ALBANY, N.Y. (WKBW) — New York's Municipal Police Training Council has approved new policies to better train officers statewide in filing extreme risk protection orders, better known as "red flags."
The new policy, enacted Wednesday morning, is designed to guide law enforcement through the process of filing the protection orders along with seizing, storing and returning guns. State law required the Division of Criminal Justice Services to develop the policy and present them to the training council for approval.
The new policy is part of the state's Red Flag Gun Protection Law, which is designed to prevent people that show signs of being a threat to themselves or others from owning or buying firearms. It was put in place in the wake of the mass shooting at the Tops Friendly Markets on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, in which a white man shot and killed ten black people and wounded three more in a racially-motivated attack.
On November 28, that man, 19-year-old Payton Gendron, pleaded guilty to all state charges he faced in the shooting. He will spend life in prison on those charges but still faces more than two dozen federal charges for which he could be sentenced to death.
