How we uncovered former police guns that were used in crimes

Every yr, thousands of guns once owned by police departments are used in crimes throughout the U.S. Many begin out because the pistol in a cop’s holster, however are later offered by an opaque community of gun sellers, recirculated into the general public market and finally recovered by different legislation enforcement officers.

The federal authorities is aware of which departments’ guns find yourself in crime scenes most frequently. They know which gun shops resell essentially the most former police weapons that are later used in crimes. They know the journeys these guns journey, the crimes they’re dedicated with, and in many circumstances who dedicated them. 

But Congress will not allow them to inform the general public what they know. 

In 2003, Republican Member of Congress Todd Tiahrt of Kansas launched an modification to a federal spending invoice that severely restricted the flexibility of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to launch particulars on particular guns they hint. 

As the one company with entry to gun transaction information, the ATF traces a whole bunch of 1000’s of firearms a yr on behalf of each legislation enforcement company, from small city sheriffs to the FBI.

Between 2017 and 2021, the ATF traced greater than 1.9 million guns, in response to a March 2024 report. But underneath the Tiahrt Amendment, they’ll solely launch essentially the most fundamental mixture details about them: totals by yr, by state, by sort of gun. It’s uncommon to acquire extra detailed information.

In 2017, Alain Stephens, an investigative reporter at The Trace — CBS News’ accomplice for this investigation — filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the ATF for the variety of guns traced again to legislation enforcement. The data existed in the ATF’s database, however they did not launch it.

The investigative journalism outlet Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting sued the ATF on Stephens’ behalf. After three years of litigation, the ATF lastly produced a single spreadsheet. The information had two columns: the yr and the variety of guns it had traced to home legislation enforcement companies. The numbers included guns that were misplaced or stolen, but in addition documented weapons that were offered by legislation enforcement.

It confirmed what had beforehand been extensively reported earlier than Tiahrt made it almost unattainable to get this data: police promote guns, and people guns typically find yourself in crimes. 

In 2022, The Trace and CBS News started working to reply a key query: which departments promote their guns, and was it attainable to hint these guns to crime scenes ourselves? 

Journalists at CBS News and The Trace filed greater than 200 public information requests, asking native departments for information of their gun gross sales. We centered totally on the nation’s largest departments. We additionally contacted some smaller companies close to CBS News’ native stations in main U.S. cities. 

Through these requests and dozens of interviews with police officers, we compiled a listing of greater than 140 departments that offered their guns. That’s about 9 out of 10 of the companies that responded to our requests — although many companies refused to reply or closely redacted the information they did present. 

We additionally submitted requests for information about guns recovered by police departments at crime scenes. Using that information, information gathered by The Trace for a earlier challenge on misplaced and stolen guns, and tens of 1000’s of pages of federal court docket filings, we constructed a database of almost 1 million guns used in crimes. 

Under federal legislation, each gun in the U.S. will need to have a serial quantity — an identifier distinctive to the weapon’s producer that the ATF can use to hint it. 

We compiled a listing of serial numbers of about 30,000 guns offered or traded by police — a small fraction of the guns police offered. By looking that small pattern of serial numbers towards the information of 1 million guns recovered by police, we recognized dozens of potential circumstances the place offered police guns were used in crimes. 

We then fact-checked every case, reviewing information and interviewing police officers to seek out out what occurred.