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Maine courts have found a way to track whether police are taking away guns from people who can’t have them. But so far police have only followed the new procedure 26 percent of the time.
The small group of people who initiated the changes across district courts in Maine said collecting information about gun relinquishments will be a powerful tool, and they are hopeful the new process will become more common as more police become familiar with it.
The work of court officials, police and domestic violence response advocates stands out because they found a way behind the scenes, without any new laws, to increase transparency. Their efforts also underscore the challenges of bringing about sweeping change.
After almost three years of preparation, Maine courts began mandating in May 2022 that police disclose on a court form when they take firearms from people who have to give them up temporarily due to a protection from abuse order.
The change is meant to add accountability for law enforcement and clarity for victims about whether all of a defendants’ guns are confiscated.
“There just wasn’t a process for victims to get this information in a centralized way, and now there is,” said Kelly O’Connor, systems advocacy director at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. “We’d love to get to a place where 100 percent of the time these forms are being filed.”
The statewide filing rate has increased over the first 18 months, but there is more work to do, said Caroline Jova, family division manager in the administrative office of the courts. When police officers don’t report back to the court, it doesn’t mean they didn’t take someone’s firearms, just that there is no centralized way to know whether they did.
“Big shifts and practice statewide are difficult. It takes time for a process to become part of the culture, so to speak, where it’s just known and it feels inherent to everyone. But I think we’re very much moving in the right direction,” Jova said. “There’s still room for improvement.”
How police handle firearm relinquishments has come under scrutiny following the Lewiston mass shooting in which a man who displayed warning signs of mental illness killed 18 people, raising questions about whether anyone could have taken away his guns.
While there were no protection orders filed in the past against Robert Card, they are a common way for people who threaten or harm others to have their access to guns restricted.
Between May 2022 and October, judges across Maine handed down 4,465 temporary and 2,249 final protection from abuse orders that prohibited people from having firearms or other weapons, according to data from Maine’s court system. In the past, the court order would mark the end of the paper trail.
But starting in May 2022, Maine’s district courts began mandating that police file forms listing the weapons they seized. Police are now also required to note if they collect no weapons, said O’Connor, chair of the Commission on Domestic and Sexual Abuse’s firearms relinquishment action committee, which led the effort. Since then, police have filed the required firearms relinquishment form 1,766 times.
The court then sends a copy to both the defendant and plaintiff in the civil matter, allowing victims to see whether police found all the guns.
“It gives them recourse and opportunity to follow up with the law enforcement agency and say, ‘You only got these two. There are actually five.’ Of course ideally the next step is that law enforcement is going to do some follow up,” O’Connor said.
Maine State Police Lt. Michael Johnston, who is also a member of the committee, said police rarely had that opportunity to report to victims about gun seizures connected to protection from abuse orders in the past.
“It’s good for accountability and feedback to the victim, so they have awareness,” said Johnston, commander of the Northern Field Troop, which serves Penobscot, Hancock, Washington and Piscataquis counties.
“We ought to be doing the best we can to ensure that the firearms are retrieved and relinquished to law enforcement and that we keep them for the duration of the order, and the victim knows exactly what we got for her peace of mind and her safety,” he said.
People who kill their intimate partners use firearms more than any other method, according to 20 years of reviews by the Maine Domestic Abuse Homicide Review Panel. As a result the panel has repeatedly called for more consistent and effective enforcement of firearms relinquishment orders granted with protection from abuse orders.
“We hear all the time about people threatened with firearms, the presence of firearms. The constant atmosphere of firearms is incredibly intimidating. You don’t have to even talk about, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ if the means to kill you is all around you,” said Francine Garland Stark, executive director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence and a panel member.
One of the most vulnerable times for victims of domestic violence is in the days and weeks after a protection order is served against their intimate partner, said Darcie McElwee, the U.S. attorney for Maine.
“Because of that critical dangerousness, it is just imperative that [firearms] be taken,” McElwee said. “To have Maine law enforcement involved now in this new system and procedure is and should be a comfort to victims.”
As a former firearms and domestic violence prosecutor, McElwee handled cases where people kept their firearms in violation of their protection orders. She remembered how one man buried a gun in the backyard.
The firearms relinquishment action committee has also helped streamline the protection from abuse order process.
The courts used to mail protection orders to police departments to then serve on defendants. In some cases, victims would hand deliver the orders directly to police to get them there faster, said Jova, who is also a member of the committee.
But court clerks are now calling dispatch centers to let them know when protection orders have been uploaded to an electronic interface connecting the court system with law enforcement, and are ready for officers to download and serve. They also include the firearms relinquishment form, called PA-024, for police to fill out and send back.
“It’s better for the plaintiff from a safety perspective,” Jova said, adding that it’s also helpful for defendants. “Rather than it taking several days, a defendant would find out sooner, which could also result in more time to prepare before a final hearing is scheduled.”
The firearms relinquishment action committee has also been talking with police across Maine about how best to peacefully serve protection orders and collect firearms. For instance, unless absolutely necessary, police should not contact defendants ahead of time to arrange when to meet to avoid giving them time to stash their guns elsewhere, Johnston said.
And the group is continuing its outreach to spread the word at police meetings and trainings about the need for officers to report back to court on the guns they take.
“You really have to get out there and do the boots on the ground. You have to follow up. You have to say it more than once. It’s an important process. We all recognize that. But we’re also very busy; we have competing priorities; and every agency is a little different,” Johnston said.
The committee initiated changes without lawmakers creating any new law, but filing the form is not optional.
“It is legally required by the court pursuant to its order,” said Barbara Cardone, director of legal affairs and public relations for the Maine Judicial Branch. “The court’s not giving them an option. It’s saying, ‘You must do this.’”
Police are only required to tell courts about the firearms they took from people who have protection orders against them, a process handled in civil court. Police are not required to file firearms relinquishment forms in criminal cases where people cannot have firearms due to their conditions of release from jail or prison.
But the Domestic Abuse Homicide Review Panel believes more attention should be paid to firearms possessed by those who have committed a crime. For instance it has called for documentation of whether people being released from jail or prison have any weapons that must be relinquished.
“The whole question of people who become prohibited by virtue of their criminal conviction is the next horizon to try to get across,” Starks said. “We don’t have that kind of centralized information about what has happened with the weapons of these people who are now prohibited people, and there should be.”
