King County Prosecutors are promoting a seldom used law that could head off gun violence.
“You know, it’s not like a ‘Gotcha’ situation, especially in the self-harm cases we’re there to help them” says Senior Prosecuting Attorney Shaya Calvo. Extreme Risk Protection Orders are the kind of legal tool that can head off a school shooting or protect an unstable family member.
“January 2018 our unit formed and then the Parkland-Stoneman Douglas tragedy occurred on Valentines Day”
Kim Wyatt is also a Senior Prosecuting Attorney “We really saw a shift in law enforcement and the community reaching out saying ‘We want to prevent something like this from happening, what is this ERPO?’ that nobody knows about it.”
Passed by voters in 2016, the Extreme Risk Protection isn’t used much across Washington.
But in King County the justice system is working to make it more user friendly and effective “The police will contact us and say ‘I’ve got concerns about this person, I just got a call from a citizen” Calvo says These emergency orders are considered round the clock and heading off a crisis moves a lot faster “We’re able to file that in real time, sometimes we’ll file a case within an hour maybe in Superior Court and we can literally be moving as fast as a few hours.”
The initial order covers 14 days until a court hearing, but the extreme risk protection order can be put in place for up to a year “Three main types: threats of self-harm, threats to others and then the combination of the two” says Wyatt “So folks that could be homicidal and suicidal.”
In Seattle and King County a growing number of these incidents involve people experiencing psychiatric episodes, “He was hearing voices, he thought people were coming through the vents in the house and he’d actually fired some rounds through the front door” Calvo recounts the case of a troubled war veteran “He was living with his child in the house and the neighbors were really concerned.” The situation ended peacefully and that unidentified war vet received treatment.
But prosecutors argue more could be done if the residents of Washington knew this was available. Because of its low profile fewer than 100 Extreme Risk Protection Orders are issued each year in King County.