How Many Assault Rifles Does The Waterford PD Have? An East Lyme Resident Wants to Know.

This article was reported and written by Paul Petrone.

Should the amount of assault rifles the Waterford Police Department has be made public?

That’s what East Lyme resident David Godbout is asking. On April 19, he sent a Freedom of Information request to the Town of Waterford asking how many assault rifles the police department has and how many large capacity magazines they have. 

Waterford has yet to make a decision on if they will give up that information or not. However, other towns have rejected similar FOI requests, citing a safety risk, and yet meanwhile the state is requiring its own citizens to do exactly that under its new gun control laws, Godbout said. 

“The question is if it creates a safety risk for the town to provide this information, wouldn’t it also create a safety risk for the people who own guns in this state,” Godbout said. 

At the beginning of this month, the state passed new gun laws that banned assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. It also required anyone that owns a now-banned assault rifle to register that weapon with the state by Jan. 1, 2014, according to the New Haven Register.

Godbout has sent out previous FOI requests in the past asking what kind of weaponry municipal police departments have, and several were rejected because it was deemed a safety risk to reveal that information. Now he has sent a similar request to the Waterford Police Department while asking why citizens have to supply this information, but the government does not. 

History 

Godburt sent a similar request to the City of Stamford in 2011, asking basically what type of weaponry the city has. Stamford rejected that request after they got a letter by the commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection stating that releasing that information would be a safety risk. 

“I have concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the release of these records may result in a safety risk,” wrote Reuben Bradford, the commissioner of the department at the time. “Specifically, the disclosure of information with regard to the type and number of specialized weapons that are intended to subdue certain people in order to protect other members of the public, would allow those who may plan violent actions against the City and its residents to calculate how to defend against the City’s protective measures, and/or the amount of force that would be necessary to overcome those protective measures.” 

So, if a municipality should not be forced to reveal what type of weaponry it has because it is a safety risk, why should an individual, Godburt said in an interview with Patch. By the state’s own conclusion, releasing that information would be a safety risk to that citizen, he said. 

Waterford has not yet ruled on if it will release the information or not, with the Waterford Police Department saying it is waiting on advice from its attorney. Meanwhile Thomas Hennick, who works for the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, said that a safety risk is a legitimate reason not to release the information. 

However, Hennick said it is hard to know if this would constitute a safety risk or if the public should have the right to know what the police department is buying. If Godbout decides to challenge this decision, it would go to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission for a ruling, Hennick said.