This story was revealed in partnership with CBS Information & Stations and The Hint.
Greater than a dozen legislation enforcement businesses have stopped reselling their used weapons or pledged to rethink the observe after an investigation by The Hint, CBS Information, and Reveal from The Middle for Investigative Reporting.
The investigation, revealed final 12 months, revealed that greater than 52,000 former police weapons had resurfaced in robberies, home violence incidents, homicides, and different crimes between 2006 and 2022. Lots of these weapons discovered their manner into civilian fingers after businesses traded them to retailers for reductions on new gear or resold them to their very own officers.
In a January report about gun trafficking, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives warned legislation enforcement in opposition to reselling weapons due to the frequency with which former police weapons are utilized in violent crimes.
The Hint and CBS Information subsequently contacted 60 legislation enforcement businesses with a historical past of reselling weapons to ask whether or not they had modified their insurance policies.
Twenty-one departments responded. 4 — the Cincinnati, Columbus, and Sacramento police departments, in addition to the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Workplace in New Jersey — confirmed they’d stopped reselling weapons after final 12 months’s investigation. (As The Hint and CBS Information beforehand reported, the investigation prompted the Indianapolis and Minneapolis police departments to additionally discontinue gun resales.)
Seven extra businesses mentioned they’d overview their insurance policies in gentle of the ATF’s suggestion. These businesses are the Wisconsin State Patrol, the New York State Police, the Newark Police Division, the sheriff’s places of work in California’s San Diego and Orange counties, the Colorado State Patrol, and the Boulder County Sheriff’s Workplace.
“We can be contemplating a coverage change concerning promoting weapons owned by the Boulder County Sheriff’s Workplace this 12 months,” Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson informed The Hint. He mentioned the company would want to examine with the county commissioners to make sure they’d sufficient cash to exchange outdated gear with out the trade-in low cost, however he believed they might assist further funding if wanted.
Police forces usually resell weapons as a result of gun shops provide trade-in worth, permitting departments to offset the price of gear upgrades and, authorities have argued, save taxpayer cash. Companies that select to get rid of the weapons not solely forfeit the trade-in worth however should additionally pay an organization to destroy them.
A number of businesses cited budgetary considerations as their purpose for persevering with to resell weapons.
Mark Kennedy, chief of the Quincy Police Division in Massachusetts, informed CBS Information that he feared his officers’ used weapons may wind up in crimes, however that his division couldn’t afford to alter its coverage. “If it wasn’t value prohibitive, I might completely destroy them,” he mentioned.
In Kentucky, legislation enforcement’s fingers are tied. A state legislation requires businesses to promote weapons they not want, together with departmental weapons and people seized in reference to crimes.
In 2019, a Kentucky State Police pistol resold to a retiring detective ended up in Buffalo, New York, the place federal brokers confiscated it whereas serving a search warrant on a homicide suspect. When CBS Information requested whether or not the Kentucky State Police’s coverage had modified, a spokesperson pointed to the state legislation, noting the company “is required to conform.”
Researchers say that whereas trade-ins can lower an company’s prices by tens of 1000’s of {dollars}, taxpayers in the end bear the monetary burden of the violence wrought with resold police weapons — a worth that may far outstrip financial savings on new gear. A 2010 Iowa State College examine estimated the price of a single murder at greater than $17 million. That price ticket contains spending on emergency response and crime scene cleanup, misplaced wages and tax income, salaries for investigators, and the price of incarcerating suspects.
Scot Thomasson, a former ATF particular agent, mentioned legislation enforcement businesses continuously negotiate trade-ins with out express approval from native elected officers, leaving taxpayers unaware that the police weapons their cash bought may find yourself in civilian fingers.
“The taxpayer pays for these weapons for use by police for the safety of their neighborhood,” Thomasson mentioned. “Now that gun may wind up in a felony’s fingers for use in opposition to the identical taxpayer that paid for it. It’s simply plain unsuitable.”
In its January warning to legislation enforcement businesses, the ATF mentioned it had recognized greater than 1,000 former police weapons recovered in homicides and one other 2,000 confiscated from convicted felons between 2019 and 2023.
The ATF additionally cited a 1998 decision from the Worldwide Affiliation of Chiefs of Police that instructed businesses to not resell weapons. The decision famous that “the recirculation of those firearms again into the overall inhabitants will increase the supply of firearms which might be used once more to kill or injure further cops and residents.”
However William Brooks, a former Norwood, Massachusetts, police chief who now heads the IACP’s firearms committee, mentioned IACP resolutions expire after 5 years, and the 1998 steerage is unlikely to be revived when the group meets to contemplate new resolutions this spring.
“I’d like to see metropolis governments totally fund these weapons purchases in order that departments can get rid of their outdated firearms,” Brooks mentioned. “But when they don’t, it must be as much as departments to resolve whether or not they’re going to move on an improve they will’t afford with no trade-in.”
Brooks argued that destroying used police weapons wouldn’t forestall violence as a result of firearms are already extensively accessible and simple for the general public to amass.
Michael Sierra-Arévalo, an affiliate sociology professor on the College of Texas at Austin and writer of “The Hazard Crucial: Violence, Demise, and the Soul of Policing,” mentioned he wasn’t conscious of any peer-reviewed analysis linking police trade-ins to will increase in violence, however he additionally hadn’t seen proof proving the observe was secure.
“The state has a accountability to be conservative in these conditions,” he mentioned. “I might query the ethical standing of somebody who’s keen to gamble with the lifetime of a single member of the general public on the grounds that they don’t have empirical proof {that a} change of coverage would forestall their loss of life.”
“We all know that individuals are killed with these weapons. That must be sufficient.”
