SUFFOLK CLOSEUP
By Karl Grossman
Amid the latest series of mass shootings in the United States, The New York Times ran a front-page story headlined: “Taking guns From Those in Crisis: A County’s ‘Red Flag’ Lessons.”
Guess what county was being reported on? It was Suffolk County.
The article, which also covered a full page inside the newspaper, started with: “The boy made his threat aboard a school bus.” And it related how in “late March, “a 16-year-old in Suffolk County, N.Y…told fellow students that he wanted to shoot their heads off, according to court records. He told the police that he wanted to hurt himself with a shotgun at his house.”
“What followed happens more often in Suffolk County than any other county in the state: a judge issued a ‘red flag’ order that would allow authorities to take weapons from the home,” it continued. “The judge acted after finding that he posed a danger. Two shotguns were taken. The judge later wrote that the boy ‘admitted that not having the shotguns in the home is helpful to him.’”
The June 10th piece said: “In the wake of horrific mass shootings at a Buffalo supermarket, a Texas school and an Oklahoma hospital, many policymakers are grasping for ways to keep guns out of hands of people in crisis.”
And it noted that during that week President Biden “implored Congress to pass a federal red flag law, though such measures face stiff resistance from Republicans who contend the red flag process can be abused to take away an innocent person’s fundamental right to own guns.”
Legislation—titled the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Act—providing for a “red flag” process involving federal courts passed in the House of Representatives, but not in the U.S. Senate. Still, an 80-page safety bill subsequently passed both two weeks later—described by House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as a “breakthrough” after decades of no major federal gun control legislation.
It included a variety of elements tightening gun sales in the U.S. including expanded background checks for gun buyers under 21—and allocated $750 million over five years for “crisis intervention programs” by states including red flag programs.
It passed with several Republican lawmakers giving support, thus it was titled the Bipartisan Safety Communities Act. It was signed into law by President Biden on June 25th. “While this bill doesn’t do everything I want,” said Biden, “it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives. It funds crisis intervention, including red flag laws.”
However, what about states not interested in red flag laws?
As of now, 19 states have them. But there has been resistance in some states. In the House last year, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas went as far as introducing a bill titled: Preventing Unjust Red Flag Laws Act. Under it, there would be a “prohibition” on federal “funding for implementation and enforcement of red flag laws or rules.” It sat in committee.
The first red flag law in the U.S. was enacted in Connecticut in 1999 after a seething Connecticut Lottery employee went on a rampage at its headquarters killing four lottery executives—including its president—and then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.
In Suffolk County, as The Times related, since a New York State red flag law took effect in 2019, “more than 100 red flag cases” handled here “shows how” the law “has defused dozens of dangerous situations…Initiated by police officers, school officials and panicked family members, the Suffolk County cases sounded a drumbeat of domestic mayhem and potential disaster. They led to the removal of more than 160 guns, including at least five military-style rifles.”
Last month in Newsday, former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart and Gail Prudenti of Suffolk, the former state chief administrative judge, authored a guest essay headed: “Red flag laws can protect communities.” They wrote: “Extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs—better known as ‘red flag’ laws—empower a limited group of people, such as law enforcement officers, household members and school staff, to petition the court for an order to temporarily confiscate guns from individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others and bar them from obtaining a firearm.”
They noted that New York Governor Kathy Hochul after “the massacre” in Buffalo directed the state police “to file for an ERPO whenever they have probable cause to believe that an individual is a threat, similar to the way doctors and teachers must alert authorities to potential child abuse.”
Red flag laws—notably successful in Suffolk—should be a national standard.
Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.