Who gets the blame when guns are lost or stolen
March 15, 2010
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
I guess this must be one of those “who watches the watchman” columns.
It comes at a time when many communities and states are enacting, or considering enacting, laws and ordinances that would require gunowners to report lost or stolen guns to the police within 24 hours of discovering the loss. These lost or stolen gun reporting requirements are being given teeth: gunowners who fail to report such gun losses and thefts face heavy fines and, in some cases, jail sentences.
Such laws tend to punish the victims of burglaries and other crimes without doing much to reduce crime. I know that these laws are justified by law enforcement and politicians to get around the claim that average citizens fail to report lost or stolen guns until those guns are recovered at a crime scene by police and are traced to them. That’s not an unlikely reality. Some people are so comfortable with the way they store firearms in their homes, businesses, vehicles and elsewhere that they really wouldn’t know they’ve lost a gun until someone, usually the police, asks where the gun is.
But citizen gunowners are far from the only people who might not know where their guns are. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the police and law enforcement agencies in general—the very guardians of society to whom such lost and stolen guns should be report—may be even more irresponsible than the average citizen gunowner.
Over the years, Gun Week has published many stories about police officers leaving guns behind in restrooms, restaurants and other quirky places. We’ve also had several stories about police chiefs, police commissioners, federal agents and sheriffs who left guns in their cars while off duty, or while taking a lunch or bathroom break, only to have them stolen. In some cases, the guns later turn up in criminal investigations.
But while these are generally one gun at a time news reports, every once in a while there is sort of a wholesale lost or stolen gun story. Some have involved substantial numbers of guns which were assigned to federal law enforcement agencies. Curiously, the latest of these involves the Department of Homeland Security, and it shows that carelessness and forgetfulness, and, in some cases, simple stupidity afflict those who are entrusted with guarding the public. In the case of the local “lost or stolen gun” ordinances, the very people to whom the average citizen is supposed to report such losses.
ABC news reported in mid-February, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), lost almost 300 guns according to a report by the Inspector General’s office.
The report which I have seen is available on the DHS website.
But ABC’s headlines focuses on the fact that the report said absent-minded officers left guns in a bowling alley, lunch box, on car seats or running boards.
At least one of the guns when recovered had had gang signs engraved on it. And that wasn’t the only one recovered after it had moved into the criminal marketplace.
“Guns meant to help safeguard America found their way into the hands of known criminals after absent-minded federal officers left firearms unsecured everywhere from fast-food restaurants to bowling alleys, according to a report, ABC noted.
“Nearly 300 guns were misplaced by or stolen from federal officials between fiscal years 2006 and 2008, some of which were never reported lost, the report concluded. Some of the guns were recovered later by local law enforcement from suspected gang members after they had been engraved with gang signs.
“The Department of Homeland Security, through its components, did not adequately safeguard and control its firearms,” according to the January report, which looked at seven of the department’s agencies, almost every one of the agencies under DHS except the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is otherwise protected by federal security requirements.
Firearms were left unattended in an idle vehicle in a parking lot, the restroom of a fast-food restaurant, a clothing store, a lunch box and a bowling alley, the report said.
One gun was locked in the trunk of an officer’s car along with body armor and radio equipment, but the key to the trunk was left next to the vehicle’s windshield wipers.
Another gun was left on the bumper of a car and fell off when the officer drove away.
Despite such anecdotal examples of negligence, the number of lost guns is not surprising to former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett.
“People who are true to their job, who are serious about their job have their guns with them all the time,” said Garrett, who carried a handgun for the Bureau for more than 20 years. “It shouldn’t happen, but for many people it sort of becomes like carrying their wallet. Do people lose their wallet? Sure they do.
“People put them down and then an hour later they go, ‘Oh, my.’ ”
Garrett also said many thieves target official vehicles specifically because they could contain guns, which could explain why some of the guns were later recovered from suspected gang members and drug smugglers.
During his time with the FBI, Garrett said, agent reports of missing or stolen guns happened “with some regularity.” He, however, says he never lost his gun.
The report was the result of an audit by the DHS’s inspector general that reviewed firearm policies of seven agencies, from the Secret Service to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no department-wide firearms policy and the DHS relies on each agency to manage its firearms. After the audit, the report recommended that the policy be changed.
“DHS is strongly committed to ensuring that weapons utilized in support of its law enforcement mission are kept secure,” DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said. “We took immediate action to correct the deficiencies identified in this audit and to improve our overall management of firearms.”
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were singled out in the report for being responsible for losing 243 of the 289 missing firearms, only 36 of which were determined to have been lost “due to circumstances beyond the control of the officers.” However, it should be noted that these are the two DHS divisions that have the largest inventories of guns of all kinds, handguns, rifles, automatic and semi-automatic carbines, and shotguns.
Meanwhile, local law enforcement agencies are still having trouble being responsible for firearms supposedly under their control.
The Associated Press (AP) reported on Feb. 24 that the Cleveland, TX, police department had an even bigger problem than DHS in terms of volume.
“A federal investigation is under way to determine whether some 500 weapons missing from a police department’s evidence room are part of an illegal firearms-trafficking scheme,” AP reported.
The guns were discovered missing from the Cleveland Police Department’s evidence room during an inventory last year, the Houston Chronicle reported The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) declined to discuss the probe with either news agency, saying it is an ongoing investigation. However, court records show ATF agents recovered 112 of the missing guns while executing a search warrant at a Humble gun shop.
Two days before the report from Texas, ATF was reported to be leading an investigation into a burglary report at the Whitley County, KY, Sheriff’s Office on Dec. 21.
Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge has said he can’t account for 78 weapons after the break-in. ATF spokesman George Huffman told The Times-Tribune of Corbin, KY, that the agency took over the investigation from the Kentucky State Police “because of the large number of firearms involved and ATF’s expertise in firearm investigations.”
So it continues. The “guardians” lose or misplace guns, but the public gets the blame.
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