Chico PD wants to buy more than $1 million in military equipment

The Chico Police Department, at a public meeting, reviewed its 2025 Military Equipment Use Annual Report and explained plans to expand its inventory with more than $1.3 million in purchases.

About 27 community members attended the Feb. 23 meeting. Many raised questions about the necessity of some of the proposed acquisitions and whether the equipment would be used during peaceful protests. Concerns were also raised about what role the department would play in potential immigration-related arrests.

Katie Hawley, the only councilmember who attended the meeting, told ChicoSol that she thinks Police Chief Billy Aldridge is “great” about being transparent when there are questions to respond to, but she has her own concerns regarding some proposed acquisitions.

“I certainly worry about overstocking things that are very expensive to acquire,” Hawley said. “An example of that are the military grade rifles. We’re trying to acquire more and more every single year. These are expensive pieces of equipment that are almost never used. 

“They’re only used in training practices, as is shown in the equipment use reports that have come out,” Hawley added. “So having a military grade rifle for every single police officer that the city has staffed is a lot.”

Chico City Council will review and consider approving the proposal at the March 3 meeting. The proposed acquisitions include three drones, seven patrol rifles, three incident command vehicles, six PepperBall launchers and 750 PepperBall projectiles.

The PepperBall projectiles can be used for crowd control or in other situations. The PepperBall website says, for example, that when a projectile bursts, it “creates a cloud of pepper irritant that rapidly disperses into the air to quickly incapacitate an attacker.”

The total estimated cost is $1,332,222, not including maintenance fees and other so-called consumables, according to Chico PD’s military equipment policy.

Activist: Drones are about surveillance

In 2025, drones were utilized a total of 439 times, according to the Annual Military Equipment Use Report. Under the proposed policy, the department plans to purchase three additional drones, at $20,000 each, to build out a Drone as First Responder program.

Capt. Omar Peña added during the meeting that because federal regulations have prohibited the future use of Chinese-made products, the department needs to gradually replace DJI drones with American-made Skydio X10 models.

Chris Nelson, a Chico resident, expressed concern about expanding drone use in law enforcement, particularly the Skydio X10 that the department plans to purchase. She noted various issues with the Skydio X10 that have been reported by the press, including fluctuation and battery problems.

“They weren’t in the consumer market until 2023,” Nelson said. “They only became available for this kind of use, basically three years ago, or less than three years ago.

“This is the whole slippery slope in drones. It is about surveillance. It’s about privacy. It’s about facial recognition and connections with trackers on cars to read your license plate,” Nelson added. “It’s bringing together all of this AI in a way that is making us less safe, and that’s what my concern is with drones.”

Chief Aldridge said the goal of using drones as first responders is to reduce the number of calls officers must respond to in person and to help to de-escalate situations.

“It allows more of our officers to be available for other priority calls,” Aldridge said.

But Aldridge also acknowledged the potential for drone failures.

“Just like any other pieces of equipment, they’re man-made,” Aldridge said. “They can fail. You know, potential for them to fall out of the sky — absolutely — you’re absolutely right. Things happen to man-made [products].

“We see that at times where some of our other equipment fails us, right? That’s just what it is. I can’t say we’re not going to go to this item because it could fail.”

Aldridge explained that Chico PD is still in the “infant stages of learning about this.”

“So we don’t know for sure if this is even the right thing for us,” he said.

But Nelson pressed her concerns.

“I think you’re going to market it to the City Council as this first responder program,” Nelson continued. “I really feel like people need to be aware that that’s what you’re proposing and that’s the direction you want to go, because it brings up a lot of issues.”

Aldridge responded. “This is something that we are still doing research on,” he said. “We have to put it into the request, because if we don’t, we have to wait another year to come back and do it, so I would rather put it into the request now and get the approval to at least take a look at it.”

“Do we really need those expensive command vehicles?”

Three incident command vehicles the department is planning to purchase are expected to cost between $355,000 and $522,000 each, costing up to $1,256,800.

The policy states that the purchase was approved during the department’s 2024 budget request, but funding was not available at that time. It notes that the pricing has since changed.

“I hope that the Council is able to apply the same values of long-term economic viability to the police department that they do to other departments”—Katie Hawley

An audience member asked: Do we really need or have we needed the $1.25 million Incident Command Control vehicles? When did the CPD, in the past decade, need these vehicles? 

Aldridge explained that the vehicles could be used for drone team deployment and for SWAT teams serving search warrants.

He said the department concluded that a 40-foot command vehicle costing $3 million would be impractical for Chico. Instead, smaller vans would be more suitable because they are less expensive, easier to maintain, and capable of serving the same function as large incident command vehicles, though the department would need about three of them.

The 2026 military equipment policy states that these vehicles are not used during routine patrol or transportation.

Councilmember Hawley expressed her concern about the high cost of the vehicles.

“I understand the pockets of need for the incident command vehicles, and I appreciate that the chief compared it to other command vehicles that usually aren’t listed as military level,” Hawley told ChicoSol after the meeting.

“I hope that the Council is able to apply the same values of long-term economic viability to the police department that they do to other departments,” she added. “A really good example is the Department of Public Works Engineering, which had this grand 10-year plan of road rehabilitation projects approved by Council but is consistently getting that budget slashed.”

“We can’t actually go and enforce immigration stuff”

Some participants raised questions about the police role in potential arrests by Immigration, Customs & Enforcement (ICE).

“We don’t want what we call a ‘blue on blue’ situation” — Chief Billy Aldridge

Aldridge said those questions are “political” and that he was not in a position to answer them.

“It’s not my agency to respond to how they [ICE officers] do business, and I haven’t been given any different direction from the City Council or the city manager as to how they want us to interact with ICE,” Aldridge said. “I will tell you that we have very specific guidelines in California laws … where we can’t actually go and enforce immigration stuff.”

He mentioned the recent downtown arrest that many people believed was conducted by ICE.

“It wasn’t ICE, it was the FBI,” Aldridge said. “They were working with Homeland Security on a person who was not a good person, and they were utilizing Title 8 to do some enforcement with that person, to remove him from the area. So we weren’t involved in that. They didn’t ask for our help. It wasn’t us.”

(Title 8 in the Code of Federal Regulations is titled “Aliens and Nationality.”)

George Gold, a Chico resident, asked whether he would receive police protection if ICE agents broke into his house. Gold noted that he is both an immigrant and a U.S. citizen.

“I can assure you this—if you feel like something is occurring at your house, someone’s breaking into your house, or whatever the case may be, we’re going to respond to confirm what’s going on,” Aldridge responded. “We’re still going to handle it like it’s a crime in progress. I would assure you that once we show up, someone is going to identify themselves really quickly. We don’t want what we call a ‘blue on blue’ situation. 

“It’s a what-if scenario, but I feel like in those scenarios, there would be a contact at that initial response once we got there, so we’re going to take every step to confirm who that person is,” Aldridge said. “Once we determine that it is another agency — and say it’s ICE — in this case, we’re not going to get involved in that. Again, that’s another agency’s responsibility.”

Yucheng Tang covers city government for ChicoSol.