Despite the New York governor’s 2022 executive order that all state police troopers be "trained and instructed" o how to use the state's Red Flag law, some officers received only written instructions and did not have formal, interactive training with an instructor by the summer of 2023, when they encountered a man who would go on to commit the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. that year, Scripps News reports. Two troopers had received only guides, manuals and updates about the law last July when they decided not to petition for an Extreme Risk Protection Order to remove firearms from an Army reservist whose "weird behavior” and access to guns concerned his colleagues. The Red Flag Law is also known as the Extreme Risk Protection Order Law (ERPO) . The only trooper on the scene that day who had received police academy training on the law had been on the job for eight months, said Beau Duffy, an New York State Police spokesperson. The two more senior troopers took charge of the situation that day. Three months later, the Army reservist, Robert Card II, used a .308 Ruger SFAR rifle to kill 18 people in Maine before killing himself.
“This incident was reviewed, and it was determined that the troopers who responded acted appropriately,” Duffy said. “The State Police uses a well-established system of internal bulletins, memos, guides, and updates to the NYS Police Manual to ensure that our members have the information they are required to know to perform their duties effectively,” he said. The law allows police to seek a protection order that would remove someone’s weapons “if there is probable cause to believe that person is likely to engage in conduct that could result in serious harm to himself or others,” according to NYSP training materials. The process also flags someone’s record so they cannot obtain other firearms for a period of time. There are similar laws in 20 other states and Washington, D.C. New York State troopers have been instructed, that they “must apply” for one of these orders if there is a “substantial risk of physical harm to other persons as manifested by homicidal or other violent behavior by which others are placed in reasonable fear of serious physical harm.”
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