Wednesday, March 29, 2000
Police won't sell weapons to outsiders
Forest Park wants its guns kept from crime
BY SARA J. BENNETT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FOREST PARK — Damaged or outdated police guns may either be sold to officers or destroyed under a new weapons disposal plan before city leaders.
The recommendation from Police Chief Ken Hughes and Forest Park's public improvements and facilities committee culminates months of rumination over what should be done with weapons the police department no longer uses.
City leaders want to be sure the weapons don't fall into the hands of criminals. The issue arose last August after Buford O. Furrow Jr. used a police trade-in to kill a postal worker and shoot five people at a Los Angeles day care center.
Forest Park's city council is expected to consider a resolution supporting Chief Hughes' recommendation at its April 3 meeting. Forest Park joins Cincinnati in efforts to head off the possibility of criminals getting police weapons.
Cincinnati's city council voted in January to destroy old police guns. Before, the city traded old weapons with gun manufacturer Smith and Wesson.
In Forest Park, Chief Hughes has recommended that old police weapons first be offered for sale to city officers at current market value. If the guns are not purchased, they would be destroyed.
“I believe this is the best we're going to be able to do with this,” said Charles Johnson, chairman of the public improvements and facilities committee. “It makes a lot of sense to me and answers a lot of the questions I personally have regarding the disposal of weapons.”
Chief Hughes was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.
He has said in the past, though, that he thinks policies on police gun disposal have a small impact on gun violence.
The Wall Street Journal determined that only 1,100 of 193,000 guns used in crimes and traced by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 1998 once belonged to police officers.
Still, some city leaders said they did not want to take even a small chance that a gun once belonging to a Forest Park officer would be used in a crime.
In August, police asked permission to trade five old semiautomatic handguns for new rifles from a federally licensed firearms dealer.
Trades are standard practice among many police agencies, saving money by defraying the cost of new weapons.
Forest Park's public improvements and facilities committee studied several alternatives. They included simply keeping the weapons or trading them with the stipulation that they they be resold only to other law enforcement agencies.
Council members said this week that they thought Chief Hughes' proposal was the best.
“I'm glad to see we're finally putting this to bed,” said Mayor Stephanie Summerow Dumas. “I think it's a great conclusion.”
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