IAPE Evidence Blog

The Jack­son Sun, jacksonsun.com

Jack­son, TN

We fail to see the advan­tage of a new state law forc­ing police agen­cies to sell con­fis­cated weapons, putting them back on the street. Many law enforce­ment offi­cials don’t like the idea. And a recent non-scientific poll con­ducted by The Jack­son Sun showed more than 58 per­cent of respon­ders want con­fis­cated weapons destroyed, not sold. The new law ties the hands of law enforce­ment offi­cials and should be repealed.

The pre­vi­ous law allowed indi­vid­ual law enforce­ment agen­cies to choose how to deal with con­fis­cated weapons. At var­i­ous times, agen­cies have taken dif­fer­ent approaches to suit their indi­vid­ual needs. It makes no sense to limit their choices.

The new law requires work­ing firearms to be sold. The law also requires the pro­ceeds to be used for law enforce­ment oper­a­tions. Under the old law, funds from sold weapons often made their way into com­mu­nity gen­eral funds. The new law is seen as an oppor­tu­nity to save money. Gun owner rights groups also point out that as long as the weapons are legal, sell­ing them through proper chan­nels makes sense, helps reduce the cost of gov­ern­ment and pre­vents gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence with gun-owner rights.

The Jack­son Police Depart­ment has a pol­icy to destroy con­fis­cated weapons. The Madi­son County Sheriff’s Depart­ment has both destroyed and sold weapons in the past. This is a deci­sion best made by law enforce­ment officials.

The leg­is­la­tion was spon­sored by state Sen. Doug Jack­son, D-Dickson, last year and passed the House and Sen­ate by over­whelm­ing majori­ties. Law­mak­ers see the mea­sure as sav­ing tax­pay­ers money.

The new law came under scrutiny recently when two high-profile shoot­ings at the Pen­ta­gon and a Las Vegas cour­t­house were com­mit­ted with guns con­fis­cated by Mem­phis area law enforce­ment and resold. We don’t know how much rev­enue the gun sales gen­er­ated for Mem­phis tax­pay­ers, but they now have cost tax­pay­ers in Las Vegas and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., many more times that, and they have led to human death and injury.

In Jack­son, the com­mu­nity has been besieged by shoot­ings and has res­i­dents wor­ried about going out in pub­lic. Forc­ing police to put even one more gun on the streets is inex­cus­able and is no way to help fight crime. We are not will­ing to accept a few dol­lars of rev­enue from gun sales at the expense of pub­lic safety.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Jour­nal Gazette, journalgazette.net
BYLINE: Holly Abrams, The Jour­nal Gazette, habrams@jg.net

Fort Wayne, IN

Sher­iff says parts sal­able; chief favors total destruction

Fort Wayne offi­cials are still unde­cided on what to do with thou­sands of guns a year after an audit said they should be turned over to the sheriff.

The police chief and sher­iff dis­agree on how the guns should be destroyed.

The city’s pop­u­la­tion is a deter­min­ing fac­tor in what should be done with the guns, accord­ing to an inter­nal city audit released last year. State law requires guns and other assets con­fis­cated by city police be given to the sheriff’s depart­ment when a city has a pop­u­la­tion of more than 250,000.

In 2000, the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau counted the city’s pop­u­la­tion at 205,727. In 2009, it esti­mated the num­ber of res­i­dents at 251,591, which included the 2006 Aboite Town­ship annexation.

Sher­iff Ken Fries said he con­tacted city police about turn­ing over the guns around the time the pop­u­la­tion was believed to have increased. The audit said city police had ille­gally kept the guns when they should have been given to the sheriff’s department.

“The statute is very clear,” Fries said. “We may need to wait until the (2010) cen­sus num­bers come in.”

Mean­while, an esti­mated 2,000 guns have piled up in the Fort Wayne police prop­erty room, Police Chief Rusty York said.

Those guns have been seized since mid-2006, when esti­mates indi­cated the city’s pop­u­la­tion sur­passed 250,000.

City Attor­ney Carol Tay­lor said Wednes­day she is review­ing state law to deter­mine what should be done with the guns. The audit, which cov­ered from Novem­ber 2007 to Novem­ber 2008, was released in March 2009. Fries said his department’s attor­ney, John Feigh­ner, is try­ing to work out a res­o­lu­tion with Taylor.

York and Fries, mean­while, are still butting heads on how the guns should be destroyed. Fries main­tains the city’s seized guns should be destroyed per court order but that work­ing parts of the weapons could be sold for profit. Fries said his depart­ment con­fis­cates about 40 to 50 guns a year. The mon­e­tary gain from sell­ing the parts is min­i­mal – “in the thou­sands,” he said. He did not have an exact figure.

“Even if you have guns that are in hor­ri­ble con­di­tions there are still inter­nal parts that can be sold,” he said, adding that the money is used for train­ing and for buy­ing equipment.

York’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “destroy” is dif­fer­ent from the sheriff’s.

“After a case is com­plete, if a firearm is involved, the court will order that the firearm will be destroyed,” York said, adding he believes no profit should be yielded from the guns.

“I don’t want any parts of those weapons, or those weapons, going back into circulation.”

York said that after the audit, a hold was put on the destruc­tion of any of the guns pend­ing a deci­sion on the matter.

An aver­age of 550 guns are seized by city police each year. The total num­ber of guns in the police department’s prop­erty room is esti­mated at 5,000, includ­ing about 3,000 that were going to be destroyed but had not been when the audit was released, York said.

Those guns, he said, are also being held, pend­ing a legal deci­sion on the mat­ter. In the past, guns were destroyed by melt­ing them at Steel Dynam­ics Inc.

“Stor­age is not an issue at this point,” York said.

Tay­lor said she was not sure when she will make a deci­sion on the law’s interpretation.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Com­mer­cial Appeal, Scripps Inter­ac­tive News­pa­pers Group www.commercialappeal.com
BYLINE: Richard Locker, locker@commercialappeal.com
Link to Article

Mem­phism, TN

But direc­tor doesn’t like los­ing options

NASHVILLE — Mem­phis Police Direc­tor Larry God­win said Wednes­day that a new state law ban­ning police agen­cies from destroy­ing oper­a­ble guns seized from crim­i­nals removes an option that allowed his depart­ment to destroy 1,900 guns last year.

The direc­tor also said “it’s unfor­tu­nate” that two guns used in a pair of high-profile shoot­ings this year — a fatal shoot­ing at the Las Vegas cour­t­house and the March 4 shoot­ing at a Pen­ta­gon sub­way stop — had been seized years ago by Mem­phis author­i­ties but even­tu­ally ended up in the hands of the shoot­ers, with­out back­ground checks.

Other elected and law enforce­ment offi­cials weighed in on the issue ear­lier this week, but God­win had been unavail­able for comment.

He said in an inter­view Wednes­day that the Mem­phis Police Depart­ment fol­lowed the law in dis­pos­ing of seized weapons. He said the depart­ment never sells con­fis­cated guns to the pub­lic or gun deal­ers, but trades them for police ser­vice weapons with fed­er­ally licensed gun manufacturers.

A new Ten­nessee statute signed into law March 3 by Gov. Phil Bre­desen elim­i­nates one of three options law enforce­ment agen­cies have for dis­pos­ing of con­fis­cated guns. Prior to the new law, agen­cies could sell or trade the guns, keep them for police use or destroy them. Now, they can destroy only guns cer­ti­fied as inop­er­a­ble or unsafe.

God­win said that of the approx­i­mately 4,000 con­fis­cated guns that MPD was allowed to dis­pose of last year — in cases that have worked their way through the courts, or which involved stolen guns returned to their own­ers — about 1,900 were destroyed and the remain­der were traded to licensed manufacturers.

The oper­a­ble guns that were destroyed had either been mod­i­fied, had their ser­ial num­bers removed or were ille­gal, such as fully auto­matic guns.

He said MPD will still be able, under the new law, to destroy guns that are ille­gal for peo­ple to own.

“I don’t think a depart­ment ought to be locked into” not being able to destroy them, he said. “We’ll fol­low the law but if it becomes more of a con­cern, I guess we’ll have to lobby” to change it.

– Richard Locker: (615) 255‑4923.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org