Daily Junction.mobi portalThe student led a coalition of campus clubs to demonstrate against the proposed purchases and vehemently protest at multiple police town halls. That April, nearly 20 students, faculty and alumni condemned the plan to buy AR-15s at the college district’s board of trustees’ monthly meeting. The protestors included the student trustee, who said several hundred students were involved in the overall effort.
“There were so many students that were yelling,” Tlatoāni Alvarado said. “They were screaming at the administration. They were upset, they were frustrated. They felt betrayed.”
As of June 2026, the college does not own semi-automatic rifles. “The discussion is still ongoing” on whether the college will seek them in the future, according to campus police chief Kelli Florman.
Still, Tlatoāni Alvarado considers the students’ work a success.
“It was a lot of work,” they said. “I was one of the students that had led the way in that campaign. But I couldn’t have done it alone. There were so many of us.”
Compton College President Keith Curry said a February inquiry from CalMatters put the military equipment law on his radar for the first time. Campus police had issued semi-automatic rifles to patrol officers for over seven years, arguing that standard-issue pistols did not effectively protect civilians and officers during the 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery and shootout. The campus police department also owns incapacitating tasers and a submachine gun, the latter of which the college reports is for potentially lethal situations and to shoot through barriers. However, after some research, Curry realized his college never adopted an equipment use policy.
“Once I understood that it was not implemented correctly, I went into action mode,” Curry said. “I was calling around, I was calling a police chief that I know, I looked on different websites. I had to dissect the bill to understand it, myself, about what’s going on.”
Ultimately, Curry and Compton’s attorney wrote up a Corrective Action Plan that his district’s board of trustees unanimously approved on March 16. In accordance with the plan , the college approved an official policy in April, held a community engagement meeting in May, reviewed an annual use report in June and will update the police policy manual by September.
The compliance review served as a general reminder to build transparency between campus police and their constituents, Curry said. In April, he announced the establishment of three new forms of oversight for campus police: a student committee, a community advisory committee, and a task force reviewing police procedures and policies.
“As a leader, you have to understand what mistakes are made. You have to fix the mistakes,” Curry said.
After a CalMatters inquiry, Chaffey College officials also discovered they had no policy, which Chief Steven Griffin amended by writing a policy that his college board then passed in April. Cal State Monterey Bay updated its website with an equipment policy. Southwestern College modified its annual report with munition quantities. And San Joaquin Delta College, Cuesta College, and the Riverside Community College District all said they are unsure whether their past documentation follows the law, but are working to ensure future compliance.
Other college officials said adjusting their documentation to conform to state law made them reconsider the tools they have. After taking “immediate steps” to update MiraCosta College’s report, public and governmental relations director Kristen Gonzales said the campus police chief plans to “responsibly reduce (munition) inventory to a level that aligns with our actual operational needs and best practices.”
Tlatoāni Alvarado said that while campus militarization is deeply concerning, he’s witnessing a growing trend of students resisting it.
“College campuses are a focus for where our activism can translate into real-world change,” they said. “Colleges are trying to quash that dissent. But what they need to know, and they need to be made aware of, is that there’s many more of us than there are of them.”