The Torrance Police Department failed to return 17 surrendered firearms worth $15,800 to their rightful owner, ignored two court orders to do so and then destroyed them after almost three years of illegally holding the weapons, according to a lawsuit against the city by gun advocacy groups.

The department’s actions cost Torrance taxpayers $30,000 to settle the federal lawsuit and are likely to have statewide repercussions.

As part of the settlement, the department was required to revise its written policy regarding seized and surrendered firearms, which groups such as the National Rifle Association and California Rifle and Pistol Association hope to use in a statewide effort to educate law enforcement agencies.

“It’s been an ongoing problem for years,” said attorney Chuck Michel of Long Beach-based Michel & Associates, which filed the lawsuit and represents the two groups. “That’s why we want to fix this once and for all.

“As a practical matter in most cities it becomes too expensive to fight the fight to get back your guns. But it usually doesn’t take this long for (police departments) to give the guns back and there usually aren’t court orders in place. … You will have to ask them why they ignored these two court orders.”

Torrance Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Kranke didn’t respond directly to that question when asked by the Daily Breeze.

Instead, he blamed a state Department of Justice letter advising law enforcement agencies that they needed to retain the firearms unless their owner could provide proof of ownership and register some of them.

That DOJ letter, he wrote in an email “was an incorrect interpretation” of the state law.

“Apparently, other cities such as San Francisco and Oakland have also been sued based on the same erroneous interpretation and those cities settled their cases and revised their procedures.”

Kranke didn’t address why a lawsuit was required to force Torrance to do exactly the same thing.

The City Attorney’s Office declined to comment, referring the matter to the Police Department.

Kranke said the firearms in question were destroyed in April 2013 because their owner hadn’t contacted the Police Department in more than six months.

But Michel said that while state law allows an agency to destroy firearms after six months if it deems the owner has abandoned them, that clearly wasn’t the case here.

His client, Torrance resident Michael Roberts, had filed four separate Law Enforcement Gun Release applications required by the state to recover the firearms from 2010 to 2012. He also received two binding court orders the department was required to follow when Torrance police ignored the DOJ paperwork.

“In this instance, not only did the Torrance PD know that the firearms weren’t abandoned by Mr. Roberts, but the department had affirmative knowledge that Mr. Roberts desperately wanted his property back,” Michel wrote in an email response. “The city knew about these (court) orders and never challenged them in court, but instead simply ignored them thereafter when Roberts made additional attempts, armed with these binding court orders, to get his firearms back.”

Roberts had voluntarily surrendered the weapons in February 2010 when a temporary restraining order was filed against him by his physician after he got into an argument with the office staff.

When the restraining order was lifted and he attempted to regain possession of the firearms, his odyssey with the Torrance Police Department began.

The lawsuit alleged a “malicious motive” on the part of the department, which went a step further than simply misapplying a law by “willfully disobeying a judicial order in order to punish a firearms owner who wouldn’t yield to TPD’s unlawful registration policy.”

“It was a frustrating process that took years and, in the end, family heirlooms were destroyed that money can’t replace,” Roberts said in an email. “I’m happy Torrance is changing its policy so this doesn’t happen to someone else, but I wish the police had obeyed the law in the first place.”

Roberts’ dilemma in dealing with a law enforcement agency that doesn’t follow the law is fairly common, said CRPA spokesman Rick Travis.

He hopes the Torrance lawsuit will finally resolve the issue.

“CRPA gets lots of calls from folks having problems getting their guns back,” Travis said. “The DOJ’s LEGR (Law Enforcement Gun Release) letter wrongly tells police to not give guns back unless the person can document ownership of the gun and it is registered in the DOJ’s database. The law doesn’t require this, and gun owners can’t comply anyway, because police routinely fail to enter the firearms into the DOJ’s database, and most people don’t have receipts for the guns they own.

“So DOJ’s bad advice is creating liability for these departments who accept it. Now that two courts have confirmed that the DOJ is wrong, CRPA is launching a statewide police education effort and will be following up with more lawsuits if necessary.”