Police have seized at least 49 firearms this year
Cooper stresses safe storage could help keep firearms out of wrong hands
People who use firearms in committing crimes in Saskatchewan obtain them primarily by means of theft, Saskatoon’s police chief says.
“They ’re diverting legal firearms — long arms, like the long-barrelled weapons, shotguns and rifles — they’re diverting those through theft into the criminal element,” Chief Troy Cooper said in a recent interview.
“For us, when we talk about legislative changes and things that would benefit Saskatchewan as far as reducing the number of firearms used in offences, we would stress safe storage as much as any other legislative change, because that’s our experience here.”
As of May 16, city police had seized at least 49 weapons this year.
Firearms seizures have been mentioned in at least 25 media releases.
Most were identified as being sawed-off — with modified barrels and/or stocks, which make them easier to conceal and lighter to carry.
More than half of the seizures reported by police in media releases have taken place since March 18 — the date the Saskatchewan government declared a state of emergency in the province due to COVID -19.
Cooper said the police force has done some “shifting ” in its deployment model to address those issues from an enforcement perspective. “But what we’ve seen, I think, as far as the COVID experience, I wouldn’t put this very short period of time into any kind of trend or pattern, but what we have seen is there has not been a reduction in some of the violence, particularly when it relates to street gangs and addictions issues,” he said.
The number of other offences such as property crime has “dropped away,” but offending patterns related to guns and gangs have continued, Cooper added.
Over the last five years, the police force’s North West Division has processed 3,102 firearms. Last year, officers recorded 129 incidents involving firearms in some way, a police spokeswoman said in an email.
Saskatoon police were not able to confirm the total number of firearms seized so far this year because the information is recorded in individual incident files; the number of firearms seized overall is not tracked.
If police conduct a search as part of an investigation and locate a firearm, that may not be reported to the public through a media release, especially if it’s part of an ongoing, sensitive investigation, the spokeswoman wrote.
Police say the majority of firearms used in crimes are .22 calibre firearms and shotguns.
For tracing of a firearm to occur, the investigating officer has to make a request, so not every firearm recovered is traced. Only 40 per cent of tracing attempts are successful because many seized guns are older and may not have a serial number, or the number is too degraded to be legible, the spokeswoman noted.
It’s rare for officers to seize a gun that has been smuggled into Canada; many of those that do reach Saskatchewan come to the province via British Columbia or Ontario, not through the U.S. border, police say.
As for the theft of legal weapons, Cooper said people generally comply with safe storage laws; however, police are asking gun owners to consider those measures as the minimum.
“We’re just asking people to keep in mind how heavy that obligation is if you’re a firearm owner, and to make sure that they do their very best to keep them secured properly, so they don’t inadvertently fall into the hands of people who are going to use them for other reasons.”