Montana § 44-3-311 - Evidentiary Seizure Of Law Enforcement Weapons

§ 44-3-311. Evidentiary Seizure Of Law Enforcement Weapons

Evidentiary seizure of law enforcement weapons. (1) When law enforcement is involved in an officer-involved shooting, the law enforcement officer's weapon involved in the shooting must be collected by investigators to be photographed and turned over to the state laboratory of criminalistics for test firing and collection of cartridge cases and rounds of ammunition and to document the unique characteristics of the weapon. (2) After an investigation is complete and no appeals are pending or no criminal charges are filed or are presently contemplated against the law enforcement officer, a weapon collected for evidence testing pursuant to subsection (1) or collected as part of a coroner's inquest pursuant to 46-4-201 must be returned within 7 days by whichever entity is appropriate to the law enforcement agency from which it was collected for redeployment in the field.