Authorities claim that at least 82 firearms have been stolen by thieves raiding cargo containers on trains around the Los Angeles area.
Officials said that 36 handguns and 46 shotguns were stolen over several months from the trains and that LA police have reacquired only a handful of the firearms. Law enforcement is uncertain if local thieves have taken any other guns.
“I’ve got 24 years in LAPD, ex-military, secret clearance, and I have to wait ten days to get a new firearm, and these guys are going into these containers with no locks and getting guns,” Capt. German Hurtado, who oversees the region where the LA railyards are located, told the Los Angeles Times. “These guns were unguarded, unprotected … God knows how many guns have been stolen that way.”
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Three recently traced weapons were tracked to be part of a batch of handguns reported missing as they were shipped by train from LA to Tennessee, according to officials. Officials also said that two shotguns found on local criminals were traced to similar shipping circumstances.
The firearm theft was orchestrated by an LA gang, police reported.
The gun thefts were part of a more significant trend of thefts in Los Angeles that has seen $5 million in goods stolen over the last year from trains stopping at Los Angeles’s ports. The thefts have attracted the attention of the Union Pacific Police Department, a specialized police force in train thefts. The train thefts gained national attention on Jan. 15 after images of the debris left by the thieves went viral.
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Union Pacific and local police have squabbled over who is to blame for the thefts, considering that Union Pacific has downsized its security forces in recent years.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not mention the stolen firearms last week while leading a cleanup of the rail yards.
