After the city of Springfield hosted a gun buyback program in 2007, I started pestering the folks at the police department about following along to watch the guns get destroyed. After months of documenting, processing and background-checking all the guns, they finally invited me observe the process of getting rid of the more than 500 guns and other evidence.

This story was a ball to report. The officers on the police department’s evidence destruction team were fun and knowledgeable. Watching them go through all sorts of old evidence was interesting, but getting to go inside a Bartonville foundry to watch the guns as they were dumped into the white-hot flames of a furnace was a sight to behold.

Hundreds of city buyback guns fed to foundry’s furnace / Old paperwork and evidence, illegal drugs also destroyed
May 27, 2008

The idea of a gun buyback, during which Springfield residents could turn over their unwanted weapons to police, no questions asked, seemed like a good one last fall.

The offer turned out to be far more popular — and expensive — than expected. And it culminated last week when nearly 500 buyback guns — plus a variety of drugs, paperwork and other no longer needed crime evidence — went into a 3,000-degree furnace at the Keystone Steel and Wire foundry in Bartonville.

When the buyback was envisioned, the idea was to get guns off the street, cut down on violent crime, and maybe decrease the number of firearms stolen during residential burglaries, city leaders reasoned. To sweeten the deal, a $100 Visa debit card was offered for every gun turned in. Organizers guessed officers would collect 150 guns — tops.

By the time the four-hour buyback was over, police had amassed 526 guns, including everything from rusty pistols with no visible markings to antique, wood-handled hunting rifles and two starter pistols. They had to issue IOUs for additional debit cards.

Next problem: what to do with all those firearms.

Evidence technicians examined and identified the guns, traced serial numbers to make sure the guns hadn’t been used in any crimes, and determined if any had historical value. The rest were prepared for destruction.

Seven months later, with police officers watching every step of the way, 478 of the buyback guns were bagged, hoisted 100 feet into the air and dropped into the Keystone furnace.

Evidence technician Bobby Dorsey, a city police officer, and Lt. Jim Henry, dressed in hard hats, protective goggles and gloves, were inside a foundry control room as guns began to curl and fall out of the bottom of four bags hanging over the furnace. A dramatic fireball erupted from within the furnace as the evidence fell in, and the heat could be felt through the glass window of the control room.

“Man, that sure was something,” Henry said later.

In addition to the guns, the officers burned marijuana, hashish, prescription medication, drug pipes, knives, clothing, bloody sheets and clothing, paperwork and other items of evidence that had been approved for destruction.

The burn was part of an evidence-destruction process that happens several times a year.

The Springfield Police Department follows strict rules that dictate how and when evidence can be destroyed, who participates in the process, who oversees it and who must sign off on it. Some evidence, including material from homicides, can never be destroyed, meaning the department is indefinitely responsible for holding those items.

The process is cumbersome, but with good reason — police want to ensure they never destroy something that isn’t supposed to be destroyed.

Michelle Lauterbach, a civilian police employee who coordinates the evidence section, estimated the process of disposing of a single piece of evidence takes about three months from beginning to end, once a case has been closed out and the statute of limitations is up.

Once officials determine an item is eligible for destruction, they determine if the associated court case or police investigation is closed and then try to find an owner for the property if it can be released.

Some things can’t be returned, such as ammunition, guns that belonged to convicted felons and drugs.

“But if it is something of significant value, then by law you do have to return it to the owner,” Lauterbach said.

When an owner is located, she sends a letter offering to return the item. If no one responds after 30 days, police can begin the destruction process, which involves several steps, including several officers double-checking paperwork against the item itself to make sure the correct evidence is about to be destroyed. Each officer has to sign off on the process, and they all have to be present during every step of the two-day procedure.

“You have to get a lieutenant, a supervisor, an officer, an evidence officer and a sergeant, and all their schedules have to be on the same day, and the burn or landfill facility has to be open on the same day, because every single one of those people have to sign off,” Lauterbach noted.

The team makes roughly two trips to a foundry each year to burn evidence. Some items, such as batteries, videotapes, liquids, ammunition and excessive amounts of paper, can’t be burned at the foundry, so it goes in a landfill.

Foundry helps police agencies recycle unwanted evidence
May 27, 2008

BARTONVILLE — All of those unwanted guns Springfield police collected back in October by now have become fences, facemasks for football helmets or spiral notebook wire.

Keystone Steel and Wire, the Bartonville foundry where a recent evidence burn took place, often helps law enforcement agencies get rid of unwanted evidence, mostly drugs and weapons. The company has worked with Springfield and Bartonville police, the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office, Illinois State Police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to name a few.

The actual destruction is a dramatic sight, with flames and sparks shooting from the depths of a 180-ton electric arc furnace, the eruption of a white-hot fireball and the buzz of blue-tinged electrical current melting down the metal.

Workers loaded hundreds of guns, along with some drugs, clothing and other weapons, into four large bags made of Tyvek. The tops of the bags were cabled together, moved into the foundry building, attached to a hook and hoisted 100 feet into the air.

Below, sparks and flames could be seen shooting from the arc furnace, where scrap metal is heated using electricity and oxygen until it is melted. The temperature inside the furnace reaches 3,000 degrees.

After the furnace was emptied and taken offline, the four bags of evidence slowly moved into place overhead. Even before being lowered, the intense heat caused the bottom of the bag to burst open. Guns tumbled out into the furnace.

As soon as the evidence hit the inside of the furnace, a large glowing fireball erupted. The intense heat of the fire could be felt inside a sealed control room a safe distance away. The fireball was caused by the scrap hitting the molten heel of steel inside.

After that, a hulking scrap bucket was lowered into the furnace — 285,000 pounds of scrap is added on the first charge and between 115,000 and 125,000 pounds on the second.

Three carbon graphite electrodes — 24 inches around and 27 feet long — then are lowered into the furnace, and an electrical current is passed through them to melt the scrap.

The Springfield Police Department’s evidence became billets, which are 5-by-5-inches and cut into 50-foot lengths. They are sent to the rod mill for rolling, where they are reduce to a round rod in diameters from 0.219 inches to 0.594 inches.

The rods are coiled into 4,100-pound units, one for each billet, and can reach a length of up to 6 miles, depending on the diameter of the rod.

The coils then are sent to the wire mill, where they become fence products, such as barbed wire, stockade panels or garden fence. The coils also are sold to other companies for their production applications, such as grill screens, facemasks for football helmets and spiral notebook wire.

The foundry temporarily goes offline to accommodate evidence destructions.

Doug Harper, manager of health and safety for Keystone, works closely with law enforcement agencies to schedule the burns.

“The operation is hindered by the destruction, but not enough to cause delays of any concerns,” he said. “For example, a 15-minute delay can cost the company $215 a minute.”

That works out to $3,225 per burn. Springfield police said Keystone does not charge them to burn evidence, something they greatly appreciate.