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Eugene

(62,626 posts)
Tue Jan 12, 2016, 12:36 PM Jan 2016

New York creates 'gun courts' in hopes of reducing gun violence

Source: Reuters

US | Tue Jan 12, 2016 12:22pm EST

New York creates 'gun courts' in hopes of reducing gun violence

NEW YORK | BY JOSEPH AX

Officials will announce a sweeping effort to combat gun violence in New York on Tuesday by convening a new court in Brooklyn dedicated to handle gun possession cases while also creating a police unit to focus exclusively on gun cases.

People charged with illegally possessing firearms in Brooklyn, which has the highest rate of such cases among the city's five boroughs, would be processed through one of the two courts, the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

The courts would be overseen by two state judges with a support staff to include retired judges who help oversee pretrial hearings, part of an effort to streamline the adjudication of such cases. The goal was to resolve the majority of those cases within six months of arrest.

The police department's new Gun Violence Suppression Division would handle gun-related investigations in the city of about 8.5 million, the largest in the United States.

New York State has some of the country's toughest gun laws, but law enforcement officials have struggled to stem the so-called "Iron Pipeline," in which illegal firearms flow in from Southern states with looser restrictions.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-guns-idUSKCN0UQ24B20160112
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New York creates 'gun courts' in hopes of reducing gun violence (Original Post) Eugene Jan 2016 OP
Why hasn't NYC done this earlier? Lurks Often Jan 2016 #1
Haven't heard that one in a while... beevul Jan 2016 #2
It's about time ... Straw Man Jan 2016 #3
Seems like paying lip service to the problem. ManiacJoe Jan 2016 #4
Such courts may routinize dropped gun charges even more... Eleanors38 Jan 2016 #5
 

Lurks Often

(5,455 posts)
1. Why hasn't NYC done this earlier?
Tue Jan 12, 2016, 01:44 PM
Jan 2016

This will do far more to reduce crimes involving guns, then trying to pass yet another law in Congress

Straw Man

(6,760 posts)
3. It's about time ...
Tue Jan 12, 2016, 03:22 PM
Jan 2016

... that criminal use of firearms was aggressively addressed, rather than continuing the fruitless trickle-down attempts at culture war.

ManiacJoe

(10,136 posts)
4. Seems like paying lip service to the problem.
Tue Jan 12, 2016, 09:38 PM
Jan 2016

Gun possession crimes are always the first ones the prosecutors trade away in plea deals.

 

Eleanors38

(18,318 posts)
5. Such courts may routinize dropped gun charges even more...
Wed Jan 13, 2016, 01:22 PM
Jan 2016

Hopefully, some serious work can come of this, but it does have the "drug court" ring.

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