Taking Aim at Firearms Violations

Complete with banners and posters, the safety-minded San Gabriel Valley town of Monrovia this week will announce its latest civic campaign: Report someone who is carrying a gun illegally, get $100.

The Police Department--quietly until now--has granted the reward since February to informants who provide tips that lead to the arrest of people possessing illegal firearms. There have been three arrests so far as a result of informants who later collected the reward.

The program is the latest effort by the Monrovia Police Department to crack down proactively on crime. The city is known for an anti-truancy program that became a nationwide model and for an unusually tight partnership between the Police Department and its schools.

“In L.A. County, gun violence is pretty bad, and we do not want it to come here to this town,” said Police Chief Joe Santoro.

Monrovia officials tout their program as the first of its kind in the state and say it could become the next big thing in local gun control. But it is not a new idea in Southern California. Three years ago, Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs proposed a similar program, but it died in a council committee when concerns were raised about the cost, Wachs spokesman Greg Nelson said.

“Timing is everything. We’re probably going to resurrect it when we think the timing is right,” Nelson said. He said Wachs will wait until a new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department is appointed.

Monrovia’s rewards are funded by donations from local businesses, Monrovia Sgt. Steve Cofield said. The city has collected $900 so far.

The policy stems from a television program Santoro watched this year that included a segment on similar programs in Charleston, S.C. The Monrovia City Council approved the program in February, and it was slowly implemented. Now police have printed up fliers and banners advertising the rewards and plan to announce it formally at a news conference Thursday.

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“It’s exactly what everyone has been asking,” Santoro said. “Target the criminal, not the gun.”

But the policy is opposed by the National Rifle Assn.

“There is potential for abuse,” said Joel Friedman, membership chairman of the Pasadena / Foothills committee of the NRA. He predicted that the law would be misused by people out to settle vendettas and harass neighbors.

“What started out as a great idea suffers from not being thought out carefully enough,” Friedman said. “There is no accountability on the people calling in.”

Under the policy, callers who report people with illegal firearms in public places will be given a code number and asked to call back in an hour. Police will be sent to investigate the tip, and if there is an arrest, the tipsters can come to the police station and receive a $100 bill, Santoro said.

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Police already receive tips on people carrying handguns and carefully investigate before acting, Santoro said. There is no reason that would change, he said. “I think that it’s a far stretch to say that because someone calls us we’re going to violate someone’s liberties.”

Although several cities across the country have implemented buy-back programs--where guns can be traded in for cash, no questions asked--some gun-control advocates said they did not know of many other reward programs. However, they were cautiously optimistic about the Monrovia policy.

“Anything that reduces gun violence is a good thing,” said Ann Reiss Lane, chairwoman of Women Against Gun Violence in Los Angeles.

In Charleston, the department offers $100 rewards for gun tips and staffs a reward program funded by regional businesses, called Gunstoppers. Charleston Police Sgt. Phillip McFadden said that since the program’s inception in 1993, there have been 46 arrests.

“That’s 46 guns that haven’t been fired,” McFadden said.

Santoro said there have been successes already in Monrovia.

After a call in February, police arrested a 15-year-old who was pointing a replica of a rifle--an illegal possession--at passersby in a parking lot. Another tip in May led police to two men in a car driving through the city who were carrying a shotgun and assault rifle, Santoro said.

“I am very confident that that tip prevented a shooting,” he said.