Lansing — A change in the way court systems are reporting Extreme Risk Protection Order data makes it difficult to assess what specific circumstances across the state are triggering the confiscation of firearms from individuals.
The Michigan State Police last week denied a public records request from The Detroit News seeking a detailed, anonymized database of the orders and the circumstances leading to their issuance. State police provided the 2024 data to The News last year but denied the new request for the 2025 information because of a change that requires court systems to report their cases directly into the Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN), which is inaccessible to the public. The Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, a two-year-old statute often referred to as a “red flag law,” allows police to confiscate the firearms of individuals believed to be a risk to themselves or others. A new state-funded group meant to implement the law, faced with the same lack of centralized data, has been collecting case files from each of the state’s 83 counties, but some circuit courts have not been cooperative with the requests.
And the process, even if all courts were responding, is burdensome. The Michigan Firearm Law Implementation Program, funded through the 2024 budget, has yet to receive all of the case files from 2024 ERPOs, let alone those from 2025, said April Zeoli, director for the program.
“Right now, we don’t know what any of those extreme risk protection orders that were granted are for,” Zeoli said. “And knowing what they’re for helps us figure out what problems, what challenges people are facing that law enforcement or family members or health care providers are going to ERPO as a solution for.”
Read the full article as published by the Detroit News
Additional Mentions