A MOTION requesting the King County executive assess the feasibility of establishing a year-round voluntary safe firearm and ammunition return program within the King County sheriff's office.
Good Eleuthera excuse me are Luther Eilish and Brandon Shell. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We will now go on to our last agenda item for today is a motion requesting the King County executive assess the feasibility of establishing a year round voluntary safe firearm and ammunition return program within the King County Sheriff's Office. This is proposed motion 2020 20221 introduced by Councilmember Dombroski. And we do have Andy McLeod to. Rufus. That will start on page 120. And Jesse Anderson, King County undersheriff, I believe, was joining us. And he is here as well. And we were going to take up legislation at our next meeting, August 17th. And I hope that there will be more that will be introduced by then, that I know that Councilmember DEMBOSKY has been so eager to get this going because it is so important. And I'm wondering if you want to say a few things before we hear from Andy for a briefing. Council Members. Dan Bass Thank you, Chair Caldwell's and thank you, colleagues. I want to start by thanking the panelists for their courage and compelling stories this morning. And I ask for their forgiveness. I had to personally leave the dais and listen from the side room because it was just extremely difficult for at least part of the presentations. But I was paying close attention, and one of the things that we heard repeatedly from the guests today was the devastating results that are consistent with the overwhelming statistics that result from having firearms in a home. You know, three quarters of deaths in Washington are suicide. And the research shows that when you have a firearm in the home, the risk of death and injury is exponentially off the charts compared to homes that don't have firearms. One recent study in California focusing just on handguns. Not long guns, but handguns showed that homes with a handgun were three times more common to have deaths than than those without. And of course, the impacts are disproportionately felt by women who are, frankly, the victims of intimate partner violence and people of color as well. So this legislation, Jericho Wells, which you have co-sponsored along with councilmembers Angela and McDermott, is a fairly straightforward motion that as our sheriff's department to establish and promote a year round voluntary firearm and ammunition turnover program. These are done in other departments, including the city of Seattle has one today. I think it's a little known, but in discussions with the sheriff's office and I want to thank Undersheriff Anderson for being here and a chief of staff, Ellenbrook. You can turn a firearm over, but out of the sheriff's office or some of them. But it's this legislation would make it more systematic, more widespread and more advertised. It's a motion that asked the department to look at the feasibility of developing a program, what it would cost, how it would be promoted and and really provide that easy opportunity. The vision here was to use the power of our King County Sheriff's Office with its geographic reach in our unincorporated communities, both rural and urban, as well as our ten or so contract cities where we provide service to see if we can make it easy. When somebody determines that, for whatever reason, they no longer wish to have a firearm in the house, or maybe they come into possession of one through inheritance or otherwise. Don't want to have it around. They're aware of the risks. You know, we have extreme risk protection orders, which we're studying and have stood up here. That's a fairly challenging program. This is in some ways a simpler way. Bring it when you can bring the gun and turn it in. There are some issues that need to be worked through that the sheriff's office would do in this legislation. In terms of the terms of a turnover, do you have to give your name or not? You know what? What would we do with the firearm with respect to obligations to to comply with federal law and and, of course , disposal and things like that. So this is not and we have an amendment here today that we've worked on with the sheriff's office. It's not directive. It it asked the sheriff's office to come up with a program and gives them the space and flexibility to do that. We don't put a timeline on it chair calls, but it would be my hope that the department could work and prepare to come back to us in the budget process to let us know how it could be stood up and and what it would cost in the amendment, which Andy will give us a briefing on. We have added a little more flexibility for them and also requested an additional item, and that would be to explore the feasibility of one or more early community buyback slash turn events. They did this a number of years ago here and had some 800 firearms returned. The city of Kirkland. Which includes councilmember mildew douches and his council districts, recently did one with their department, and almost 80 firearms were turned over in a day. So there is a, I think, a demonstrated need an interest in the county for this, and we've got that there. So there's a little set up for it. Thank you, General Wells. Thank you, Councilmember Baskin with that. And the clerk will go ahead and give the briefing. Good morning, Andy McLeod. Council central staff at the staff report for this item begins on page 120 of your meeting packet. Proposed Motion 2020 20221 request would request that the executive assess the feasibility of establishing a year round voluntary firearm and ammunition return program within the King County Sheriff's Office. Voluntary firearm return programs allow individuals to relinquish their unwanted firearms, ammunition, explosives or other destructive devices to government entities. Usually, law enforcement programs can be one time limited events or ongoing services. Program policies vary widely across jurisdictions, but commonly include anonymous or no questions asked participation, financial or other incentives for IT. Participants. Partnerships or community oriented partnerships with community organizations. Delivery of unwanted firearms to a secure location or requested firearm pickup by program employees. And the destruction of all relinquished items. Jurisdictions in King County have both a history of one time firearm buyback events and ongoing firearm return programs. And these are summarized on pages 120 and 121 of the. With respect to King County, the King County Sheriff's Office, General Orders Manual includes policies and procedures that allow individuals to drop off unwanted weapons during normal business hours at the King County Sheriff's Office, locations equipped with secure evidence storage or another location upon individual's request and with the supervisors approval once relinquished, all firearms are taken for safe storage until they are held and can be condemned, can be destroyed at a facility in Spokane, which, according to the King County Sheriff's Office, generally occurs once or twice a year. Unwanted ammunition is also accepted, according to the sheriff's office, though it's not explicitly stated in the general order manual. King County Sheriff's Office does not provide currently any and any incentives, financial or otherwise, to county residents who relinquish unwanted firearms or ammunition to the sheriff's office. As I noted earlier, proposed motion 2020 20221 would require that the executive assess the feasibility of establishing a year round voluntary firearm and ammunition return program within the Sheriff's Office. The program, as assessed by the executive, should include a process by which any individual may relinquish any firearm or ammunition to any location at any time. Any sheriff's office location. A process by which an individual may request the sheriff's deputy or otherwise employee, other authorized employee to retrieve unwanted firearms or ammunition from a specified location. The destruction or disposable of all unwanted firearms and ammunition voluntarily relinquished, and the provision of monetary or other incentives to encourage participation in the program. And finally, the proposed motion further requests that the executive assess whether the voluntary firearm and ammunition return program could be developed and implemented in collaboration with jurisdictions throughout King County. And as Councilmember DEMBOSKY noted, there is an amendment, and we are joined by Undersheriff Anderson in Mark, L.A. Brooke, with the sheriff's office. I'm happy to brief the amendment now and four questions. First of all, let's hear if any of our council committee members has a question. I'm sure. Yes, Councilmember Dunn. Thanks, Andy. Thanks for the briefing there. The question I have is I understand that the motion would give the sheriff's office the option of a perhaps being a buyback program as opposed to a voluntary gun return program. I'm less worried about that because ultimately we would decide here what the buyback program would look like. The question I have is, what does it speak to about the lists that the sheriff office might make or keep when somebody comes and returns a gun or ammunition? As you probably remember, there was a voluntary bump stock return program and then later on a list was capped and then the public disclosure request was made of the personal information who had done that and became quite, quite the dust up. So I'm just curious what the legislation speaks to on that issue as it is right now. Thank you. Council member Dunn, I believe as drafted, the legislation does not speak specifically to that list, but does give some deference to the sheriff's office to, I think, respond to your question. Okay. And then we do have King County Undersheriff Jesse Henderson. Would you like to make any comment on that? Yes, I would like to thank for being. Here, too. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Counsel, I appreciate the opportunity to come to you and talk about our support for this program as brought up. We've had policy in place for some time, and I like to emphasize that the overwhelming majority of guns that we bring into our custody under these surrender type programs have been court ordered surrenders. So we need to do a better tracking of the times that we voluntarily when community members voluntarily turn over firearms. And so we were going to we're going to build a system in place to be able to track that information as well. And I so totally support the need to get out there and market this better. So we so community members know that they have this option and they can go to our designated facilities or occasionally, if they're not able to provide that have that transportation to one of our facilities, that we could go out to the home and collect that firearm. And so we want to make sure that we're doing this in the safest way possible. And so we will build into our policy, our existing policy, some additional information that provides guidance to our deputies to be able to take these weapons into custody and put them into our evidence for him for disposal. And thank you very much. And we have Mark Labrecque, who is chief of staff for the King County Sheriff's Office. Mark, do you have a comment? Just a. Quick comment. Yes. Good morning. And just for the record, Mark Holbrook, chief of staff for the sheriff's office, comes over down. Just to answer your question, we actually had an opportunity to chat with Councilmember Dombrowski about this issue yesterday. And I think there obviously, the goal of a program like this is to be able to take in as many firearms as possible and concerns from folks who might be turning those in about the anonymity of that. So I think we absolutely recognize that, and I think we want to make sure that when we come back with the report on this, talk about what the options are in that space to ensure that anonymity. I think a question we had talked about, we have not settled it, but came up from one of our captains was, you know, is is there a possibility of wanting to at least understand if a weapon has been used in a past crime, not for the purpose of obviously following up with the person who turned it in, but just to recognize that that weapon has been identified and is, you know, our firearm has been identified and taken sort of out of service. So we're going to look at that and come back with how we can do that. But I think we're acutely aware of how do you manage names, a process, ensure anonymity, particularly with public records requests. Can I just just just finish real quick on that? Thanks, Madam Chair. Mike, I want to support this. I think voluntary gun return programs are good. We can argue about the effectiveness of gun buyback, because I ran President Bush's national effort to fight gun violence. And at that time, there really wasn't any efforts to gun buyback programs work per se. But we do need an option for people to voluntarily give away a gun. And there's a bunch of reasons why they might they might inherited a house. They might have somebody in their house has become emotionally unstable and they want to return a gun. There's a lot of good reasons why it should happen. The biggest deterrent to involuntary gun returns will be whether or not somebody's name is going to be put on a list somewhere. And so that's a concern I have. And, you know, court ordered returns are one universe individuals who are just kind of want to get the house out of their gun, out of grandmother's house or wherever, and just get get rid of it, because that's not their thing. That's kind of where I hope I hope you're sensitive to. And I if you are sensitive to that and I think I can support this today, but I just want to I want to put a face on it for for you folks, where you would see this program become less effective moving downstream. Any comment on that? Councilmember Domanski. Or. I'll defer to the expert, Undersheriff Anderson, and then I'll make a statement of legislative intent, as. We still do need to hear about the striking amendment. Go right ahead. I agree with the anonymity of turning in firearms. So we would have a system in place that you could show up at a worksite or call one of us to come out and obtain that weapon without needing to provide your name. Now, one of the scenarios we talked about, or I mentioned briefly during our discussion other day is that if you're a witness to a crime and you want to turn over a weapon that may have been involved in that crime, probably not going to be able to turn that over anonymously. We would have to work through some of those. But generally speaking, under the program, you could show up at one of our precincts and turn over that weapon and be able to walk away knowing that you're not your name's not going to end up on a list somewhere. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Thank you. Chuckles. And I'll just say, from the legislative intent perspective and the language in the motion, it is consistent with Undersheriff Anderson's views and position to make this effective and preserve folks anonymity, if you will. Thank you. Let's go on now and hear from and our clerk to I mean, our policy analyst coordinator to about the striking amendment. Thank you, Councilmember. Actually, Councilmember Dombroski did a great summary of it. And what it would do is it will clarify that the request is to evaluate the assessment of the feasibility of a program and the original language. It said it specified which tribes that wants more time. The amendment would clarify that the request is to evaluate the feasibility of a voluntary safe firearm ammunition program. The original language specified what could potentially be included in the program in the amendment would say These are things that should be considered during the assessment, and so it changes it from what should be included in the program to what they could be conclude included in the assessment. And then, as Councilmember Taberski noted, two additional items as part of that evaluation were added, which is the gun buybacks and potential cost to administer the program. Okay. Thank you very much. Councilmember Jim Bass, would you like to move the first of all the legislation and then the striking amendment? Sure. Thank you. Chair. Coel's I move adoption or that we give a do pass recommendation that is to motion 2020 20221k and I move adoption of amendment one which has been described. Okay. The motion has been made for the proposed motion and also for this break amendment or amendment one. Are there any questions or comments on this striking amendment? Amendment one. Councilmember two I don't see any questions. Councilmember Dombroski, would you like to speak. Just briefly on Amendment one? It says and he described, but I want to thank the sheriff's office, including Undersheriff Anderson and Chief of Staff Ellenberg, for working with us to refine this and our staff for getting it into order. And just to be clear, it removes kind of the directive language which was in the original motion. Just by way of example shifts that to assess whether these elements should be included in the program. And that's consistent with the original intent of legislation to defer to our experts in developing this more enhanced and robust program by way of example. Undersheriff Anderson said, Well, you've got in here include in the program a requirement that we go to somebody, residents or placements to pick up a firearm. There's a lot of danger involved in that. We may or may not want to do that. Or if we do it, it may want to be under certain conditions. So the amendment here would say, should that kind of element be included? And then in addition, we added the tell us what you'll need to run it from a budget perspective and look at a couple of jump start, you know, look at some of these early buyback events to see if that could help. So that's what it does. And I encourage members support and I should let the sheriff's office say whether or not they support it on the record by themselves without me speaking for them. Yes, we support that. Excellent. Thank you very much. And thank you both for being with us today. Any other questions or comments before we take a vote on Amendment one? Okay. All in favor of Amendment One, please say. I, i. I any opposed? Say me could. The amendment has been adopted and we now have before us propose motion 2022 0 to 21 as amended. Anything final that anybody would like to say? Councilmember Dombroski Well, I want to thank my colleagues and for their support, hopefully of the motion and thank the co-sponsors. You keep saying it's my legislation turtles, but it really is. Yeah, I've been here now in just over nine years. And one of the things that is inspiring, we often have our disagreements, even about things we generally agree about. But on this issue, gun safety and gun violence prevention, this council works extremely well together and is aligned to a great degree. And I really appreciate the co-sponsors, council members, ally and yourself corrals and Councilmember McDermott as evidence of that. And others, of course, are welcome. Councilmember Dunn, who has a great deal of expertize from his federal service on this, is correct that these programs aren't a panacea. The studies show that they can they can be helpful, but it takes a whole package of things. And so I don't view this Chair Caldwell's and colleagues as something that will solve this issue. But I think it can save lives. I think it can save lives by reducing the number of guns that are out there, because we know that, again, guns in homes dramatically increases the risk to folks living in those homes. And so if we give folks the opportunity when they're ready or interested to turn over a firearm, I think it follows logically that we reduce the risks associated with having the firearms in the home. That's the basic thrust of it, and I think it's part of a big package of work that we've done for years here, working together and will continue to do. And I really appreciate our sheriff's office engagement on it and willingness to help us develop a more robust program for the safety of our community, their core mission. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for introducing us. And of course, guns can be stolen that are out there, too. I'm okay with that. Will we please have the the card called the rule. Councilmember Perry. Chair. I'm sorry I missed you. I was looking. It's hard to see those hands raised sometimes. Councilmember Perry. It is hard to see them. Thank you. Chair COLWELL So I would just like to add my name as as a co-sponsor to this. I think that's a really great movement forward. And I and I agree also with Katzenjammer down on anonymity that it is critical, critical that we have the anonymity to allow guns to be removed from the hands of those who intend to do harm to themselves or others. Thank you. Thank you. And with that will occur. Kirk, please call the roll. Thank you for your calls. Councilmember Bell Dickey, I. Councilmember Dombrowski. I. Councilmember Dunn. All right. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember mcdermott now. Councilmember Perry, i. Councilmember up the grove. I. Councilmember Yvonne Reich. Power. I. Council members. Charlie. I charcoals. I. Charcoal was about as eight eyes with Councilmember McDermott. Excused. Okay. Thank you. With our vote, we have approved to propose motion 2020 20221 as amended. Hopefully, Councilman McDermott can touch in and be able to record have his vote recorded. He is a co-sponsor. And unless there is opposition, we will send this motion with the do pass recommendation expedited to the July 26 meeting. Okay. Thank you. That concludes the items on our agenda. I had said we would be through by noon. We've just missed that by about a minute. And any I don't believe any technical difficulties stop council members from voting.