Looks like the universities have been doing this for years and the law in 2021 is trying to make them more transparent about it. I’m so glad journalists are still doing their jobs. This is a win for the public that The Guardian is going after them and that there are laws that we can judge them with.

Several campus police departments created reports after CalMatters’ inquiries, though the law requires the documents to be posted online as long as the equipment is usable. Not all reports or policies contained the details mandated by the 2021 law; in many cases, campuses left out information, including manufacturers’ product descriptions, up-to-date inventories and equipment quantities. The University of California board of regents approved UC Berkeley’s annual report last September, but university police only published their equipment list on 7 April, after four CalMatters inquiries.

According to their own reports, San Jose State University and San Francisco State University own AR-15s even though Cal State’s policy does not authorize this. A Cal State spokesperson, Amy Bentley-Smith, said these AR-15s are standard issue, which would exempt them from the reporting requirement, even though San Jose’s report classifies them as specialized firearms and university police departments determine which equipment is standard issue. San Francisco State’s semi-automatic rifles are standard issue and won’t be listed in the annual report going forward, university spokesperson Robert King said.