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