protective custody

The commission, which also asked to hear from an official from the Army Reserve Psychological Health Program on Thursday, issued an interim report in March saying law enforcement should have seized Card’s guns and put him in protective custody based on these warnings, using the existing yellow flag law.

The state’s yellow flag law differs by putting police in the lead of the process, but the law was updated to allow police to ask a judge for a warrant to take someone into protective custody.

That removes a barrier of police meeting with a person to assess whether protective custody is needed, something that came into play when the Lewiston gunman refused to answer his door during a police welfare check more than a month before the shootings.

The legislation includes changes to the state’s yellow flag law that allows police to assess an individual, take the person into protective custody for a mental health evaluation and hold a hearing before a judge to remove guns from someone in a psychiatric crisis.

Law enforcement should have seized Card’s guns and put him in protective custody weeks before he committed the deadliest mass shooting in state history, the commission concluded.