Blogs

3 June, 2018 – 6:25 PM

GUN BUY-BACK RESULTS

New Haven |The New Haven Police Department and its partners, Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, the Injury Free Coalition for Kids and the Newtown Alliance are pleased to announce the results of their recent successful New Haven Gun Buy-back event.

The GBB was held on Saturday, 23 June at the NH Police Academy. It was scheduled from ten until till three o’clock.

In all, 45 operable firearms and three that could have been made operable were turned in. One assault type weapon was part of the cache. Those are scheduled for destruction per state protocol and means they will never be able to fall into the hands of children, suicidal people and criminals.

Our safety team gave out free gun locks and provided gun safety information to those who wanted it.

There are many people who deserve our thanks but none more than the driving forces behind this and all of our past GBB events, Pina Violano, a manager at Yale New Haven Hospital in injury prevention, community outreach and research in emergency medical services for children and co-director of the Injury Free Coalition For Kids of New Haven and Steve Yanovsky of the Newtown Alliance. Officers Omar Thomas of the NHPD’s Firearms Division and Detective Josh Kyle, Officer Joshua Smereczynski and Sergeant Mary Helland catalogued each weapon – completing vast amounts of paperwork that assures the guns will disappear once and for all. Detectives and Officers from the NH Police Academy, armorers and Bureau of Identification personnel were responsible for making safe the weapons turned in and test-firing them.

Thank you to the YNHH injury prevention staff.

In all five years of Buy-back events here in New Haven, we’ve taken in over six hundred guns. We are encouraged by this recent buy-back and hope to keep our momentum.

In the next months leading toward our larger GBB event in December, the NHPD and our YNHH partners have pledged to research and hopefully secure funding for future events. We’re optimistic there are community partners out there who want to help provide for such important and worthwhile events.

Let us stay focused on keeping guns out of the wrong hands.