Drones, tear gas and more listed as part of Modesto police military equipment
The Modesto Police Department delivered its annual Military Equipment Use Report to the City Council on Tuesday. The presentation included a request to purchase new drones, flash-bangs, tear gas canisters, pepper balls, batons and other crowd-control equipment.
MPD’s current stock includes most of these items already, but it requested more to supplement or replace inventory. The agency listed 58 military-grade items, across six categories, on its list given to the City Council.
The agenda item for the council to accept the report was originally on the consent calendar — a list of items packaged together and voted on all at once without public discussion — but was pulled by meeting attendee Kevin McCarty.
If a member of the public, or the council, requests an item be pulled from the consent calendar, it must be discussed in the open and voted on publicly. MPD Lt. Joe Bottoms presented the report to council, saying the equipment is used for multiple scenarios and is standard.
“So it may surprise council, and whoever’s listening, what (the state) considers to be military items,” Bottoms said. “These are items that the Police Department has purchased for as long as I’ve been a police department … officer: for over 21 years. So it’s just after 2021 that the state determined that they would now consider these to be military items.”
MPD’s requested new equipment will cost $71,384, with the most expensive purchase being four DJI Mavic 4T drones. These will replace two identical drones that have reached their “end of life” use, according to its report.
At about $8,000 apiece, the drones have 56-times zoom lens cameras, thermal imaging and a mapping system. The department listed nine uses for the drones, which include: major collision investigations, searches, rescues, crowd control, crime scene photography, SWAT operations and natural disaster response. The new aircraft aerials will be added to its fleet of 13 drones.
Law-mandated categories of MPD’s inventory include unmanned aerial vehicles, robots, armored vehicles, mobile command posts, training rifles; flash-bangs, tear gas and pepper balls; 40 millimeter canister launchers and less-lethal ammunition. The total purchasing cost of its inventory is about $600,000. It costs roughly $56,500 a year to maintain.
Flash-bangs, tear gas and pepper balls
In its arsenal, MPD holds 86 mini flash-bangs, 48 gas canisters, 550 pepper balls, 50 liquid barricade ferret rounds — tear gas or pepper spray rounds typically used indoors — and seven aerial warning rounds. The latter are 40 millimeter rounds fired into the air that produce 170 decibels of sound and bright light to be “fired above a crowd during a riot/civil disorder situation.”
MPD wants to add, or replace, items in the arsenal and requested the purchase of 48 mini flash-bangs, 80 gas canisters, 145 smoke canisters and 100 liquid barricade rounds. In its usage report, MPD stated two mini flash-bangs were deployed in 2025. The use of the other aforementioned items was not listed except for pepper balls, which read “TBD,” for “to be determined.”
The report stated there were “no complaints/investigations regarding the use of military equipment in 2025.” A public engagement meeting about the use of military equipment will be held on May 19, 2026, from 5 to 7 p.m. at MPD’s headquarters at 600 10th St. The meeting will also be streamed live on MPD’s Facebook account.
