“The issue of weapons did not come up,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said. “We had no information that he had weapons or reason to believe he had weapons.”</p>
<p>Rodger had legally purchased handguns, which would have come up during a check of law enforcement weapons databases. At least two of them had been purchased before Rodger’s encounters with authorities.</p>
<p>The Sheriff’s Office has defended its handling of the Rodger case. It said its deputies acted properly, including an April welfare check at Rodger’s apartment.</p>
<p>Law enforcement experts said most departments don’t have explicit rules requiring officials to check gun registration or ask about weapons when officers perform welfare checks.</p>
<p>That decision, they said, is often left to the discretion of officers.</p>
<p>The Sheriff’s Office had three interactions with Rodger in the year before the May 23 rampage, which left seven people dead, including Rodger.</p>
<p>In January, officials said, Rodger accused a roommate of stealing three candles worth $22 and performed a citizen’s arrest. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office eventually arrested the roommate and booked him on petty theft charges.</p>
<p>Last summer, Rodger accused several people of assaulting him. But investigators concluded that he was the aggressor in the incident and a detective dropped the case.</p>
<p>Then on April 30, four deputies, a UC Santa Barbara police officer and a dispatcher in training went to Rodger’s apartment to perform a welfare check, officials said Thursday.</p>
<p>The visit occurred after a person who identified himself as a friend of Rodger called a county mental health staff member. Based on that call and information from Rodger’s mother, sheriff’s officials said in a statement released Thursday, the staffer requested the welfare check.</p>
<p>Sheriff’s officials did not detail what information the deputies had when they made the visit. But a Rodger family friend told The Times that his mother had contacted his therapist in April out of concern over bizarre videos that Rodger posted on YouTube. The family friend said the therapist contacted a mental health service, who referred the matter to authorities.</p>
<p>When the group spoke to the 22-year-old outside his apartment, the department said, he was “shy, timid and polite.”</p>
<p>“Based upon the information available to them at the time,” the statement continued, “sheriff’s deputies concluded that Rodger was not an immediate threat to himself or others, and that they did not have cause to place him on an involuntary mental health hold, or to enter and search his residence. Therefore, they did not view the videos or conduct a weapons check on Rodger.”