Man claims sheriff's office violated his rights

RIDGEFIELD TWP. — A Norwalk man is asserting that his rights were infringed when deputies attempted to seize his guns due to a protection order that was, in fact, denied. That man, a River Road resident who asked not to be identified, contacted the newspaper with documentation over an incident that occurred at his home last summer. Huron County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived at the man's home on Aug. 12 to serve him with a civil protection order, seize any guns in the home and inform him he was disqualified from possessing firearms, according to a sheriff's office report. People who have protection orders approved against them are prohibited from owning or possessing firearms for as long as the order is in place. It turns out, though, that the paperwork the man was served with stated that the order was denied during an Aug. 4 hearing in front of Magistrate Bradley Sales. According to the man, both he and his wife were home when the deputy came to serve him. He said that the department would not let the woman leave the premises until the weapons were surrendered and that she missed work because of it. The man also stated that the sheriff's office allowed a friend of his to take hold of the firearms rather than being seized by the department. When the man went to the sheriff's office on Aug. 13, the error was discovered and the man was told that he could possess firearms. "It is unusual for the court to provide this office with applications for ex-parte orders that are denied," Huron County Sheriff's Department Lt. Bill Duncan noted in his sheriff's office report. Sheriff's office commanders believed they knew what the error was and vowed to retrain their staff to avoid the same issue in the future. "I explained what we believed happened and why and told (the man) that we would address the issue and train staff to better understand the paperwork that is received from the court so we execute service that is consistent with the direction of the court," the report states. The court sent the paperwork to the sheriff's office so that the man could be notified that the application for a protection order against him was denied, the report states. The sergeant who served the paperwork incorrectly assumed that it was a ratified protection order that required him to seize the man's guns. In addition to the paperwork, the deputy was supposed to inform the man of a hearing set for Aug. 25. After conversing with the man at the sheriff's office on Aug. 13, Lt. Ted Evans met with Sgt. Mitchel Cawrse and his shift to take "corrective steps to ensure this does not happen again," the report states, but it did not clarify what those corrective steps were. The newspaper reached out to Chief Deputy Dave Ditz asking if Cawrse faced any discipline for the incident. That message went unanswered.