LAPD Scandal After 44 Guns Discovered Missing from Gun Store

A scandal has allegedly been uncovered at the LAPD following the discovery that 44 firearms went missing from the gun store at the Los Angeles Police Academy.

The Los Angeles Times notes that Archi Duenas, the manager of the gun store, has allegedly been selling guns on the cheap to officers for years and was able to hide the sales by simply being at the store every day to handle the paperwork.

However, in February 2020, Duenas was told he saved up the maximum amount of “leave hours” and needed to take time off. When he did, his substitute discovered that many boxes labeled as containing guns were actually empty.

Investigators began looking into store records and Duenas’s dealings and found that numerous LAPD officers had allegedly “purchased stolen weapons from Duenas, bought and sold much larger numbers of firearms in questionable ways, and dangerously stored loaded guns in places accessible to children, according to internal police records.”

Certain LAPD commanders are simultaneously accused of standing in the way of the investigation, allegedly undercutting investigators’ attempts to identify LAPD higher-ups who may have purchased guns as well.

KRCW reports that the “LAPD captain overseeing the investigation says top commanders on the police force tried to hamstring her team’s work.”

At one deputy in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and four LAPD officers allegedly “knowingly bought stolen guns from the LAPD Police Academy’s gun store.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.