Agenda - 12-05-2016 - 7-a - Recommendations of the Firearms Safety Committee

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27 authority to go to that man and say, "you are in violation of something." It's unacceptable that he could not do anything in that situation. I had to tell the third officer that if he didn't stop the shooter that I would. What do you think the shooter's attitude is going to be after three officers did nothing and I go down there? Chief Deputy Sykes said he has responded in his 20 year career to over a thousand gunshot calls. The most frustrating thing for me is to tell a complainant that there is nothing we can do. They look at me like I'm an alien: what do you mean there is nothing you can do? I know Dr. Arvik experienced that in May when we responded to his calls. There was nothing we could do. But if this draft ordinance had been in force at the time, and we saw the insufficient backstop and a man with a .223 shooting toward your neighborhood, then we would have had teeth to do something. Dr. Arvik added that the ordinance also would require the County to provide the deputies with the training necessary to make the necessary judgments. Chief Deputy Sykes said no, that such training does not exist for law enforcement. Mr. Webster and I have searched for that across the state, he said, and it does not exist. Everybody in law enforcement had a background in firearms when I started in 1995, he said. Now we're seeing a younger generation enter law enforcement that has grown up in homes without firearms. We're having to train them. We're having to send them to urban rifle school and to firearms safety courses. And we're having to provide remedial firearms instruction in our basic law enforcement training. We want everyone to be safe, so it is our responsibility as leaders in the Sheriff's Office, to convey the information the guys in the street need to make the necessary judgments. I don't know who responded to Dr. Arvik's calls in May, he said, whether they were State Troopers or Sheriff's Deputies. But what Dr. Arvik says he heard from those officers is the same information I have given officers for 20 years: "If he's on his own property then I can't do anything." Dr. Arvik said he wants law enforcement to have the authority it needs to stop people from doing stupid things with guns. Mr. Tilley said that if the Board of Commissioners adopts section(c), even without the noise part, then law enforcement would have that authority. Mr. Webster said that law enforcement does not need (g) to investigate a firearm noise complaint; they will come out if you call and say you're hearing gunshots and are concerned about it. If these other provisions, (a)—(f), are in place then after the deputies get there from the noise complaint they will have the teeth to do something if there is an inadequate backstop. They don't need (g) to do their job. Dr. Arvik said that if the shooter had suppressed his gun, and if there were no noise, then the shooter could have been there all day shooting into crushed rock toward the neighborhood. An AR-15, 4,000 feet per second! The officer investigated whether it was an appropriate place to shoot, and determined that it was, and so he couldn't do anything about it. The whole reason we 8