BELLEVUE, WA – Following the announcement by Salt Lake City, Utah Police Chief Charles F. “Rick” Dinse that he has accepted a position on the board of directors of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah (GVPC), an organization with links to various extremist anti-gun groups, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) called on him to step down from his law enforcement job.

“By joining the board of an outspoken anti-gun-rights organization, Chief Dinse has made it abundantly clear that he cannot fulfill his obligation to enforce the laws of Utah, including its sensible concealed carry law, fairly and objectively,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “If he wants to get into politics, he needs to get out of law enforcement.”

Dinse was quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune, lamenting that he has “seen guns and the violence surrounding them and the impact it has on the community and individuals…” He further asserted that “Gun violence is about public health and public safety.”

“Chief Dinse is regurgitating the rhetoric of the extremist gun control movement, almost as though he were reading directly from a script,” Gottlieb observed. “Not only is this an insult to the intelligence of Utah gun owners, it is a clear indication that he has switched from being a police chief to a puppet for the state’s leading anti-civil rights lobby. That’s not a ‘natural extension of his job’ as he claims in the newspaper. It’s a sell-out of his oath to uphold the law, even the gun law whether he likes it or not. But what else could Utah residents expect from somebody who came from Los Angeles, California?

“Henceforth,” Gottlieb continued, “Rick Dinse will be nothing more than a shill for the anti-gun lobby, working against the rights of the law-abiding citizens he was hired to serve, while wearing a uniform and badge that his obvious philosophical leanings will almost certainly discredit. That’s not what he’s being paid for by the Salt Lake City taxpayers, many whom are gun owners whose rights he appears poised to trample. From now on, Chief Dinse will have no credibility on the gun issue, and now it is debatable that he ever had any.”