A $570,000 appropriation to replace police guns and related equipment was approved Monday by the City Council. The vote on the controversial proposal came after a two-week delay so councillors could have their questions answered about the purchase. Still, some questions remained after the 6-3 vote.
Some issues councillors raised did not change during three meetings when the police guns were discussed: why police wanted to replace guns that were at most seven years old, when the department says it replaces them in 10-year cycles; why officials asked to tap the city’s “free cash” reserve for unexpected needs when police had known since 2022 that its gun model was no longer being made; and why every officer needed a gun.
One sticking point was that a 2020 report to the council on police department inventory said the guns then in use – the ones that will now be replaced – had been acquired that year. That would mean the weapons were only five years old.
Yet at the March 31 meeting police commissioner Christine Elow repeatedly said the department did not buy any guns in 2020 and that the ones that will be replaced were from 2018.
Elow avoided saying the 2020 report, provided by her predecessor, Branville G. Bard Jr., was incorrect. Instead she merely insisted the most recent gun purchase was in 2018, with language playing a role in the confusion: “The date of acquisition” of 14 guns from the fire department in 2020 was a transfer of existing equipment, not a purchase of new equipment.
“I just want to understand the discrepancy and make sure we are getting correct information,” councillor Patty Nolan. “We should fix that report and make sure it’s clear.”
It’s not the first time semantics have played a role in police relationships with the council. In 2020, Bard told the council his department didn’t have military equipment “at all,” then provided a list of materials showing a lot of equipment used by military forces – leading him to explain: “We do not possess materials that are restricted only to the military by law, and therefore exempted to civilian law enforcement.”
Answering concerns about police snipers in 2023, Elow said that “officers on the roof had a rifle but it was not set up or deployed … which is why they were not snipers.”
Outside the budget cycle
As for why the department wanted money from “free cash,” Elow had said new weapons are urgently needed because the supply of unassigned guns is running low: only 38. Since the police department’s Sig Sauer P320 model was no longer being made, police could not get more guns or parts if they were needed for additional officers or repairs, Elow had said.
When councillor Sumbul Siddiqui asked in a written question submitted before the council meeting why the purchase couldn’t have been planned instead of requested from free cash, given that the supply problems were known in 2022, Elow said that “until recently the department had a sufficient surplus” of guns.
The surplus dwindled “as additional training was conducted and more firearms were assigned to both full-time and special sworn officers,” she said in a written response to Siddiqui.
One clue to why that happened came in another response from Elow. The department hires retirees to serve as special officers. They are usually assigned to details, have the powers of sworn officers and are required to provide their own uniforms and equipment. Since 2022 special officers haven’t been able to get the P320 model from a federally licensed gun dealer in Massachusetts, as required, so the department has provided them with guns from its own inventory, Elow said.
Fourteen guns are assigned to special officers, she said.
Reasons for armed officers
As for why every officer, even those assigned to schools, needs a gun, Elow originally said state law requires it. After councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said he couldn’t find any such law, Elow said she had been mistaken – it’s the city requiring that every officer be armed.
Why? Sobrinho-Wheeler asked. The commissioner said in a written answer that armed officers are necessary to ensure public safety in “tumultuous and unpredictable situations”; to keep officers safe; to respond quickly in “scenarios involving imminent danger”; and to standardize “operational readiness.”
Other issues also came up in all three meetings – the initial session when police requested the appropriation, March 17; a Finance Committee meeting March 27, when councillors were supposed to find out more; and the final meeting when councillors approved the purchase, Monday.
One selling point for the new guns was that they come with holsters that have technology to automatically turn on an officer’s body camera if he or she removes the gun from the holster. Police are beginning to outfit officers with the cameras.
Five “intentional discharges” in 30 years
Vice mayor Marc McGovern noted that many people who opposed the purchase in public comment had brought up the case of Arif Sayed Faisal, the 20-year-old Bangladeshi student who lived in Cambridgeport and was shot and killed Jan. 4, 2023, by a police officer while in a mental crisis and advancing with a large knife. The shooting sparked months of protest. Middlesex district attorney Marian Ryan found after an investigation that the officer had done nothing wrong.
“If we had the guns that you’re proposing to buy, the minute that officer took his gun out of his holster, the body camera would have gone off, would have activated, and we would have clearer evidence of what actually happened,” McGovern said. “That doesn’t happen with the guns we currently have.” Police didn’t have body cameras when Faisal was shot. There was little discussion of the need for body-worn-camera footage before a gun is drawn – to see what behavior led to that point.
McGovern agreed that Cambridge police officers rarely shoot their guns – there have been five “intentional discharges” in the past 30 years, Elow said in another written answer.
“That could cut both ways,” McGovern said, meaning it shows either that police “don’t need” the guns or “how responsible we are.”
Votes in favor
In the end, mayor E. Denise Simmons, McGovern and councillors Burhan Azeem, Paul Toner, Ayesha Wilson and Cathie Zusy voted to approve the appropriation. “This is modernization and not militarism,” Simmons said.
Zusy, in an unexpected comment, said: “I think this is a period when we want the Cambridge police to have strong firearms. Again, I feel like it’s a very unstable period of American history, when I think we want our police to be fully armed with excellent weapons.”
Asked Thursday to explain further, Zusy said in an email that she remembered “reading an article about how about five years of political instability followed major pandemics. We’re in the thick of this. Trump’s rise is part of it. I would not want to leave us vulnerable because of frugality.”
She added that “community safety stems mostly from encouraging human connection and satisfying basic needs.”
Votes against
Siddiqui, Nolan and Sobrinho-Wheeler voted no. Siddiqui summarized the questions and answers she had asked and concluded: “What I needed to make the decision is not as transparent as I had hoped it would be. And so for that reason, I’m a no.”
Sobrinho-Wheeler had previously questioned whether officers assigned to schools should be armed. “I think there’s a number of positions where having armed officers makes us less safe, like school resource officers and traffic safety officers,” he said. “So in my mind, it doesn’t make sense to vote to authorize [the purchase] and buy weapons for those positions.”
“I still remain pretty hesitant to pull [$570,000] for this purchase from free cash given questions about the age of the guns, about their use, that it is so incredibly rare that they’re even used or pulled,” Nolan said. “So I appreciate that we have guns in service now, and it seems like we should wait a couple years.”
A stronger
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As with most things being done, more transparency helps. There ought to be a clear way for a city councilmember to:
(1) Be supportive
(2) Hold off on voting yes pending clear information
The questions asked seem reasonable to have answers to before spending $500k. Something like “what type of gun” or “why do they cost more than double the old ones, even with a trade-in” fall far short of even very minimal due diligence.
On the other hand, it seems like properly equipping emergency responders makes sense too.
And the number of guns should be budgeted for an emergency. I fully agree many officers don’t need guns in their line-of-duty (esp. school resource officers), but it seems like a no-brainer that there should be enough in an armory to arm those officers if needed. So the arguments against make little sense.