Two cases in 2011 indicate the state of justice in the state of California.
Police in two cities followed the same procedure. Each sent officers to a man’s home. The police confiscated firearms unrelated to the investigation. Then they refused to give back all of the guns.
In Oakland, police went to a man’s home to investigate his brother’s suicide. Not suspecting anything amiss, he let them into his home. Then they took all of his guns.
The police refused to return one of them. They claimed it is an assault rifle. He disputed this. So do his lawyers.
The second man lives in San Francisco. The police came to investigate him. They took his weapons. The district attorney dismissed the charges against him. The police kept a Remington .22 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, and five other guns.
The police claim he could not prove that he owned them. But they can’t prove that he didn’t. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, but not for citizens. It is for the police after the police confiscate the citizen’s weapons.
Both victims have gained free legal counsel from the Second Amendment Foundation, a public interest law firm. Otherwise, legal fees would have been more costly than the guns’ market value.
The police did not factor in this possibility, I suspect. Now they are facing lawsuits in federal court.
The attorneys are arguing more than just confiscation. They are arguing that the state’s Department of Justice has adopted a policy of recommending such action to local police departments.
The plaintiffs are suing the head of the California Department of Justice and the police departments. The goal is to get a favorable ruling that will keep this from happening again.
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Published on May 17, 2012. The original is here.
The case was dismissed in May 2013.
Two years later, in 2015, a similar case took place in Torrance, California. The man sued in federal court and won. He got his guns back, and the city paid a $30,000 fine. The police department changed its policies as a result. Calguns, a gun rights group that supported the lawsuit, sent out this bulletin:
NRA and CRPA provided much support in securing this CRPA victory will now be sending information to all California police departments educating these law enforcement agencies about the law governing the return of firearms, and correcting the bad advice in the DOJ’s eligibility letter. Agencies that follow the bad advice in the DOJ’s letter are violating state law and will face NRA/CRPA legal action.
The story is here.
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