FBI won’t say how stolen gun was stored

Agency says it is conducting its own investigation “You would think that given the (number of thefts) in the Bay Area and the shootings like Kate Steinle’s, at every level law enforcement people would be very careful.”

The sponsor of a new state law requiring law enforcement officers to lock up guns in parked vehicles said on Monday that the FBI should be more forthcoming about how a powerful submachine gun was stolen from an agent’s car in central Contra Costa County two weeks ago.

“There should absolutely be more transparency from the” FBI, state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo said. “It’s a very serious matter. The damage a submachine could cause in the wrong hands could be very tragic.”

San Francisco FBI spokesman Prentice Danner on Monday said “we are investigating the matter internally,” and that the agent, assigned to the bureau’s San Francisco division, could potentially face misconduct charges based on the outcome of internal investigation.

However, he wouldn’t say where the 10-mm Heckler and Koch MP-5 was in the unidentified agent’s car or how it was secured when it was stolen sometime between 6 p.m. Jan. 8 and 10 a.m. Jan 9 as the agent made stops in Concord, Lafayette and Orinda.

“Our main concern is public safety and the recovery of the weapon,” he said.

The theft is the firstknown case of a stolen law enforcement gun since the new law went into effect Jan. 1.

Danner said the bureau is “aware of the legislation” that Hill sponsored last year requiring all law enforcement officers in California, including federal agents, to properly secure weapons left in parked cars by locking them down. But he would not say how the new law could apply to the agent from whom the submachine gun was stolen.

Hill’s legislation came after two high-profile Bay Area killings in 2015 with stolen federal guns that had been left in parked cars. Kate Steinle was killed July 1, 2015, in San Francisco with a gun stolen from a U.S Bureau of Land Management ranger. Oakland artist Antonio Ramos died on Sept. 27, 2015, when he was shot with a pistol stolen from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

An investigation by this newspaper last year found Bay Area police and state and federal agencies across California either couldn’t account for or reported stolen 944 weapons since 2010. Four FBI guns were stolen last year — three in Benicia and one in San Francisco, which was recovered.

U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, who sponsored federal legislation on weapons storage last year, said Monday he plans to bring the bill back this year.

It would require federal agencies to develop best practices for storing weapons in vehicles and then require they be used.

The theft of the submachine gun occurred in his district, bringing the issue home for him. “You would think that given the (number of thefts) in the Bay Area and the shootings like Kate Steinle’s, at every level law enforcement people would be very careful,” DeSaulnier said in a phone interview from Washington. “It’s really disturbing.”

The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office is aiding in efforts to recover the weapon, the FBI said Friday, when it announced the theft. A spokesman for Sheriff David Livingston did not return repeated messages Sunday and Monday.

Hill called on the Sheriff’s Office to investigate the theft and issue an infraction if the weapon was improperly stored. The law also calls for offending officers to be fined $1,000.

“The sheriff is the one to conduct that investigation,” Hill said. “It’s not for the FBI to determine” if the state law was violated.

James Wedick, a retired FBI agent, said the bureau’s standard practice is to store a machine gun in an unattended car in a locked case in the trunk bolted to the car frame and also secured with a chain and padlock.

“It’s a thick chain,” he said Monday. “You’re going to kill yourself trying to get it out of there.” Some cars also have a “ready use” storage area in the driver’s door where an agent can get to the gun in a hurry if it is needed, Wedick added. But it is not where the gun should be kept when the car is unattended, he added.

Machine guns are also kept in locked cases for transport to to gun ranges for training, he added. “You can find one on the back seat,” he said, but added it would not be left alone there.

The theft was announced late Friday afternoon in a news release, with the FBI asking for the public’s help in recovering the submachine gun. An ammunition clip and a bulletproof vest were also stolen.

Bill Tharp, a San Ramon resident and self-described “gun person,” said he called the FBI hoping to learn more details about the theft and to urge that more information about it be made public. But a voicemail he left on the tip line wasn’t returned.

“It would be helpful if they told us where the car was parked each time,” Tharp said. “And the color of the car.”

Tharp said most gun owners “always want to help the police. It would be helpful if they provided more information so people might remember.”

Mike Gant, a Dublin gun dealer and gunsmith, said the FBI simply should have been more careful. A machine gun should never be left unattended, he said.

“They should have to remove it when it goes with the person in a special case,” he said. There is “totally a lack of oversight by the feds.”