The Bloomington Police Department is hosting an event to take unwanted weapons off the streets.
The department has scheduled a gun buyback from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 29, at the Bloomington Fire Department Maintenance and Training Annex, located at 2602 Six Points Road.
Bloomington Police spokesperson Bryce Janssen said the event is “no questions asked” and payment will be provided in cash. The department said in a news release on Tuesday it will pay $500 for each assault weapon, $400 for so-called ghost guns (homemade weapons) and $200 for handguns, rifles and shotguns.
The funding comes from an Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grant.
Janssen said the department will try to track down the owner of any weapons that are listed in a database as stolen. He said all other weapons will be destroyed.
“This isn’t an event where we’re trying to take guns back from rightful gun owners, lawful gun owners,” Janssen said. “This is an opportunity for people who do not want those firearms anymore to discard them safely, and in the process they will receive cash for getting rid of those firearms in a safe manner.”
Janssen said the firearms will be required to be unloaded in the owner’s trunk and officers will receive the firearms and safely transport them to another officer before exchanging cash with the owner.
Surveys
BPD also is asking for the public's input on how the department responds to calls for service.
The department is the second police department in Illinois to utilize Axon My90, an engagement tool that allows the department to send out a survey for community members to provide feedback on services they received.
The surveys are distributed to the caller’s cell phone number 72 hours after the call for police assistance was made.
“We’re just hoping to gauge as far as where we’re at as an agency. Are we meeting everybody’s expectations, and what we can do to improve?” Janssen said.
The survey will ask callers to describe their interaction with the incident, who they interacted with, how they view the agency based on their interaction and if they were provided with the help they needed, concerns within the community and more.
Answers are anonymous.
“The survey will not be sent out to everybody,” Janssen said. “It’s going to be sent out to a majority of our calls for service, but there are some where it will not. Sexual assault, a lot of violent crime, those will not be receiving the survey for obvious reasons. We would not like to re-traumatize somebody who just went through a horrific situation and start bombarding them with questions.”
The survey is a 90-day pilot program. The program will then be evaluated to determine further involvement.
Crime map
The police department has expanded its online map.
The map shows the report number, type of crime involved, date and time, as well as an approximate location of the incident.
Residents can sign up for daily, weekly or monthly emails alerts about crime within a selected area, such as their home, work or school.
Intelligence analysts at the police department are responsible for receiving a list of reported crimes and uploading the data into the crime map every two to three days.
“Sometimes there are sensitive cases and those would not be placed on that map, or it would be randomized and put into a different location around town,” Janssen said. “So the statistic might still be there as far as a more sensitive crime, but it’s not going to give you the location where that happened at.”
Janssen said that sensitive cases include any sexual offenses and homicides and are put in different locations to not disrupt any active investigations.
