Sure, cops make arrests after crimes have occurred, but what the public may not realize is how much time cops spend trying to keep crimes from ever happening, especially violent ones.
The prohibited possessor program is a good example of how police act proactively in averting future crimes by checking on persons who are not allowed by law to own a gun.
A good example of this happened yesterday, when a sergeant and officers from LAPD's Mission Area Parole Compliance Unit went to a man's house in Sylmar. The man had been convicted of a road rage incident, shooting the tire of another person's car. Other than this one crime, the Vietnam vet had no other criminal record. He got probation and was prohibited from possessing any firearm.
The officers of PCU knocked on the door to conduct the probation compliance check. The man said he had no guns in his house. In keeping with the law, he was not "in possession," but thanks to the persistence of the officers, the man owned up to owning 18 guns, which he had taken to his friend's house after his conviction in order to be within the law.
To his credit, the man showed the officers where the friend lived, and the officers were able to seize 18 guns, including assault rifles, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Moreover, they found the parts to make a fully automatic machine gun.
The cooperative vet was not arrested, but his ownership of some of the guns is being reviewed for possible criminal charges in the future.
We'll never know if this seizure of so many guns will have averted some future assault or death. But the chances of these guns having been sold or stolen in the future made them a threat to society; after all, the caretaker did not own the guns and could have done anything with them he wanted, and no one would have been the wiser.
Pardon the pun, but I think we all might have dodged a bullet with this seizure.
Prepared by
Lt. Paul Vernon
