Working in conjunction with the State Police, the Falmouth Police Department will have surplus police shotguns destroyed at no cost to residents.
At the April 1 Select Board meeting, Town Manager Mike Renshaw recommended the guns be destroyed rather than traded in toward new weapons for the police department. The select board agreed with the recommendation.
“The police department is making arrangements with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab Firearms Identification Section with facilities located in Maynard to schedule the complete destruction of all 26 surplus shotguns,” Renshaw said. He added that the trade-in value of the weapons would have been $4,125.
The move is welcome news to the Falmouth Gun Safety Coalition which lobbied the select board to adopt a policy in which residents can contribute to a fund to pay for destruction of surplus police weapons, rather than trade them in toward the cost of new ones.
The group started its effort when the police department replaced some assault-style weapons with new ones and traded in the older weapons.
Coalition member Nan Garrett-Logan said the arrangement with the state police exceeds what the group called for.
“In the town manager's insight and courage and wisdom he decided to destroy them without asking town residents to contribute to their trade-in value,” Garrett-Logan said.
Garrett-Logan acknowledged the move to keep the surplus weapons out of circulation is largely symbolic, because the police department has replaced them with new ones.
But she hopes it sets a precedent.
“As far as we know, Falmouth is the only town in Massachusetts that is choosing to do this. We are setting the stage for other towns in Massachusetts to do the same thing.
Nationally, only Seattle and Honolulu destroy surplus police weapons rather than trade them in.
