Blog note: this article references a Marin County grand jury report on the subject.
The killing of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier in July 2015 shook the law enforcement community when investigators traced the pistol that took her life to a federal ranger. Four days earlier, he had returned to his parked car in the city’s downtown to find a window smashed and the weapon gone.
Over the next seven months, at least seven other guns were snatched from law enforcement officers’ vehicles in the Bay Area, and the rash prompted some chiefs and sheriffs to tighten policies on how officers secure guns, whether off-duty or on.
State legislators sought to punish cops who leave firearms vulnerable to car burglars. San Francisco supervisors took up the issue, as did Marin County’s civil grand jury.
But two years later, after criminals allegedly stole a gun from the personal car of a San Francisco officer and used it to kill a young man in the Mission District, critics say the push for changes fell short. The thefts keep happening, with devastating consequences. And though police have made some reforms, the efforts have been uneven.
Some departments bought officers lockboxes that can be fastened to the interior of their vehicles, providing stronger security, but many others have not.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors considered making it a misdemeanor — punishable by up to six months in jail — for off-duty officers to leave a gun unsecured in a car. But they ultimately voted to exempt San Francisco officers and deputies and apply the measure to everyone else, as long as the police and sheriff’s departments enforced internal policies.
The civil grand jury in Marin County, in a report released in May 2016, said just one police agency there had toughened policies on gun storage in vehicles since Steinle’s death on Pier 14, and that most agencies did not use lockboxes.
“The Grand Jury believes that the best policy is for law enforcement never to leave a firearm in a vehicle,” the report said. “Short of that, lockboxes should be installed in every department vehicle and policies should state specifically how firearms are to be secured.”
The problem persists as vehicle break-ins rise in some Bay Area cities. Victims reported 17,970 car burglaries in San Francisco through the end of July, or about 85 a day, up 28 percent from the same period in 2016.
Still, information about the theft of police guns is scarce: Local, state and federal authorities do not publish figures on how often it happens, and police agencies do not typically reveal whether or how they punish employees who lose guns in violation of internal policies, because of California laws that keep officer discipline private.
Law enforcement critics say police — now more than ever — should know better than to leave guns unsecured in vehicles and must be held to a higher standard.
“You know what is out there, and you know what is happening every day,” said attorney Frank Pitre, who is representing Steinle’s family in a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management. He also represents the family of Antonio Ramos, who was shot in September 2015 while painting a mural in Oakland by an attacker who used a gun stolen from the rented car of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
“Criminals are just looking for opportunities,” Pitre said, “and you’re giving them a gold mine when you allow them to steal a weapon they wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Some police officers and advocates, though, say there’s no simple solution to stopping the thefts. They say officers obliged to carry guns are victims of the same scourge of home and car burglaries as civilian gun owners. According to federal gun regulators, 1.4 million firearms were reported stolen in the six-year period from 2005 to 2010.
“The bigger problem is how do we address this rampant crime problem?” said attorney Alison Berry Wilkinson, who represents Bay Area law enforcement officers. “Everything from cell phones to water bottles to guns, any item left in a car is subject to being stolen right now. The reality is police officers are no less vulnerable to that than any other segment of the population.”
She said that even in cases where officers put guns in lockboxes that are welded to vehicles, “People can rip out entire pieces of equipment from a car. I know officers who have gone to great lengths to make sure they have secured their weapon, and still, criminals with blowtorches and crowbars are able to remove it from the vehicle.”
Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Glennon noted that officers who travel with guns can’t take them in places where they are prohibited, such as post offices, or sporting events where a police presence is needed but guns are not.
For this reason, his boss, Sheriff Laurie Smith, purchased 750 special gun safes for her deputies’ personal vehicles last year.
“We haven’t had any weapons taken since then,” Glennon said.
Complicating the problem, some police officials said, is that thieves sometimes target officers, knowing they carry valuable weapons.
Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said he had heard of cases in which crooks followed officers and other people home from gun ranges and then burglarized their homes. In 2013, thieves in Richmond poisoned two dogs at the home of a city K-9 officer before stealing two handguns and three long guns.
But in the mind of state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, the officers’ unique position only heightens their responsibility. And in some cases, he said, the “irresponsible behavior” is clear.
“A carpenter has a tool belt that carries his tools all day and he doesn’t think much about it when he tosses it in his car, but there’s a major difference between a gun and a hammer,” Hill said. “It becomes a custom that they follow, but they need to wake up to the fact these are dangerous weapons, especially in the wrong hands, and when they are stolen, they invariably wind up in the wrong hands.”
After the Pier 14 killing, the senator wrote a law that, as of Jan. 1, requires that officers who aren’t carrying out official duties secure a gun in a vehicle’s locked trunk or in a locked container out of view. A violation is an infraction punishable by a fine up to $1,000. The law considered in San Francisco would have been tougher, if the police and sheriff’s departments had not been exempted.
Those agencies did enact internal policies, though they differ slightly from each other.
The sheriff’s policy requires deputies who must leave a gun in an unattended car to stow it in a lockbox fastened to any part of the interior, as long as it’s out of view. The police force’s policy mandates that officers secure a gun in a vehicle’s locked trunk for a “short period of time” at most, and never overnight. If the vehicle lacks a trunk, the gun must be in a lockbox affixed to the interior, out of view.
It’s not clear whether Hill’s state law could apply to the recent San Francisco case, in which officials said a silver revolver and ammunition were stolen from a car that belonged to city Officer Marvin Cabuntala. Three days later, on Aug. 15, the gun was used in the killing of 23-year-old Abel Enrique Esquivel Jr. Three young men have been charged with murder.
Police officials would not elaborate on the circumstances of the theft, but said internal affairs is looking into the officer’s actions and could discipline him if he violated department rules. Cabuntala did not know his vehicle had been broken into until after the shooting, the police union said, suggesting that he did not follow the restriction on stowing a gun overnight.
The gun thefts that have plagued Bay Area officers in recent years have been spread among a number of agencies. In January, an FBI agent reported that a thief had stolen a submachine gun out of his parked car in Contra Costa County. The agency would not say how it had been secured.
Last weekend, it happened again: A newly hired San Francisco sheriff’s deputy left his service pistol unsecured in a parked rental car in the city in violation of department policy, officials said, allowing a thief to break in and take it. The deputy, who was still on probation, was fired.
Pitre, the Steinle family attorney, said that as laws and policies change to force responsible gun ownership, agencies must hold officers accountable when they fail to do their part.
“Until you really have a significant consequence such as termination of employment or suspension for a significant period of time,” he said, “only then are you going to get people who are going to think twice about leaving a gun unattended in a vehicle.”
September 24, 2017
San Francisco Chronicle
By Vivian Ho
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