READING, PA - Across the state of Pennsylvania, Act 79 is changing how, and where, firearms are turned in after protection-from-abuse orders are granted over allegations of domestic abuse.
“People are concerned that there are firearms in the residence or the fact that they can get access the firearms, I think is even a bigger concern,” says Legal Advocate at Safe Berks, Jennifer Sawyer.
Until recently, those who had a protection-from-abuse order placed against them were required to turn their firearms over to the sheriff’s office or friends or family members. That changed April 10th. Since then, local law enforcement and state police have been obligated to collect and properly store firearms within 24 hours after the order is granted. The old law gave those with protection from abuse orders against them anywhere between thirty days and as long as sixty days to do so.
When we serve a protection from abuse order, the law now requires the respondent to surrender weapons within 24 hours. What our deputies are trained to do is explain to the respondent, the entire process, let them know that we can safeguard their weapons. They’re all boxed, they’re kept in an area and will be in the same condition when they’re returned as when we took them,” explains Berks County Sheriff Eric Weaknecht. “So we urge them to let us take the weapons, rather than having them take them within 24 hours and surrender them to another police department or the state police.”
Failing to relinquish firearms within that 24-hour time frame is a second degree misdemeanor. Which could lead to a 5 thousand dollar fine and up to two years behind bars. The Sheriff’s Office is equipped to handle thousands of gun and weapon surrenders. And the Sheriff’s Office is the agency that serves PFAs.
When we first get weapons from a defendant, deputies will take them off the street, they’ll come to the first room that we were at over here, they’ll log it onto our paperwork, we have paperwork intricate. The defendant gets a copy, we get two copies, they’ll log it. They put it in a bin up by my desk. I’ll know there’s weapons down here, I’ll come down to that first room, take the weapon and then log it to where I put it,” says Sergeant Troy Wolf of the Berks County Sheriff’s Office Patrol Division. “The only people that have access to this room, is sergeants, captains and the sheriff; regular deputies do not have access to this part of the armory.”
But unlike the Sheriff’s Office, local police departments have found that they’re not entirely equipped to properly store and secure this new wave of firearms being turned in. That’s where the Berks County Sheriff’s Office has offered to step in.
“The problem with Act 79 to a lot of the local police are they don’t have room for them. We have a lot of very small police departments here in Berks county and their evidence rooms are not real big. In rural areas, you end up having people with a lot of guns and if they would be subject to surrender those guns under protection from abuse orders, it could fill up evidence rooms rather quickly,” explains Sheriff Weaknecht. “So one of the things we did is, we went to the local police and we told them that we would take the weapons, the defendants, or the respondent would surrender their weapons to the local police and then the local police could bring them in to us here at the Berks County Court House so that we could safeguard those weapons for them.”
Here in Berks County, Act 79 is expected to have a huge impact. Over the last decade, the county has seen an average of 2 domestic related murders involving firearms per year. The new law is closing a loophole, Safe Berks legal advocate Jennifer Sawyer says is long overdue.
“If we make that connection we can do some immediate safety planning with them for the next 24 hours and from there the hope is that they’ll contact us again in the future for additional services because re-assault drops by sixty percent when a victim comes in to domestic violence services,” says Sawyer. “So those numbers are huge, and this program is really evidence based and shows that it does save lives and so these added measures with Act 79 going into effect has just bumped up a lot of safety measures for victims that weren’t there previously.”
While advocates like Sawyer and Sheriff Weaknecht say since Act 79 has only been in effect for two months, its greater impact won’t be felt for a while. But there are other aspects of the law that are already shifting how allegations of domestic violence are handled. Those with protection from abuse orders placed against them are barred from acquiring any new firearms and with the Sheriff’s Office’s help, firearms, swords and crossbows will be in safe hands until PFAs are lifted.
Act 79 Changing How Firearms are Turned In After Protection-From-Abuse Orders
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