MESSAGE BOARD: Guns under fire VIDEO CNN's Rusty Dornin reports law enforcement agencies are inadvertently helping to put guns onto the nation's streets by trading in old service weapons and those confiscated from criminals. Windows Media 28K 80K

August 20, 1999
Web posted at: 10:18 a.m. EDT (1418 GMT)

In this story: Dilemma for some departments 'They were advertised as former police rifles' RELATED STORIES, SITES

COSMOPOLIS, Washington (CNN) -- It's common practice for police to take guns they no longer use and trade them in to licensed gun dealers who can resell them. But it's a procedure some local governments were rethinking even before it backfired in the case involving white supremacist Buford Furrow.

The police department in Cosmopolis, Washington, once owned the 9 mm Glock semiautomatic pistol Furrow is accused of using to kill Joseph Ileto. The Philippine-born postal worker was shot repeatedly August 10 about an hour after five people were wounded at a Los Angeles area Jewish community center.

Furrow is charged with murder and attempted murder in the two incidents.

Gary Eisenhower, Chief of Police in Cosmopolis, said the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had tracked the gun to his five-man department, which had traded it to a local gun shop in 1996.

"We're just devastated," Eisenhower said. "This is not something that we'd like to have notoriety for."

The Furrow case prompted California Gov. Gray Davis to order the destruction of old state law enforcement weapons, and those confiscated from criminals.

Local governments must decide for themselves what to do about used and unwanted weapons -- and some have a dilemma.

Twenty-seven cities and counties are suing gunmakers, demanding reform on the sales of handguns. But some of those same cities and counties have traded in guns to licensed dealers -- guns that have ended up back on the streets.

East Palo Alto, California, once known as the homicide capital of the United States, is one of the cities suing the gun industry. Police there trade their guns back to the manufacturer with the agreement the guns will only be sold to law enforcement agencies.

But, city officials admit, there's no way to enforce that.

In nearby San Francisco, the practice of trading in weapons to local gun dealers was stopped in 1994. After a street battle that year that left an officer dead, police complained of being outgunned.

The San Francisco Police Department responded by trading in 1,600 handguns overseas, instead of locally.

Until last year, however, used rifles were still traded to gun dealers.

That policy also was changed after someone spotted an ad placed by a dealer with an alarming sales pitch. "They were advertised as former (San Francisco Police Department) rifles," Sgt. Mickey Griffin told CNN.

As a result, San Francisco police ordered that all used police weapons and confiscated guns be destroyed.

The gun industry should stop encouraging police departments to trade in old weapons, says San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne. Police departments should take a stand as well. "Don't accept those inducements anymore," Renne said.

It was such an inducement that had the Cosmopolis Police Department regretting that one of its old weapons ended up in the wrong hands.

Correspondent Rusty Dornin contributed to this report.

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