More than 300 weapons recovered in amnesty program
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/06/2018 (2107 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Dozens of weapons, including hunting rifles, restricted pistols and a cannonball, were laid out on a table at Winnipeg Police Service headquarters Thursday. With 10 days left in the province-wide gun amnesty program, police continue to encourage Manitobans to hand over unwanted firearms, both real and replicas.
Three weeks into the program, Winnipeg police said they have collected roughly 140 firearms, Manitoba RCMP said they have received 162 items, and 29 weapons have been handed over to the Brandon Police Service. The numbers of weapons collected from other police services in Manitoba, such as Dakota Ojibway Police Service, have yet to be announced.
“We’re very happy with the numbers that we’re receiving to this point,” WPS Insp. Eric Luke told reporters Thursday.
Manitobans who want to get rid of a weapon can do so until the end of June through the program. For the next 10 days, police won’t lay charges against those returning firearms — such as if their weapon is prohibited or hasn’t been registered — unless it is determined a weapon was stolen or used to commit a crime.
The amnesty month is about public education and “a push” to get dangerous firearms turned in, Luke said, adding those who hand in illegal or unregistered weapons post-June will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
“Brandon Police Service and all agencies have the same issues with break and enters, and thefts, and we want to make sure firearms don’t end up in the wrong hands, the hands of criminals,” said BPS Chief Wayne Balcaen.
The public is asked to call their local police service to set up a pick-up or drop-off time, rather than bring weapons to a station unannounced.
“We’ve got 10 more days, let’s push,” said Sgt. Paul Manaigre, a media relations officer for the RCMP. “If you have something that you don’t want, please turn it over to your local police.”
When police recover weapons, they classify and investigate them for any links to crime. They may choose to keep a weapon for teaching or training purposes, or put it in a police museum. Otherwise, firearms in Winnipeg are destroyed in a large machine called the “T-Rex,” said Const. Marc Roemer, who works in the WPS firearms investigative analysis unit.
“Picture an oversized bolt cutter, and it chops up the firearm,” Roemer said.
Luke said officers in Winnipeg have collected a variety of weapons, with one notable turn-in being a cannonball. The individual who turned the relic over first picked it up in 1966 at York Factory, an old trading post and site of historic naval battles between the French and English, located nearly 900 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
“It’s a piece of Canadian heritage we are going to keep with the Winnipeg Police Service museum, under the care and control of our bomb unit,” he said.
The province collected almost 200 firearms and 74 boxes of ammunition during the last Manitoba-wide gun amnesty program in 2010.
More than 1,700 firearms and 13,000 rounds of ammunition were collected in 2012 through the Winnipeg Police Pixels for Pistols program, which offered to trade digital cameras and Henry’s camera store giftcards for unwanted items.
Any future decision to create a year-round gun amnesty program would be made by the province, Manitoba Justice, the RCMP, and the rest of the police services, Luke said.
maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Maggie Macintosh
Reporter
Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Winnipeg Free Press. Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.