AT SFPD, 14 GUNS TURN UP MISSING

The San Francisco police lost 14 of their guns.

Chief Fred Lau said Monday that the department is trying to account for 14
handguns lent in recent years to officers while on temporary duty with the
narcotics division.

The officers were given specialized firearms to use while working as
undercover officers or on drug stakeouts, Lau said. But they apparently
didn't return the weapons when they went back to their regular posts.

According to a department-wide bulletin, the unaccounted-for guns include
such small and nonstandard weaponry as two Smith & Wesson snub-nose
.38-caliber revolvers, two Beretta automatic pistols, a French Manurhin
revolver, and three Walther PPK automatic pistols, the handgun favored by
the fictional British spy James Bond.

The missing guns also include three Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers,
the department's primary on-duty weapon.

The bulletin, issued by Lau in May, warned officers that the guns would be
listed in law-enforcement computers as stolen if they were not accounted
for.

Lau said that since he issued his bulletin on the guns, several had been
found at the police firing range.

To recover the rest, "we're going back to everybody who has been assigned to
the narcotics unit," Lau said. "We're very confident we're going to find
them all.

"It's something we don't want to have happen again. We have issued tighter
controls, and I have had discussions with the deputy chief in charge of
investigations.

"But we don't believe the guns are anywhere other than in the possession of
police officers."

Lou Reiter, a law enforcement consultant and retired deputy police chief in
Los Angeles, says it's critically important for law-enforcement agencies to
keep close tabs on their firearms.

When police weapons are lost, public confidence in law enforcement can be
shaken, he said -- especially if the guns wind up in the hands of criminals.

"If you can't keep track of your weapons, which can cause death, people will
say: How can we guarantee you're using all your other stuff in a reasonable
manner?" Reiter said. "It would be real embarrassing if Joe Badguy comes up
with one of these guns, and they're hot ticket commodities on the street."

Reiter said the case of missing guns in San Francisco, as described to him
by an Examiner reporter, was cause for concern.

"Something's off there, in terms of losing that many weapons," he said. "You
may have misconduct, or officers who have simply kept them."

Lau said he learned of the missing guns after ordering an inventory of
narcotics division equipment earlier this year when the new division
commander, Capt. John Gleason, took over.

In addition to the missing firearms, the inventory could not account for 18
small two-way radios, also used in undercover work.

Like the guns, the radios had been assigned to officers on temporary duty in
narcotics, but then the department lost track of them.

Lau also issued a bulletin to track down the missing radios. All of them
have been found, many in the department's communications division, he said.

He said problems have arisen because the narcotics division uses so many
officers from elsewhere in the department.

"Sometimes we'll detail officers from district stations to come in (to the
narcotics unit) for some operations," he said. "Often they can't use the
standard firearms they are issued, so they are loaned specialized weapons,
for undercover operations, for example.

"I want to be very proactive on this, and adjust our procedures so that it
doesn't happen again."

John Crew, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's police practices
project, said the missing guns suggested that procedures were too lax in the
narcotics squad, which he said has long been known for "loosey-goosey"
behavior. "This sets off alarms in terms of public safety, and sounds alarms
about how careful they are on other issues," Crew said.

1998 San Francisco Examiner

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"