Richmond Sheriff seizes guns of citizen with no criminal record & without legal cause

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If the Sheriff will take contol of firearms for safekeeping will he also hold the owners other furniture and other belongings ultil he can pick them up.

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Eviction is usually a lot more than just breech of contract. When I was the Navy Family Housing Liaison Officer and we would need to evict a family that didn't belong there(i.e. member discharged and refused to move, things like that) we had a LONG, drawn out process and it could take up to 90 days to get the eviction completed.

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VAopencarry wrote:

HOLY COW!!!!!!! WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!

What does it matter how many he has, he is legally allowed to own them or not. If he is legal then what the Sherriff did is illegal. I hope this guy gets a lawyer. People need to lose their jobs, at least, over this. *%&^$(*#^%$

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well with all that weapons in residence and the rent is being overdue, smells fishy to me. As a fugitive Investigator, I would say he had other thoughts beside just getting those weapons to do his practice shooting. 38 rifles and 20 handguns can make a small squad of terrorist, extremist group that can do harm if gone unnoticed. Unless he can prove that he was taking them to the gun shop for repairs or owns a shooting place or is a collector.

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lockman wrote:

If the Sheriff will take contol of firearms for safekeeping will he also hold the owners other furniture and other belongings ultil he can pick them up.

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He is lucky that they said they would give his firearms back if they all checked out. Once you get evicted and your property is seized by the sheriff's office it is normally actioned off. This money is then used to back the debt balance and the service cost of the courts. At lease that is what happens in CA. Va might be different so i am not 100% for sure on the procedures.

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swatpro911 wrote:

well with all that weapons in residence and the rent is being overdue, smells fishy to me. As a fugitive Investigator, I would say he had other thoughts beside just getting those weapons to do his practice shooting. 38 rifles and 20 handguns can make a small squad of terrorist, extremist group that can do harm if gone unnoticed. Unless he can prove that he was taking them to the gun shop for repairs or owns a shooting place or is a collector.

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I don't remember seeing anything in the law about the number of guns a person can own. Perhaps you can show us where we might find that as just cause for ANY LE action.

Regards

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Up here in Murderapolis if youare too damn lazzy to pay your rent but have the money to collect firearms, this is what should and does happen:

- Any property within the rental is seized, becomes property of land owner

- Such property is usually sold off to pay for expenses to evict, clean property, make suitable for new rental.

If he had this cache of guns, I'm not doubting they are legal, but possibly purchased with illegal money, such money that couldn't be used to pay the rent because of no paper trail of honest working for it. The individual was lacking intelligence on many levels:

- If he is completely legit (honest work, legal guns), he should have sold some guns.

- He should not be "collecting" instead of paying his rent, a hobby over a necessity.

- He should be willing to accept the conseqences of non-payment.

- If the Land owner wanted no part of the guns because he feared them stolen, he could hand them to the local authorities, which can auction them off.

He should be thanking the Sheriff's Office for letting him have them back, as they are really no longer his property. The Sheriff checking on some guns that belong to "no one" isn't wrong or illegal, especially if they are giving them back.

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Doesn't that violate the 4th Amendment? Is the eviction a court proceeding?

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There are many reasons that you could be evicted besides not paying the rent. We don't know the particulars. Depending on how the lease was written it could be for not maintaining the yard, or having pets, or not carrying renters insurance.

Plus we don't know if the owner doesn't want the guy out in order to sell or develop the property( thus he would be looking for ANY reason within the lease to go forward w/ eviction proceedings). We don't know enough about the particulars to pass judgement on either the owner or the renter as it comes to the eviction.

We do know that there has to be a court order for eviction in order to get the sheriff involved. So its not like the sheriff dropped in and searched the house and evicted this guy on a whim.

If the eviction is not about money then there would be no reason to seize and sell off property to cover a debt as there is none. This is why the guy would get his property back.

The circumstances are what will determine if the sheriff was justified or not. I mean you don't get evicted overnight so this guy had ample warning to move his collection before the sheriff got involved.

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I've been around long enough to know the media leaves things out of the story.

Was there something unreported in the story that gave thesheriff probable cause to seize the weapons?

I'd be interested to hear if any weapons do turn out to be stolen.

In one sense, the sheriff might have donethe tenantand the neighborhood a favor by securing the weapons. That's different than running serial numbers, though.

I'm thinking thereis more to the story.

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Are we sure that breech of contract/ nonpayment of rent is a crime? More likely it is just a civil matter.

Whether the sheriff will be held to account for any abuse of office is doubtful. Someone who lacks the cash to pay the rent isn't going to attract much interest from ambulance chasers. The ACLU also isn't going to be interested in who rightfully should have the guns. Bye, bye collection.

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swatpro911 wrote:

well with all that weapons in residence and the rent is being overdue, smells fishy to me. As a fugitive Investigator, I would say he had other thoughts beside just getting those weapons to do his practice shooting. 38 rifles and 20 handguns can make a small squad of terrorist, extremist group that can do harm if gone unnoticed. Unless he can prove that he was taking them to the gun shop for repairs or owns a shooting place or is a collector.

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Huh?

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This idea that because someone has more than a certain number of guns or more than a certain munber of rounds of ammo, that they are some how a criminal is just too "Washington Post" for my flavor. If this is the case I am in serious trouble because believe me this guy was a kibitzer.

Every time I read an article in the paper that claims some guy with five guns and two boxes of ammo had an "arsenal" it just makes my blood boil. To see people on this list talking like that is just unreal.

This guy does not have to justify to ANYONE the number of guns he has or the amount of ammo, so long as the ammo is kept according to prevailing laws. And he does NOT have to prove he is a collector.

Regards

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It's been several years ago and the laws may have changed, my wife use to be an apartment manager and it would take at least 3 months to get a court order to evict someone. The deputy was there to make sure that the former renter did not interfere with the movers (normally the maintenance crew and myself) and if anything was found that was illegal (drugs) or dangerous (firearms) the deputy would take custody of it. In the case of illegal items, the former renter (if present) was arrested then and there. Firearms were normally checked (tosee if they were stolen)and held until we were finished and had left the property. Firearms (unloaded of course) were then given back to theowner.

If theformer renterwas not present when we moved them out, all property was left on the street (remind you this was several years ago) and after we left it was free for the taking by anyone. Any illegal or dangerous items were taken back to the station. The sheriff's dept. would hold them until the owner claimed them or they were arrested in the case of illegal items.

Also that part of Richmondisnotone of the better places to live. I worked that area as a paramedic in the late 80sand early 90s andwe would not go into that area without police escort (usually 3 or 4 officers).

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I suppose I could ask the sheriff next time I see him. I see him weekly, and often briefly say hi and chat. In fact, I spoke with him on Wednesday at work. Let's just say we do business together...

My only concern is that I don't want to mix my business with my personal feelings, and while we have a friendly rapport, it's not like we are friends or anything like that. And I doubt he'd say anything to me anyway. Still....

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Hawkflyer wrote:

To see people on this list talking like that is just unreal.

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Yeah, that's the problem with irresponsible media. Their game is to stir up controversy and keep everybody annoyed, angryor worried, etc. One way is toreport only part of the facts.

I think we could undermine the whole media controversy machine if the thread starterpicked out some aspect of a story to discuss. Might as well assume the events behind the story never even happened, and just discuss it as though it was advanced in a law school textbook. For example, using this story,we could discuss a question: "What, if any, are the circumstances where the police are justified in seizing a firearms collection without a warrant?"

Many of us know the usual "probable cause" sort of stuff. Many of us could predict scenarios like "if the owner fired upon the police while they were executing a search warrant for drugs." I'd be interested in subtle nuances.For example, "When asked about it, the owner said he was a collector; but in plain view in his living room was an invoice pad, cash box,and each weaponhad a price tag; andthe owner was unable to produce a dealer license."

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Some of the people have gotten off of topic here.

The point is, is that when getting "evicted" this is a somewhat random illegit search warrant procedure? What if the person is getting "evicted" pays the rent, and the sheriffs office takes his guns? What if his house is broken into and he's robbed? I know that the courts have ruled they cannot be held liable, however you see my point.

I do see the point for a deputy to be there when the stuff is moved out in either case, when someone is "evicted" whether they have firearms or not.

How many weapons qualifies as an arsenal? If im a right wing, left wing, pacifist, facist, jihadist, protestor, anti this or that - "extremist" its not a crime for me to own legal weapons in the US as long as I go through theproper channels and obey the laws set forth by the US government. In fact I can be christian,jewish, buddhist, and muslim and own weapons legally in the US. If this upsets you, move to the UK, move to africa or the middle east, move to cuba or china...If a person has 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and agarden variety of "assault weapons" since when did that become a crime? Did they fail to mention that the person also had a years worth supply of food and water, not to mention a generator? If you were at Hurricane Katrina cleanupyou would understand why that may be a need in your home, not a maybe or a want. Lets not forget who it came down to when it was time to protect the streets - the average harry homeowner citizen. If you think for 1 second that a catagory 6 hurricane cannot roll up the coast and do the same damage your wrong.

This isn't an attack on LEO's. In fact the sooner some police departments recognize that some citizens out there would help them in an emergency just as they would like to save the day and the world, then perhaps they can become apart of the community, and not try to criminalize society 1 person at a time, whether its owning guns, ammunition, belonging to a certain religion, etc.??? Its not a crime to stand up for your constitutional rights, even if you are a cop or investigator, because someday, you may not have that job, and you will wish you had those rights as well. Perhaps the FOP and some of the other police organizations in america should take a new stance on guns and responsible gun ownership, and stop trying to criminalize legalfirearms owners, maybe I might see things in a different light.

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ProtectMd wrote:

...SNIP
If you think for 1 second that a catagory 6 hurricane cannot roll up the coast and do the same damage your wrong.

This isn't an attack on LEO's. In fact the sooner some police departments recognize that some citizens out there would help them in an emergency just as they would like to save the day and the world, then perhaps they can become apart of the community, and not try to criminalize society 1 person at a time, whether its owning guns, ammunition, belonging to a certain religion, etc.??? Its not a crime to stand up for your constitutional rights, even if you are a cop or investigator, because someday, you may not have that job, and you will wish you had those rights as well. Perhaps the FOP and some of the other police organizations in america should take a new stance on guns and responsible gun ownership, and stop trying to criminalize legal firearms owners, maybe I might see things in a different light.

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Well the Cat 6 ain't going to happen here because the scale only goes up to Cat 5.:lol:

But I agree that civilization is a VERY thin crust and most of the people living on top if it have no clue how thin and fragile it really is.

As to the rest, i think they call that a Militia in the constitution and the militia statutes in the various states.

So you get a +1 from me.

Your are right about the subject so I started a new thread and a poll HERE

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I wonder if our SuperModerator was testing us to see if we were gullible enough to accept the story at face value and get worked up about it?

Heh, heh, heh. I wonder if he wrote the topic heading to see if we wereableto distinguish between a news story andtheevent the news story is about.

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swatpro911 wrote:

well with all that weapons in residence and the rent is being overdue, smells fishy to me. As a fugitive Investigator, I would say he had other thoughts beside just getting those weapons to do his practice shooting. 38 rifles and 20 handguns can make a small squad of terrorist, extremist group that can do harm if gone unnoticed. Unless he can prove that he was taking them to the gun shop for repairs or owns a shooting place or is a collector.

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So, now you're a terrorist if you have a lot of firearms and cannot prove that you are "taking them to the gun shop," "owns a shooting place," or are "a collector"?!?

swatpro911; you might really want to rethink you position on guns, because that is one of the most anti point of views that I've heard on this forum.

I would also imagine that a lot of the members here fall into your definition of "terrorist."

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When my In Laws have to evict someone here in Richmond, the Deputy is there to make sure that the former tenant does not impede the removal of the property from the rental property. My In Laws go through a long court process to have someone evicted (which costs money), pays someone to move the former tenants property out (which also costs money) and are rarely reimbursed for their cost or time (Being a landlord sucks if you ask me). They usually move the property to the sidewalk and if the former tenants are not there the neighborhood kids usually start scavenging. I don't think I would want those weapons just sitting on the sidewalk.:shock: