Inglewood Ends Policy of Selling Confiscated Arms : City Council: The decision follows citizen complaints. Weapons will now be destroyed instead of used to raise $50,000 annually.

Bombarded with bad publicity and citizen complaints, the Inglewood City Council has rescinded an earlier decision to allow its Police Department to raise cash by selling confiscated weapons.

Council members said little as they decided unanimously Tuesday to destroy rather than resell seized weapons. Afterward, however, Councilman Jose Fernandez said the earlier vote to allow the gun sales had been unwise.

“I received several calls on the matter,” Fernandez said. “Every call was in favor of the city changing its policy. It’s the right thing to do. Youth crime is a big issue.”

Police had estimated that the city could sell 600 firearms annually, bringing in $50,000 a year. Although Tuesday’s vote ends that possibility, it comes too late to prevent the sale of about 200 confiscated guns that were sent to a Modesto auctioneer shortly after the council in October decided unanimously to allow the transactions.

The council’s about-face came at the suggestion of Councilman Daniel Tabor, who was absent during the October council vote. Inglewood isn’t the only city to change course. Two weeks ago, Redondo Beach ‘s city manager, William E. Kirchhoff, ordered an end to confiscated weapon sales by that city. Compton, which also peddles seized firearms, is expected to consider a proposal by Councilwoman Patricia A. Moore to end the sales.

An estimated 100 cities in California currently send confiscated firearms to auction as a way of raising cash to help bolster their budgets. Supporters of the practice point out that the auctioneer--in Inglewood’s case Roger Ernst & Associates--can sell only to licensed gun dealers.

Critics, including public health officials working to prevent homicides among inner-city youths, say the safeguards on gun sales are too permissive. Too many guns, they say, end up in the hands of youthful criminals.

Various public health studies show that homicide is a leading cause of death among young, minority males. In Inglewood, 42 of the 48 homicides last year were the result of gunfire, according to police records.

Proposing Tuesday that Inglewood end its weapons sales, Tabor said the transactions were not “good public policy.”

Councilman Garland Hardeman said later that in allowing guns to be auctioned in the first place, the council members saw only the money the city would earn. Hardeman said that in talking to Tabor, he had come to see that the financial gain was not worthwhile, given the public policy issues raised by weapons sales.

For Fernandez, the short-lived weapon sales policy only serves to show that council members are human and make mistakes.

“We were able to correct our error on this,” he said. “My position is I can sleep comfortably at night knowing I did the right thing.”