San Francisco

Officials from California's Santa Clara county were considering creating a new task team to help curb rising gun-related domestic violence, a media report said.

Santa Clara Board of Supervisors President Cindy Chavez is pushing for a plan to set aside about $750,000 annually to fund the new team to complete their mission of intervening in domestic disputes in a timely way before such altercations turn violent or fatal by family members who possess guns, Xinhua news agency quoted the KTVU TV report as saying on Monday.

The officials were trying to close a gap where police officers usually do not have a legally coordinated way to prevent suspects of domestic violence from carrying weapons, said the report.

It cited a case in June 2019 when a frantically distressed family member shot and killed four members of his own family in a domestic dispute before committing suicide in San Jose, about 79 km south of San Francisco.

Such cases of domestic violence-turned massacre have increased steadily in the past decade, Santa Clara officials said.

"We know that any gun that's out there in the hands of someone illegally has the potential for violence," the KTVU quoted Deputy Chief of the San Jose Police Department Heather Randol as saying.

The new task team will be composed of three analysts, a prosecutor and an investigator, according to the officials.

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