Article content

The Ottawa Police Service would rather invest in proactive policing and work with communities than fund a gun buyback or CCTV cameras, according to its response to a gun ban motion from city council.

In 2019, Coun. Rawlson King, in a motion to council, asked the mayor to lobby the federal government to ban handguns and for police to be proactive in their efforts to deal with gun violence. That motion was sent to the police board, whose policy and governance committee received the police response on Monday.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Proactive policing, not gun buybacks or CCTV cameras: Ottawa Police Service Back to video

King’s motion also referenced a gun buyback. Police, too, were looking into the use of CCTV cameras in response to a separate motion by Mayor Jim Watson.

The premise of a gun buyback is essentially that by removing firearms in a city, police will decrease shootings. The statistics show that just isn’t true, said Insp. Carl Cartright, who oversees both the guns and gangs and drug units.

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia

Buybacks work by taking legal guns into police possession but about 73 per cent of the guns police are dealing with have been illegally smuggled from the United States, Cartright said.