Cities Under Fire for Resale of Seized Guns

To feed their cash-starved budgets, cities with some of the state’s worst murder rates are selling rather than destroying guns confiscated by police--a practice that is drawing fire from public health experts and others working to curb inner-city violence.

Inglewood, where shootings accounted for 42 homicides last year, is the latest city putting confiscated weaponry back on the market. Compton started doing it in 1989. Santa Ana has been selling seized firearms since 1986.

“As a physician who sincerely cares about the survival of our children and our society, I am extremely dismayed to learn that the city of Inglewood or any other government would actively participate in returning weapons that had once been confiscated back into society,” said Dr. Reed Tuckson, president of Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles. “This is a sad situation.”

Although a growing number of cities are selling seized weapons to raise cash, the little-known practice is neither new nor confined to inner-city communities.

Hawthorne has been reselling its confiscated weapons for at least a decade. The city of Ventura started doing the same in 1990, and Alhambra did it for the first time this year. Fullerton also sells its firearms, as do Santa Monica and Pasadena, although police officials in the latter two cities said that only antique and collectible firearms are resold.

The city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have firm policies against selling confiscated weaponry. Reselling weapons would only exacerbate the high level of violence on the streets, said Lt. Jeff Springs of the Sheriff’s Information Bureau. “It’s all speculation on our part but I think we can all draw some conclusions. . . . It’s better to take the guns off the street.”

Officials in cities selling firearms say that before the weapons are resold, they cull and destroy notorious and illegal weapons, including assault rifles, cheap handguns--commonly called Saturday night specials--and guns involved in “sensational” murders.

Only collectible firearms and high-cost weapons are resold, they say. But the definitions of what guns fall into these categories vary from department to department. And the ad hoc restrictions do not appear to prevent a large number of weapons--ranging from handguns to rifles and shotguns--from re-entering the marketplace.

Although Inglewood destroyed more than 300 weapons this month, it sent more than 200 guns to be sold, according to city officials. In Santa Ana, only about a dozen weapons seized by police in fiscal 1991-92 were destroyed, said Lt. Chuck Magdalena. The rest--832 guns--were auctioned last year, raising $54,000 for the city.

For the most part, the firearms are sold each July to licensed dealers throughout California and the country by Roger Ernst & Associates, a Modesto auction house that specializes in property confiscated by police.

According to an Inglewood Police Department memo, more than 100 California law enforcement agencies send seized firearms to Ernst’s firm.

Ernst, who ardently courts law enforcement agencies for business, declined to discuss his dealings. “I really don’t want to talk to anyone in the media about firearms,” he said. “It’s a political handball and I really don’t care to play.”

Supporters of the practice argue that confiscated weapons offer cities a useful source of cash in tough economic times. Inglewood could earn $50,000 from the sale of 600 confiscated weapons in the 1992-93 fiscal year, its Police Department memo said.

However, public health experts and others concerned about high homicide rates among inner-city youths say they are appalled by the gun sales. They point to a study published in June in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. that says gunfire is killing black men at a greater rate in Los Angeles County than anywhere in the nation except Washington.

“There are simply too many guns in our society,” said Dr. Tuckson of Charles Drew University, who is one of the nation’s leading black public health officials. “I am particularly adamant about that because it is the children of my community that are getting access to them.”

Compton Councilwoman Patricia Moore, who said she was unaware that her city sells firearms, calls the weapon sales “madness.”

“We’re adding fuel to the fire. We’re making guns available that we say shouldn’t be on the streets,” she said. “It’s appalling that we can’t think more logically than this.”

Moore said she plans to raise the issue with the Compton City Council in an effort to discontinue the practice. Three Inglewood City Council members--Daniel Tabor, Jose Fernandez and Garland Hardeman--said they have second thoughts about their decision to resell weapons and do not want the city to continue the practice.

Despite the growing number of cities raising funds through confiscated weaponry, the practice has received little attention. William Kirchhoff, who took over about 18 months ago as Redondo Beach city manager, said he was stunned to discover last week that his city has been sending its weapons to an auctioneer for the past eight years. Kirchhoff said he will review the policy.

“It’s real simple,” he said. “We ought to do everything we can to prevent weapons from getting into the hands of youth or criminals.”

The question of whether cities should sell confiscated firearms is a controversial one among police.

Joseph D. McNamara, who put a stop to seized gun sales when he took over as police chief in San Jose more than 15 years ago, said the country’s homicide rate is argument enough to prohibit the practice.

“When you hold up to the public what’s going on, they’ll see the sleaziness,” said McNamara, now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “Thirty-three thousand Americans a year die by gunfire. No civilized society, even one in the midst of a civil war, has that many people dying.”

Officials in cities reselling weapons insist that the seized firearms cannot be auctioned off to just anybody. Only licensed gun dealers, they say, can participate in the auctions.

“They (the firearms) will go through persons who will ensure that weapons will be handled the way they ought to be handled,” said Inglewood Police Chief Oliver Thompson.

McNamara, however, is skeptical of such claims. “The gun dealers don’t care who gets their guns,” he said. “Guns that are legitimately manufactured end up being bought in flea markets.”

Health expert Tuckson added that it is lamentable that budget pressures are so intense that cities such as Inglewood find it necessary to consider sales of confiscated guns.

“The real tragedy is that people of conscience, such as members of that City Council (in Inglewood), have so few alternatives, no other place to turn to, in order to raise revenues.”