Cops seized N.J. man’s guns during mental health crisis 5 years ago. He wants them back.

By S.P. Sullivan | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The man had been drinking heavily, his wife worried he was suicidal, and the emergency room nurse didn’t want to release him unless he temporarily surrendered his guns, according to court records.

That was in 2018. He never got them back.

More than five years later, a New Jersey appeals court held Monday that police lack the authority to indefinitely seize a person’s firearms and auction them off in such cases. The Wyckoff man, who was not identified because the case involves sealed health records, will get a March hearing to determine what happens to the guns.

New Jersey has among the strictest gun control laws in the nation — and one of the lowest rates of gun deaths. But Monday’s decision is at least the second in less than a year in which New Jersey courts found police and prosecutors overstepped their authority in seizing someone’s weapons.

Under state law, police can take weapons if a person is credibly accused of domestic violence, faces certain criminal charges, or if authorities or family members file an emergency application under “red flag” laws which provide for temporary seizure if a person is a risk to themselves or others.

Supporters of red flag laws say they strike a delicate balance of respecting the Second Amendment rights of someone experiencing a mental health disorder while keeping them safe.

Evan Nappen, a prominent gun rights attorney representing the Wyckoff man, countered under the current set-up, “mental health is treated as a crime.” A spokeswoman for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, which is handling the case, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Court records show the ordeal started in Nov. 18, 2018, when Wyckoff police received a call reporting the man “missing and potentially suicidal.”

The man and his wife had been having marriage trouble, the man’s father died just a week before and he had a history of depression for which he was on medication, the records show.

He planned to attend a football game and stay with a friend, but a text message he sent his wife caused her concern.

“Don’t worry you will NEVER have to deal with me again and nobody,” he wrote as the couple quarreled over text. He stopped responding to messages and his wife later found a single bullet on the floor next to a safe in their home.

The man’s wife “had never seen a gun or a bullet anywhere near her husband before and was concerned in light of his text message earlier that day,” court records say.

A family member called police, who found the man, unarmed, at his friend’s house. He was taken to a hospital for “a risk assessment and a psychiatric evaluation” and held for several hours but released when a doctor determined he did not pose a risk to himself.

A hospital nurse contacted police about the weapons, and two days later, the man voluntarily surrendered his collection of firearms, which included two handguns he kept locked in his house and seven long guns stored elsewhere in a warehouse, records show.

Five months later, in April 2019, the man’s attorney requested his guns back from Wyckoff police.

They declined, and he sued, but the department never responded to his complaint. Two years later, Bergen County prosecutors filed a motion to revoke the man’s Firearms Purchaser Identification Card, a legal document required to buy guns in New Jersey, and force the sale of his existing guns.

At a hearing, the man’s psychiatrist testified he “does not pose a danger to himself, others, or property and that he can safely handle and own firearms,” according to court records.

The judge disagreed, ordering he give up both the ID card and the weapons. On Monday, the state appellate court held that was a mistake, citing a case last year in which authorities in Bergen County were ordered to return weapons they seized from a man based on expunged criminal records.

The appeals court upheld the judge’s ruling revoking the man’s purchaser ID, but held the law doesn’t cover “forfeiture of firearms already possessed” because you technically do not need a permit to keep a gun in your own home.

“There are multiple legal mechanisms to take guns, and then possibly to seek forfeiture,” Nappen, the man’s attorney, said in an interview after the ruling. “But license revocation is not such a procedure.”