Sacramento police seize 43 firearms, arrest dozens for gun crimes after upping patrols
The Sacramento Police Department says it has made dozens of firearm-related arrests in the past two weeks, as recent gun violence and homicides in the city prompted heightened patrol efforts.
The department said Wednesday in a social media post that it has seized 43 illegally possessed guns and arrested 40 suspects, including “felons and validated gang members who are prohibited from possessing firearms,” in the past 12 days.
For comparison, police made fewer than 60 arrests during the full month of September for felonies related to firearms possession or brandishing, crime data available through the city’s open data portal show.
In Wednesday’s post, the police department says the increased patrols are a “direct response” to a spate of recent shooting incidents.
Most of the violence within and just outside of Sacramento city limits dates back to Oct. 3.
That day alone, a drive-by shooting at a Del Paso Heights park left a 9-year-old girl dead and three others injured; a gunman shot three shoppers at an Afghan market in Arden Arcade, fatally wounding two of them before reportedly turning the gun on himself; a 17-year-old Sacramento Charter High School student was found fatally shot in a crashed car along Jackson Road near Folsom Boulevard; and another drive-by in North Sacramento’s Strawberry Manor neighborhood sent two men and a 17-year-old girl to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
On Oct. 5, another man was found with a life-threatening gunshot wound in a crashed vehicle, this one in Del Paso Heights. Fire personnel pronounced him dead at the scene, Sacramento Police said.
At least one suspect, identified as 21-year-old Laise Hands, has been arrested in connection with the Mama Marks Park shooting in Del Paso Heights that killed Makaylah Brent, and a minor was arrested in connection to the Jackson Road shooting of Jaylen Betschart.
In the days immediately following the flurry of shootings, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg asked for peace, and called upon community leaders and the Police Department to increase violence prevention efforts.
“An eye for an eye only leads to everybody becoming blind,” Steinberg said during an Oct. 5 press conference outside City Hall.
The police department social media post included photos of more than a dozen of the recently seized firearms, including both rifles and handguns, some of them with extended magazines.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 2:46 PM.
