Opinion ID: 2377250
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Delivery to the Chief

Text: Section 6-2375(a) requires a person seeking its protection to deliver any firearm to the Chief . . . at any police district, station, or central headquarters, or by summoning a police officer to the person's residence or place of business. In another section Chief is defined for the purposes of chapter 23 of title 6 of the Code, of which section 6-2375 is a part, as the Chief of Police of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia or his designated agent. D.C.Code § 6-2302(4) (1981). The legislative history states that what became section 6-2375 provides a mechanism for the lawful surrender or abandoning of any firearm or ammunition to the Chief or to a Metropolitan police officer. Council of the District of Columbia, Committee on the Judiciary and Criminal Law, Report on the Firearms Control Act of 1975 at 30 (April 21, 1976). The Metropolitan Police and the Capitol Police are two entirely separate police departments. Compare, e.g., D.C.Code § 4-104 with D.C.Code § 9-115 (1981). See also, e.g., D.C.Code § 4-127 (1986 Supp.) (prescribing uniform designs for four police forces, including both the Metropolitan Police and the Capitol Police); D.C.Code § 9-116 (1981) (authorizing the Mayor to detail Metropolitan Police officers to the Capitol Police). Significantly for the purposes of this case, Capitol Police officers are not and have never been designated agents of the Chief of the Metropolitan Police for the purpose of receiving firearms surrendered under D.C.Code § 6-2375(a). Conceding this, [10] Stein argues nevertheless that under general agency principles the Capitol Police had the authority to accept the guns and ammunition from him in compliance with the firearms laws. His argument is based on a statute which, he maintains, makes the Capitol Police designated . . . agent[s] of the state with the authority to arrest persons for violating any law of the District of Columbia, including the law prohibiting the possession of certain weapons. See D.C.Code § 9-115 (1981) (Capitol Police may make arrests within the United States Capitol Buildings and Grounds for any violations of any law of the United States [or] of the District of Columbia). Because their agency status, he asserts, allows them to enforce District of Columbia law by making arrests, it also allows them to enforce the law by acting as recipients of weapons surrendered under section 6-2375(a). We reject this argument for two reasons. First, although the Capitol Police have been given express authority under section 9-115 to arrest, they have no such express authority under section 6-2375(a) to take delivery of guns and ammunition. The statutory language and legislative history explicitly identify the authorized recipient to be the Chief or his designated agent, which includes only the Metropolitan Police, not the Capitol Police. Second, we do not read section 9-115 as creating an agency relationship. It gives to the Capitol Police the power to make arrests, but nowhere does it make them agents of the Metropolitan Police (or anyone else) for that purpose. Section 9-115 is an independent grant of arrest power to the Capitol Police, unrelated to any other powers which the Metropolitan Police may have under other statutes or regulations. In addition to calling for delivery to the Chief of the Metropolitan Police or his designated agent, section 6-2375(a) also requires that the person in possession of the guns and ammunition deliver them at any police district, station, or central headquarters, or by summoning a police officer to the person's residence or place of business. The guard desk in the Russell Senate Office Building, which is in a public hallway just inside the entrance, does not meet this requirement. Thus, even if the Capitol Police officer at that desk had been authorized to accept Stein's surrender of the firearms, that surrender could not validly take place there. The conclusion is inescapable that even if Stein's delivery of the weapons were otherwise in accord with the statute (which it was not; see part B, infra ), he delivered them to the wrong person at the wrong place.