BELOIT, WI – Police in Beloit, Wisconsin are starting a new program to ask city residents to volunteer to have their houses searched for guns. Chief Norm Jacobs hopes the problem will get people to think of gun violence like they do ebola, with a home inspection being like a vaccine.
“Gun violence is as serious as the Ebola virus is being represented in the media, and we should fight it using the tools that we’ve learned from our health providers,” said Chief Jacobs.
“It was clear to me that people in the community are looking for things that they can do to help cut violence in the community,” Jacobs said. “I think it’s appropriate that police try different things also.”
The police chief thinks that a search might result in the discovery of guns that people didn’t even know they had.
“That’s really what we’re looking for,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find a toy gun that’s been altered by a youngster in the house — and we know the tragedies that can occur there on occasion.”
WPR reported that one mother of a gun violence victim said: “Pretty much all those kids and young men just need to be is educated. You have a lot of them that barely read at a fifth-grade level yet they’re 25 year-old-men. But they know how to work a gun. There’s something wrong with that picture.”
Chief Jacobs went on to state that unsecured firearms are a much greater threat than any potential burglar.
“Guns not only are used in robberies, but they are used for suicides,” Jacobs said. “Easy access to weapons, especially weapons that you don’t know about, are a threat to your family. It’s not a criminal living next door that might kill your family member. You might have a family member that is suffering from some type of mental illness and easy access to a weapon could end their life.”
From the Beloit Daily News:
Those that do give consent will either see a member of the drug and gang unit or a detective come to the home. Jacobs said each person living in the home has some individual right to privacy. So if a room is locked the owner of the home may not have the right to open the door to police. So who is living at the residence will determine where police are allowed to search. Residents also have the right to stop the search at any time.
If a weapon is found in the home that isn’t legally owned it will be seized by police. Officers will then determine if it has been used in a crime in the city, Jacobs said.
He hopes the program will help residents take control of their community.
“We don’t want to be in people’s houses, but we have to talk about it,” Jacobs said. “We have to raise the question ‘What are you doing help the community be safer?’ A lot of folks’ expectation is way too high for police in terms of what we can do. This is something that we can do, raise awareness, and suggest that people take charge of their own home.”
Any takers on this one?
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