SPECIAL REPORT: More guns being taken off the streets of the Central Coast

Every week it seems we come across stories about guns being taken off the streets of the Central Coast. It happens so often, we decided to take a closer look at the issue. Local law enforcement agencies we’ve spoken with say they’ve seen an uptick in the number of guns seized over the last few years.

In early April, KION, along with our Spanish language partners Telemundo 23, went to Watsonville Police headquarters to take a look at dozens of guns taken out of the hands of criminals. Sgt. Mish Radich showed us 65 guns from cases that were adjudicated, meaning a sentence had been handed down and served.

“All these guns here were seized off of cases that officers took on the street, whether they were involved in a shooting, or just felon in possession of a firearm or maybe a drug dealer in possession of a firearm, or somebody just illegally possessing a firearm, carrying a loaded gun in a public place,” Radich said.

In the first three months of this year, 30 weapons were confiscated in Watsonville. Last year, 182 guns were seized, including one bust where some 40 guns were found. In 2016, 117 guns were taken off the streets. The year before it was 74.

It’s a trend other agencies are seeing also.

Salinas Police say 142 guns were taken off the streets last year, 71 and counting this year.

The Peninsula Regional Violence Prevention and Narcotics Team (PRVNT), a task force made up of Peninsula police departments, took 12 guns off the streets last year and five so far this year.

The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said it confiscated 45 guns last year, 36 the year before.

“It seems as though we’re coming across these illegally possessed firearms more often than we used to,” Sgt. Mark Sievers said.

Residential burglaries are the most prevalent. People aren’t properly securing their guns, leaving them on a shelf in the closet or between mattresses, or criminals are getting them from places with lax gun laws.

“A lot of times what happens is because other states may not have as stringent gun laws as California does, there could be a lot of hand-to-hand purchases without background checks. People bring them over from state lines and they do the same thing,” Sievers said.

They say illegal guns are often used to commit more crimes like burglaries and shootings.

Back in Watsonville, those 65 guns are being destroyed.

“We send these out to a facility in the Central Valley that has a large incinerator and they basically get melted down to scrap metal,” Radich said.

Law enforcement says the best way for a person to keep their guns safe is to get a gun safe and bolt it to a wall or the ground, so the safe can’t be easily broken. They also said people should have a copy of the gun’s serial numbers kept separately, so if the weapons are stolen, law enforcement can list them as such.