Oops! New York State Police Admit to Major Mistake in Gun Confiscation Case
In a surprising turnaround, New York State Police have admitted that they made a mistake when they confiscated the guns and suspended the permit of an Erie County resident on the grounds of mental health.
Late Wednesday, Erie County, NY, released a statement (posted below) blaming the New York State Police for giving them bad information regarding the suspension of a pistol permit and demand to surrender firearms sent to Amherst resident David Lewis.
(Mr. Lewis was not identified in our original story, his name has since been released in conjunction with court documents filed by his attorney, Jim Tresmond.)
"Eerie County Clerk Chris Jacobs said that late today he received a call from the New York State Police informing him that they had provided information on the wrong person when they notified his office of someone whose permit should be suspended because of the new mental health provisions in New York's SAFE Act," the release begins.
"When the State Police called to tell us they made a mistake and had the wrong person ... it become clear that the state did not do their job here and now we all look foolish," the release went on to say in a quote from Clerk Jacobs.
Jacobs appeared on WBEN radio in Buffalo on Thursday morning and explained the details of this administrative debacle. Mr. Jacobs also delivered some pointed comments about how the law was written so badly that mistakes like this were bound to happen. He closed with some fairly damning statements and also asked the state to consider scrapping the bill and re-writing it.
"When you write a piece of legislation in a vacuum, without having hearings, without talking to people about how it's going to implemented in the real world -- without jeopardizing people's rights, and putting an individual like this through a nightmarish experience, and infringe on their rights, you have to go back to the drawing board," he said. "And I encourage the legislative leadership here and mostly our governor to take a step back and say 'we didn't get it right' and let's change this."
Read WBEN's full story on Jacobs here.
After the press release was issued by the state, TheBlaze spoke with one of Mr. Lewis' attorney, Max Tresmond.
"We won round one," he said, "round two will be a suit against the state for what they did to our client and his reputation."
Here is the press release admitting to the error in this gun confiscation:
