Sale of Pilfered Gun Parts by LAPD Officers Charged

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating allegations raised by the former commander of the department’s firearms and explosives section that officers in the unit stripped hundreds of confiscated guns destined for destruction and sold the parts for personal profit.

Lt. Jimmie J. Finn, a highly decorated 23-year police veteran, has told internal investigators that members of the 20-man unit took gun parts that did not have serial numbers--allegedly so they could not be traced--and marketed them at swap meets and civilian gun shows.

In addition, Finn has alleged in interviews with investigators and civilian police commissioners that members of the unit took without authorization from the Police Department’s property rooms thousands of rounds of confiscated ammunition to sell or use themselves.

Some of the ammunition, other sources said, may have been traded to the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton for military camping equipment and choice seats at Marine air shows.

Finn has alleged further that his supervisors refused to investigate the matter when he repeatedly brought it to their attention in 1987 and 1988, and that he was transferred to a desk job in the department’s planning and research division, where he remains today.

Only after Finn approached members of the civilian Los Angeles Police Commission in November, 1988, did the Internal Affairs Division begin an inquiry, sources said.

Police officials would not discuss the case Tuesday because, they said, it remains under investigation. The case has not been forwarded to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office for possible criminal prosecution.

When contacted, Finn would neither confirm nor deny his having alleged the stripping of guns, the theft of ammunition and a cover-up by superiors. However, Police Commission President Robert L. Talcott confirmed Finn’s charges.

“We are taking them seriously,” Talcott said. “There have been corrective steps already taken.”

Limit on Discipline

Talcott, however, said he doubts that any officers would be punished even if Finn’s allegations prove true because the department has a one-year statute of limitations on matters of internal discipline.

No one familiar with the investigation could determine the precise dollar value of the gun parts and ammunition allegedly taken from police property rooms, but estimates ranged as high as several hundred thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, two officers, speaking independently and on condition that they not be identified, said they had first-hand knowledge that members of the firearms and explosives unit routinely and without authorization sold confiscated gun parts.

“I was at one gun show,” said one officer, “and there was a table covered with gun parts. It was evident by the envelopes they were (LAPD) confiscations. Somebody was making major bucks.”

Functions of Unit

The firearms and explosives unit is based in a nondescript building on San Fernando Road in Northeast Los Angeles. The explosives side of the unit defuses or disposes of bombs found in the field. Those assigned to the firearms side of the unit test-fire guns and microscopically examine bullets for evidentiary purposes.

Finn took over the unit in July, 1986, five months after two of its senior members, Detective Arleigh McCree and Officer Ron Ball, died while attempting to dismantle a pipe bomb in North Hollywood.

A strict disciplinarian whose blunt, by-the-book style has offended more than a few supervisors and subordinates, Finn received the LAPD’s most prestigious award, the Medal of Valor, for his actions in a shoot-out with members of the Black Panthers in December, 1969, records show. Before commanding the firearms and explosives unit, he commanded the department’s Coliseum venue during the 1984 Olympics and later served as Chief Daryl F. Gates’ personal adjutant.

In late 1986, Finn has alleged, he discovered that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of often exotic, expensive guns had been stripped by a handful of officers in the unit in preceeding years, and that crates of ammo also had been taken. In 1986 alone, he has alleged, nearly 200 confiscated guns stored at Parker Center were stripped.

Problems Identified

According to documents and sources, Finn found the firearms and explosives unit in disarray when he arrived. Bomb experts were continuing to disarm explosive devices with their bare hands while going about their dangerous work clad only in blue jeans, cowboy boots and T-shirts bearing the unit’s logo--a pig with its fingers in its ears, sitting atop a round black bomb with a smoking fuse.

As for the firearms specialists in the unit, Finn complained to his superiors that the specialists’ filing system was a mess, that evidence bullets were being misplaced and that dozens of homicide investigations were backlogged because the unit did not establish priorities to help manage the caseload.

Finn established a priority system for pending cases. He also initiated a dress code and physical training, cracked down on private, long-distance telephone calls and sought to regulate the unit’s slush fund.

It did little to endear him to the troops, some of whom still refer to him with expletives.

The LAPD, on average, confiscates and destroys more than 6,000 firearms each year. As a cost-saving measure, some guns are stripped beforehand and their parts used to repair the revolvers, semiautomatic pistols, shotguns and machine guns that Los Angeles police officers carry on the job.

Inventory of Parts

In past years, members of the firearms and explosives unit also have been allowed to visit police property rooms in Van Nuys and Parker Center, ostensibly to maintain their own parts inventory for malfunctioning weapons that are brought into the lab for test firing.

However, several officers familiar with the operations of the firearms unit said that a big inventory is hardly needed because few of the murder or assault weapons examined each year require replacement parts before being test fired.

Few of the parts taken from the property rooms showed up in the inventory of the firearms and explosives unit as they should have according to procedure, sources said.

By early 1987, when word got out that Finn was investigating, according to officers, boxes of confiscated ammunition clips that had apparently been taken from LAPD property rooms began mysteriously appearing in the unit’s offices. Eventually, more than 1,200 clips had been returned anonymously to the firearms and explosives building.

Strong Demand at Shows

Some of the clips, for which there is a steady demand at gun shows, can sell for $50 or more apiece.

“If they’re giving back clips, it makes you wonder what they did not give back,” said one officer.

Finn has alleged that he tried to get his captain, Joe C. De Ladurantey, and other ranking officers to launch a formal investigation, but that his efforts were rejected. Instead, he was allegedly told that because firearms and explosives officers were in a special assignment, they were being given special consideration.

De Ladurantey denied the allegation when contacted this week and declined further comment because of the pending investigation.