Alphecca

I Guess There's a Problem at UPS

Last month I wrote:

Earth to Mars...Earth to the un-named [Canadian] "official"... I doubt very much that shipments from Smith & Wesson are being waylaid unless you're accusing FedEx or UPS of allowing grand theft on a massive scale large enough to fuel all the gang wars going on in your cities and towns.

Four former UPS workers, including a USC student majoring in criminal justice, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell stolen handguns in what federal officials are calling one of the largest gun-trafficking schemes in the state’s history.

The scam involved more than 200 handguns stolen from the UPS sorting facility in West Columbia near the Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

[...]

The scheme ran from 1999 to 2000, but the men weren’t indicted until August. The case had gone cold until some of the stolen weapons started showing up in Easley.

“We ran out of leads,” said Pat Dumais, special agent in charge of the Columbia office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Part of it was that the thefts had stopped.”

Dumais called this one of the largest gun trafficking cases in the state’s history. He said there have been cases of shipping employees stealing guns, “but never this size.”

Most of the weapons came from Ellett Brothers, a major firearms wholesaler based in Chapin that uses UPS as its primary carrier.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways for firearms to wind up in the hands of bad guys, and it's sometimes because of the good guys:

A Quincy [Massachusetts] police officer lost his department-issued gun apparently after driving away without realizing he had placed the weapon on the roof of his car, officials said.

The officer, Declan Breslin, was reprimanded and placed on desk duty for several days as punishment for losing his weapon, which was picked up by other Quincy police officers who were investigating a car crash last month in the same area the gun was dropped, Police Chief Robert Crowley said.

The incident marks the second time in a month that a local public safety official has lost his handgun, but with drastically different results. Last week, a part-time Plymouth County sheriff’s deputy was fired for a similar mishap after leaving his gun in the restroom of a Pembroke Dunkin’ Donuts.

The deputy, Robert Greek, returned to the doughnut shop less than 45 minutes later, but the weapon was gone. When the gun was recovered, Scituate police revoked Greek’s license to carry a firearm, which prompted the sheriff’s department to fire him.

Not keeping a gun secure is a state crime and is grounds for local police to revoke a gun license.

Update: Tom at WrightWing responds regarding UPS security.