“The guns get chopped up, rendered useless and ultimately melted down,” said Chief MacKinnon. “All metal gets treated the same way. The baseball bats and other weapons are crushed or rendered useless. All the weapons will be destroyed one way or the other.”Well, not all: found in the mix is what could be a very valuable antique shotgun said Chief MacKinnon.“SPPD Range Master David Manning recognized it as an antique weapon and felt it could be worth a lot of money...we’ll get that appraised, we think it might be very valuable and we have the ability to auction it off and convert it into cash,” that would benefit the city’s General Fund.Weapons aren’t the only Evidence Room items being audited and Chief MacKinnon said the purge “will lead to a public auction...anything of value we’re putting to the side and we’ll have a wide variety of stuff” available to bidders.The only items not yet purged from the Evidence Room - nor ever to be slated for auction - are narcotics: “We have a very large quantity of narcotics,” that require a court order for destruction Chief MacKinnon noted.
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Chief MacKinnon said that in all there were 128 “long guns and handguns, included in that is replica guns that for all intents and purposes look like the real thing, Red Ryder BB guns and six milk crates full of other weapons.” These weapons and others will be destroyed. Photo by Brian D. Wilson |
SPPD purges guns, knives, clubs but holds on to antique shotgun
March 21, 2007
Santa Paula Police Department
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula TimesGuns, rifles, knives, clubs, even martial arts weaponry is being purged from the Santa Paula Police Department’s Evidence Room, representing decades of crime-fighting.“As a result of doing an audit of the Evidence Room,” a lengthy process noted Chief Steve MacKinnon, the disposal of weaponry was undertaken.“The SPPD hasn’t done a purging of guns for quite a long time,” and “weapons of all sorts that were used in crimes and/or seized from people,” as well as those believed to be stolen but with no way to identify the owner were among those targeted for disposal.Chief MacKinnon said that in all there were 128 “long guns and handguns, included in that is replica guns that for all intents and purposes look like the real thing, Red Ryder BB guns and six milk crates full of other weapons.”Those other weapons include brass knuckles, throwing stars, numb-chucks, baseball bats, “clubs of all sorts, just about any kind of knife you can think of,” from butcher to double-edged. “There were enough baseball bats to outfit several teams, just all sorts of stuff.”In a coordinated effort with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, which is undergoing a similar effort, a Bakersfield area vendor will destroy the stash of metal-based weapons.
