Majority of confiscated guns returned to High River owners
More than three-quarters of all firearms confiscated by the RCMP from empty homes in High River during a mandatory evacuation of the flooded-stricken town last month have been reunited with their owners.
Staff Sgt. Patricia Neely said 404 of the 539 seized firearms had been claimed by their owners by Friday morning.
“Everybody that has wanted to remove their firearms from RCMP possession has been able to do so,” said Neely.
Gun owners who don’t have a possession acquisition licence are required to have a friend or family member store the firearm until a new licence is obtained, Neely said.
No charges have been laid against any gun owner, she said.
In late June, at the height of tensions between displaced residents and authorities, RCMP revealed that officers had been taking firearms left in plain sight from High River homes during door-to-door search-and-rescue operations to prevent the guns from being stolen or damaged.
The issue prompted comments from Alberta’s solicitor general and the prime minister’s office, both of which said they expected the RCMP to “focus on more important tasks such as protecting private property.”
The provincial Emergency Management Act grants authorities additional powers during a state of emergency, including the authority to enter premises without a warrant and take property to “prevent, combat or alleviate the effects of an emergency or disaster.”
Mounties said they took the same action after the devastating fires in Slave Lake two years ago.
In the wake of the recent confiscation, the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP launched a probe in July to examine whether officers broke any laws or breached force policies.
The seizures angered many town residents, some saying Mounties had, in fact, taken guns from secured storage units.
Neely said there has been no indication that happened.
“A lot of people assumed that we had gone into secured areas without checking them, only to determine that we had not,” said Neely.
“We did have one gun owner come to claim his gun and we did not have it,” she said.
“He called us back shortly later to say that he had located them where he left them — in his gun locker.”
In an odd twist, several owners have voluntarily handed in more than 180 guns to RCMP to be stored at the local detachment since the mandatory evacuation was lifted.
“These were guns that were left in the residences where the people have requested that we secure them for them,” said Neely.