“The last thing you want as a police chief or a sheriff is to have a gun you sold being used in a crime. That would be a bad day and a bad headline.” – Boulder County (CO) Sheriff Joe Pelle in Boulder police get broader license for disposing of guns, other items [at dailycamera.com]
FTFA:
One of the main reasons Testa wanted the ability to recycle or destroy unclaimed property was so the department would not be selling guns.
“I don’t want to auction them off and put more guns back in the community,” Testa said. “I want to destroy them.”
What do they do with cars, houses and other property?
But Testa said destroying the guns is in line with other law enforcement agencies and that the revenue from auctioning them off would be “negligible.”
So he’s saying they’re a revenue center?
“I don’t think too many law enforcement agencies are interested in the business of selling guns,” Testa said. “Our goal is to keep the community safe and police officers safe. Our goal is not to make money.”
So why mention the negligible revenue generation to begin with?
“I don’t think too many law enforcement agencies are interested in the business of selling guns,” Testa said. “Our goal is to keep the community safe and police officers safe. Our goal is not to make money.”
There’s the big lie. From little dump munis where all of a sudden it drops to 30 (and 31 is too fast), to the countless depts that are raking in millions confiscating everything they can get their hands on, to every cop filling his “production” quota – the goal of the police dept is to make money. Sure, it’s secondary in better depts, but any suggestion cops aren’t meant to generate revenue is delusional.
I call such police departments “tax collectors for the welfare state.” That goes over well at Thanksgiving/Christmas with liberal relatives.
send ’em over…
“I don’t want to auction them off and put more guns back in the community,” Testa said. “I want to destroy them.”
Well, that pretty much sums up his position.
Oh, and chief, you wouldn’t be putting “more” guns back, just some of the same ones. But since you hate inanimate objects, it’s clear you are mentally unbalanced. IMHO.
“Well, that pretty much sums up his position.”
Boulder. That says it all.
Somebody please tell me what has happened to Colorado. I lived there 25 years ago, and you couldn’t ask for a more conservative and gun friendly place. Now, it seems to be awash with gun hating left liberals. What happened?
Locust fleeing from California. Unfortunately, they don’t realize the reason why they fled is a result of the same, old tired voting habits they bring to the other states.
oh, but they do realize what they are bringing. the attraction is real estate is a fraction of california cost, they can be big fish is small communities, and they can get stoned. perfect storm.
Californication.
We’re talking about the “People’s Republic of Boulder.” That should sum up where this is coming from. Really, the only two agency chiefs that are pushing this view in the state are Boulder and Denver. Jeffco (my county), as well as the majority of other county agencies were part of the lawsuit filed against our new gun control bill last year.
Also, keep in mind that the people of Colorado did fire two representatives after they jammed that down our throats! If the people of the state really thought like that, they would have been willing to have it on the general ballot as a ballot referendum. Instead, they had to push it through against the will of the people, and it cost some reps their jobs! This election (with the exception of governor) proved that when we “cleaned house.”
So… *donate* them to the nearest FFL.
Then you won’t have “sold” anything, and those that do get sold will require background checks… after all, background checks work to ensure that guns aren’t “used in a crime”, right? Right?
Ha! Nailed it. Where’s your faith in the system, Sheriff?
Donate them to county sheriffs around the country, to use or dispose of as they wish. A constitutional sheriff with a well stocked armory and some well trained (good shooters) posse/militia volunteers being necessary to the security of our free states. 🙂
Does he plan to specifically sell them to criminals without a magical universal background check? How irresponsible does the chief or his department plan to be in completing the auction transaction?
Sorry chief, lame excuse, massive fail.
Basically, he’s admitting that background checks don’t stop crime.
What an empty argument? How many firearms does his deputies sell in their career? How many of those firearms were purchased with tax breaks or subsidized because of their association to this Sheriff’s office? If he auctioned them off, how are those guns going to have any higher chance of being stolen by a thug than any other gun. The reality of his argument does not stand up to anyone honest man’s BS meter. He sounds like just another lying politician who has sold his soul for power.
I was wondering how many firearms are “lost” while in evidence.
Like he says, a bad headline is bad for business. It sounds like he’s just recognizing the political situation with the “news” media and Mothers Against Everything.
“Our goal is to keep the community safe and police officers safe. Our goal is not to make money.”
Hmm…..so will the good Chief be donating or destroying his department’s share of the approximately $5 million per year that Colorado law enforcement agencies steal, I mean, obtain, through civil asset forfeiture? (Rough estimate based on Institute for Justice figures through 2008, based on FOIA data.)
Or, once the dollar amounts are no longer negligible, do his professed principles become expendable? Funny how at the outset, everyone’s a man of honor, but come the Double Jeopardy round, where the the scores can really change, a kind of fluid morality seeps in. Curious, that.
“civil asset forfeiture”
That was my first thought as well.
Not to go all ad hominem fallacy or anything, but one really has to consider the source. Boulder is a weird, weird place…elitism and statist thinking are only the starting points there.
I don’t know this guy from Adam, but if he got elected by the voters in Boulder, he sure is not thinking about these kinds of issues the same way we are.
Civil assets forfeiture…
That made me laugh.
How many police guns were used to commit crimes while still in police hands?
So he’s giving away bikes.
Is this guy aware of how many kids are killed on bikes every year?
Please, for the children.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/Bicycles
So he is willing to kill and maim innocent children. Now I’m positive he is unbalanced. Wow.
“The last thing you want as a police chief or a sheriff is to have a gun you sold being used in a crime.” — Boulder County (CO) Sheriff Joe Pelle
If only Sheriff Pelle were as passionate about violent criminals that they keep releasing back into society.
If gun grabber to the core Joe Pelle has to be balding, he should make a fashion statement and go all the way…oh, wait, that probably wouldn’t fit his progressive anti-gun statist image.
If he and Chief Testa weren’t grabbers at heart, they’d auction the firearms off to reputable FFL’s for resale through the FFL process. The city and county’s hands are then clean. (Of course, then they probably wouldn’t be able to cherry pick too many for their own ‘armories’.)
Instead, the “…Boulder Police Department, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office disposes of guns by taking them to a facility that also destroys and recycles cars. The guns are placed in the cars, which are smashed and cut up and recycled for metal.”
Of course, I’m not privy to all the security precautions involved in this operation, but am I alone in seeing an opportunity for theft in this process.
Fair enough, we’ll just run backgroung checks on buyers. I mean, background checks are supposed to be the be-all-end-all to keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys, right?!
So if this Sheriff just uses background checks, they’ll never end up in the hands if a criminal!
Yea, they sound that stupid. But this is a perfect opportunity to use their argument against them!
Yeah exactly, if the so called “be-all end-all” background checks are as eminently effective as the antis’ claim, why aren’t said checks good enough for the ‘gander’.
Smoke and mirrors along the antis’ incremental course to confiscation.
I understand what he means about “bad headline.” If ever a gun used in a crime was traced back to he department, the press would have a field day with it.
I understand all the corollaries. But if they sold a car that was used in a crime, there would be no such media nightmare. This is all about our hoplophobic, ignorant media and a government agencies’ understandable aversion to negative publicity.
Exactly the thought I had. It is far more likely that a police surplus car sold to the general public would be far more likely to be used in a DWI or hit-and-run that creates a crime victim – if not a death – than a gun sold by the police.
No kidding. After seeing thousands of civilian owned P71s on the road the drivers were either wannabes(5%), or (95% of them) guys who really just wanted to see what it was like to drive one, instead of being handcuffed in the back seat.
Don’t auction them off, then. If you don’t want them in your neighborhood, you could always give them to me. I promise I won’t commit any crimes with them. I’ll dispose of the janky, busted ones too.
They better not give them to me because I would be inclined to search the public record and post public notices with the intention of returning them, whenever possible, to their rightful owners or owners’ respective designees.
As a Voter, the last thing you want is an elected official unable to recognize the difference between an inanimate object, and human behavior.
Remember that Boulder is to Colorado what Berkeley is to California. Except for Denver, the rest of Colorado is more like Wyoming or Arizona.
Unfortunately, there are enough misguided people in Boulder and Denver who vote that it often outweighs the reasonable ones in the rest of the state who sometimes don’t.
15 square miles surrounded by reality.
read somewhere, once, that back in the early 80’s, boulder had no homeless, but found out there was federal money for cities creating programs to help the homeless. boulder dutifully placed ads in major newspapers, offering homeless people a free bus ticket to boulder…to live in a homeless shelter (that didn’t yet exist because there were no homeless people in boulder.
and that was before colorado became a pot haven.
cheers,
“The last thing you want as a police chief or a sheriff is to have a gun you sold being used in a crime.” — Boulder County (CO) Sheriff Joe Pelle
Or maybe “the last thing” a police chief would want is for one of his officers to, with prior planning, shoot an elk in the city limits, without a tag, on duty. Boulder PD is an irresponsible, unaccountable, occupying force.
This is nothing more than deliberately misleading double-talk by the Chief, who of course has to answer to the City Council and Mayor of uber-liberal Boulder, if he wants to keep his job.
Yeah, ok, auctions are a pain in the butt, so hire a professional auction house. Thats what fiduciaries do with any valuable gun collection in an estate disposition process. Or, as one poster notes- take it to the local FFL who sells most guns on consignment for estates.
That gets a fair price, and most important, removes the conflict of interest, too,
that the Chief kind of skips over… yeah, “guns that match what is in our inventory, that our armorers can work on…riiiiight…
Clueless journo’s don’t even have a clue to truth of the matter- the valuable collectibles and antiques, that many ill-advised elderly give away, to….the cops, of course, who are MORE happy to add them to their personal collections, which is most likely in CO with wealthy retirees moving there. How many valuable rifles and collectible handguns worth thousands make it to the hands of local cops for free?
What I’d suggest is that some enterprising local CO investigative journalist or even an interested CO resident file a FOIA for the disposition of actual guns seized by Boulder police for the last 5 years, and go to a friendly FFL and use the state system and NICS to track those guns to their current owners…
As the Immortal Sage once said “you got some ‘splainin’ to do….!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ43__Aul3o
Put them in cars….. yeah that’s secure fer sure. If they’re not cutting through the action with a chop saw, I would be willing to bet a six-pack some of the employees at the scrap yard are doing a good business in private gun sales, or at least have a nice collection of firearms. Geeze.
I lived in Boulder for quite a while.
I won’t bother with the real nitty gritty, but I got charged with felony menacing, disorderly conduct 2x, and prohibited use of a weapon 2x. I was defending my female roommate who had already been clocked in the face a few times by a group of 6 drunk frat boys cause she shined a laser pointer their way. When I had no good way to defend her, I walked into our house (this happened in the front yard in a busy part of town) and retrieved my firearm (Beretta M9). Never pointed but they saw it. They retreated back and called the cops. I waited, and got arrested and they went inside, no warrant and searched and took my weapon as well. Threw the book at me with the charges and let God sort it out type of thing.
Roll forward to first day in court. Based on the police report alone, the judge dropped everything charge except the disorderly because the cop said I smelled like alcohol (I had been having a beer shortly before inside, but def not intoxicated).
I wanted my weapon back, and went through the process, which was surprisingly fast. Less than a month after the incident, I walked into evidence and they handed it over. Even my lawyer was surprised.
Even in liberal Boulder, their can be hope. At least back then.
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