SIDE STREETS: Cops' request to deliver gun to them hard to swallow

   Every day after work, Freddy Gibbons walks her dogs, Bonsai and Lola, along Monument Creek. It's been her ritual for years. 

    Last week, Gibbons and her dogs made a couple of discoveries during their daily walk that left her shocked and angry.

    The first surprise came when Gibbons noticed something near the water not far from where some children were playing.

    "There, in the sand, was a little black gun," Gibbons said. "At first I thought it was just a toy. Then I noticed some rust on it. I pulled it out and realized it was a real gun."

    Gibbons grew up around weapons and immediately knew what she was holding.

    "It was a .25-caliber handgun," she said. "It was a nice little gun."

    Her fascination was interrupted by the laughter of children nearby and the scary realization of what might have been.

    "They could have easily found it instead of me," Gibbons said.

    So Gibbons took the Spanishmade handgun home and called police. That's when Gibbons got her second surprise, one that left her furious.

    "I wanted to do the right thing and turn it in because I didn't want kids finding it and getting hurt," Gibbons said. "But the police wouldn't come get it from me. They wanted me to deliver it. I was enraged."

    Although Gibbons is comfortable with guns, she doesn't want them around. And she wasn't about to stroll into the police station packing heat.

    "I'm not stupid," she said. "I refused."

    Eventually, Gibbons drove the gun to the Police Operations Center downtown, but she insisted an officer get it from her trunk.

    "I was so mad," she said. "They are lucky I found it and did the right thing. What if I wasn't a good person?"

    Police Lt. Skip Arms said there are a million good reasons why Gibbons was asked to deliver the gun - $1.3 million, precisely, in budget cuts the agency suffered last year.

    "Some things had to be taken away," Arms said.

    The list includes using patrol officers to make house calls to retrieve guns tossed into creeks.

    "We have to prioritize their time," Arms said. "We must have officers available for high-priority calls. We can no longer do more with less."

    If Gibbons had left the gun in the sand and called police, the response might have been different.

    "In that case, it was an imminent safety risk to the children," Arms said. "Once she picked it up, she eliminated the immediate risk."

    Gibbons had a response for that explanation:

    "That's an excuse," Gibbons said. "I don't want to hear about your budget cuts.

    "They've got cops sitting on Interstate 25 clocking people and writing speeding tickets. But they can't take a few minutes to get a gun off the streets?"

    Tell me about your neighborhood: 636-0193 or bill.vogrin@gazette.com