Miami Police Missing Dozens Of Department's AR-15s
The Miami Police Department can't account for at least 25 of their AR-15 rifles. And we private citizens are the ones who supposedly can't be trusted with them.
bearingarms.com
Miami Police Missing Dozens Of Department's AR-15s
By Tom Knighton | May 14, 2021 5:30 PM ET
AP Photo/Michael Conroy
To hear some politicians describe it, the AR-15 is the ultimate murder-death-kill machine, capable of destroying a tank or fighter jet with a single round. Plus, that round is apparently a heat-seeking round that will hunt you down and kill you, then your family, then your prom date from years before. And, it seems, the Miami Police Department is missing a number of them.
Now, the hype around the AR-15 is ridiculous, to be sure, but they’re still weapons. No one likes the idea of AR-15s in the hands of people they don’t belong to.
But hey, we can trust the police with AR-15s, even if we’re supposedly untrustworthy with such weapons. What’s the worst that can happen if only the police have them?
More than two dozen semiautomatic rifles owned by the city of Miami Police Department are missing.
The prime suspects: The city’s own officers.
It’s not a matter of theft, however, but record-keeping — at least for now.
A strongly worded internal memo sent out to 1,400 sworn police officers Wednesday morning listed the serial numbers of 25 missing AR-15 rifles and warned officers that if the firearms are not returned by Monday, it could land them in hot water.
“Effective Monday, May 17, 2021, these rifles will be reported stolen…” the note read. “You are hereby ordered to return it to the Quartermaster unit immediately. Failure to do so may expose you to criminal liability for possession of stolen property.”
The brief note was headlined “MISSING RIFLES” and was sent out as an MPD [Miami Police Department] mailer with no sender’s name attached. The rifle audit listed serial numbers of the firearms in question.
A department spokesperson said it’s just part of an inventory check in place since the city’s new police chief, Art Acevedo, came aboard just over a month ago.
Oh, wait, this is Acevedo’s department? That just makes this all the more hilarious. Acevedo is notoriously anti-gun and has a history of making anti-gun remarks. Meanwhile, it’s his department missing the guns, though they may have gone missing before he came to town.
Yes, it’s a record-keeping issue right now…but if these guns don’t turn up, what happens next? It seems clear they don’t know who the guns were issued to, otherwise, they’d reach out to those individuals and get the weapons back.
So, they don’t know where the guns are or who has them. It’s not difficult to imagine someone who knew about the poor record-keeping took a few rifles here and there and sold them. Police don’t make bad money, but they’re not rolling in the cash, either. It’s not difficult to imagine someone supplementing his or her income by selling department weapons, possibly to people who shouldn’t have the guns in the first place.
And these are the people we can trust with weapons, but we ourselves can’t be trusted?
Remember, there’s no broad movement to disarm police officers in this country. That means even the anti-gunners believe the police should still have weapons with which to carry out their duties. It’s you or me that’s supposedly a problem.
The thing is, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know where their guns are. They might not look at them every day, but they know what they have and where it is.
Apparently, the same can’t be said about the Miami police.
