up into the air to look for suspects who may be fleeing the area. They’re also often used in search and rescue operations where you have perhaps a child that has been reported missing. You can put a drone up, you can cover a lot of distance, you can cover backyards, you can do all those things.”
The armored vehicle was used nine times while the acoustic device saw six uses. Undersheriff Matthew Calkins broke down some of the gear and how it is used, such as the acoustic device.
“That’s basically a modern form of a bullhorn that can be directed more effectively than a bullhorn or sirens on our vehicles,” Calkins said.
Calkins said tear gas had been deployed in situations where a suspect was held up inside a home such as a situation that happened in Thermalito last year.
“On March 19, 2023, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team responded to a residence in Terhamlito after a shooting where the suspect was believed to be barricaded inside the residence and armed with a firearm,” Calkins said. “(Law enforcement) attempted contact using the device and the PA system. Eventually chemical agents consisting of tear gas were deployed inside along with flashbangs on the outside. It was later determined that the subject had fled the residence prior to a complete perimeter being set up by deputies.
“However, later that evening SWAT personnel and patrol deputies located the suspect and took them into custody when he attempted to sneak back into the house,” Calkins continued.
When the conversation turned back to the board for questions, Tod Kimmelshue asked who labels the equipment as military use, a question that has come up in previous meetings regarding these reports.
“That’s a very good question,” answered Honea. “I would have to say I think the quick and short answer is that legislature determined what was military equipment. Unfortunately, as is the case with a lot of legislation, there is an ambiguity built into the language, oftentimes because members of the legislature are not subject matter experts and so they don’t understand what it is they are writing into the law and so this broad category of things got lumped into their definition of military equipment even though in actuality it’s not military equipment.”
ICE report
Along with the military equipment use presentation, Honea gave his yearly update on interactions with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly referred to as ICE.
Honea noted California Senate Bill 54 changed how state law enforcement agencies could work with ICE by limiting how long an inmate the federal agency might be interested in could be held in jail.
“Historically, ICE could request that a jail in California hold an individual beyond the time that you can legally hold them on state charges for a few days and allow ICE agents to come and take that person into custody if they believe that they were in the country unlawfully,” Honea said. “Senate Bill 54 and some of the following legislation ultimately put restrictions on that and made it so that law enforcement in California and particularly jails cannot honor those detainers because they’re not legal court orders.”
Of the 8,620 bookings into the Butte County Jail last year, ICE showed interest in 21. Of those, 11 met the requirements of SB54, which allowed the Sheriff’s Office to interact with ICE.
ICE did not arrest any of those they reported an interest in. According to Honea’s report, 15 were never picked up and six are still in custody.
