Cops’ union cancels its rifle raffle after outcry
A San Jose police officers’ union announced Friday it canceled its plan to raffle off a semiautomatic rifle amid community concerns that the raffle would take place soon after Sunday’s mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
The decision to cancel the raffle of a Ruger PC Carbine 9mm semiautomatic rifle was made Friday after members of the community expressed concerns to the San Jose Police Officers’ Association. The raffle would have taken place Tuesday.
“Myself and our POA board totally understand the concerns this raffle has caused ... and we took immediate steps, which are the appropriate steps, to cancel the raffle,” said Paul Kelly, the police union president. “As soon as we learned that people had concerns, we looked at this immediately and put the brakes on. What matters is doing the right thing to support Gilroy.”
The raffle was planned several months before a 19yearold man opened fire at the Gilroy festival, killing three people and injuring 13 others before reportedly killing himself.
“The optics and timing, I would agree, are horrific,” Kelly told The Chronicle on Friday.
The police union advertised the gun raffle in its July 2019 issue of the Vanguard, its monthly magazine. The raffle was to benefit the San Jose Police Department’s Chaplaincy.
While the advertisement stated that “Civilians may enter this raffle,” Kelly said the advertisement’s language should have been more clear to specify the raffle was only open to law enforcement — both active and retired police officers, who are now technically considered to be civilians, he said.
Kelly said the chaplains, who are not paid a salary as members of the 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization, are supported by donations. The gun raffle was one of many fundraising efforts the police union spearheads to monetarily support its chaplains, Kelly said. Other events include barbecues.
The police union had raffled off handguns in recent years in other events, though Kelly said this was the first semiautomatic rifle raffled off in recent memory. But, the union will no longer raffle off weapons of any kind, Kelly said, including handguns and semiautomatic rifles.
“But we will do other kinds (of events) to keep the department’s chaplaincy alive and well,” Kelly said. “You better believe it. Our department would be lost without them.”
San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia said canceling the raffle was “the right thing to do” and thanked Kelly and the police union in a statement on Friday.
“The timing is regrettable because it distracts from the real connection San Jose POA members have to the tragedy in Gilroy,” Garcia said.
More than 70 San Jose police officers, including special operations and airsupport teams, responded to Gilroy after the mass shooting, Garcia said.
“San Jose police officers patrolled the streets of Gilroy for 38 hours, as our brother and sister Gilroy officers dealt with this incident,” Garcia said. “Their actions that night and continued support of Gilroy today, illustrate the true sympathy felt for every victim of this tragedy and the entire community forever effected by that horrific day.”
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told The Chronicle in a statement that, “It’s good to see that better judgment prevailed.”
On Thursday, LaDoris Cordell, San Jose’s former independent police auditor, told The Chronicle that the union’s initial decision to raffle a semiautomatic firearm to benefit the chaplaincy was “indefensible” and has “no place in law enforcement.”
“When I think chaplaincy, I think of peace, I don’t think of violence, I don’t think of killing,” Cordell said. (The chaplaincy) deals with everything that is the antithesis of assault weapons. “You would think that after the mass shooting, where the shooter used a semiautomatic rifle to kill and maim, they would say, ‘Hey, maybe we should rethink this.’ ”
Kelly said it’s important to make the distinction that the rifle that would have been raffled off should not be considered to be “an assault rifle” and was chosen by LC Action Police Supply, a San Josebased distributor of law enforcement equipment that sponsored the raffle.
“People have called it an ‘AR’ or an assault rifle. It’s not an assault rifle,” Kelly said. “It has the same 9mm caliber as the firearms our officers use.”
The WASR10 semiautomatic rifle the shooter used in Sunday’s mass shooting was legally purchased in Fallon Nev., but he broke the law by bringing the gun into California because of the state’s assault weapons ban, a federal law enforcement official told The Chronicle this week.