CINCINNATI — For Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge, it's a matter of setting the right example.
"We, (the) Cincinnati Police Department, city administration, do not want to be a part of the gun violence in our city," she said. "We preach to people all the time about safe storage, be a responsible gun owner, and so that is incumbent upon us as well."
The department, under Theetge's guidance, will end a gun buyback program it's had in place with gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Now, instead of sending retired firearms back to the manufacturer — in exchange for new guns at a discount — CPD will destroy the weapons.
"Every five years, our officers receive a new firearm, and what we would normally do is work with our manufacturer ... and sometimes do a one-for-one trade," Theetge said. "Doing the trade with the manufacturer was beneficial in a financial aspect for us."
Cutting the program will cost CPD, since they have to pay full price for guns now.
It's why the Cincinnati City Council approved the allocation of $500,000 from its carryover budget to the department.
"The accessibility of guns on our streets, both legal and illegal is contributing to the gun violence problem that we're seeing in our community," Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval said during the Oct. 9 meeting. "The idea that we would send service weapons back to the manufacturer so they could just sell them and get them back on the streets struck us as inconsistent with our goals."
According to Everytown, a national nonprofit that advocates for gun control, just four gun manufacturers accounted for more than 40% of recovered guns used in crimes in 2023. CPD's manufacturer, Smith & Wesson, was one of them.
"We want to do our part to make sure that we're not adding to the volume of guns on the street," Chief Theetge said. "One of the things I started seeing were other agencies — large cities in the U.S. — that were doing (this) same thing."
Theetge says it's hard to measure what the impact will be but described the change as "optic."
"I can't say, 'Well this and that is not going to work.' I don't have time for that," said Mitchell Morris, director of Cincinnati Works' Phoenix Program. "Whatever you have to do that's gonna be able to save somebody's child from getting shot in the streets. We have to try it."
Theetge says the next round of firearm purchases will take place sometime in spring 2025.
Plans for how CPD will destroy the retired guns are still in the works, Theetge said.
"In order to have gun violence in your community, you need to have people (who) have access to guns, and we're seeing that more now than I've ever seen in my career," said Theetge, who marked 34 years on the force Monday.
