The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is on the lookout for 31 guns believed to have been stolen from a municipal gun vault in Compton, California sometime between March 6th and August 21st of last year. The missing cache includes 23 Beretta .40-caliber pistols and 8 Glock .40-caliber pistols, according to the ATF. A reward has now been set up in the amount of $10,000.
"There's stuff a little too loosey-goosey around here," City Manager Cecil Rhambo Jr. told the Los Angeles Times.
Boy, I’ll say.
Had it not been for Rhambo’s work, there’s no telling how long the breach would have gone unnoticed. He ordered an inventory of the stockpile shortly after assuming office last year. That’s when the discrepancy was discovered.
Compton’s police force disbanded in 2000. The firearms are most likely left over from the force that was once in operation. An ATF spokesman said authorities do have the serial numbers of the guns to compare and that none of them have shown up in any crime scenes so far.
This isn’t the first gun-related bungle in Compton. In 1997, a Long Beach police officer was shot with a stolen handgun that had been booked into evidence at the Compton Police Department 11 years prior.