Some Chicago area police departments resell guns, but don't track what happens next
Each year, tens of thousands of guns, once used by police officers, have been discovered at crime scenes, according to federal records obtained after a lengthy legal battle.
CBS News and nonprofit newsrooms, The Trace and Reveal, surveyed 200 police agencies nationwide and found a majority sell their guns when they decide to upgrade their arsenal.
Chicago police do not not resell their guns, but some suburban police departments do to reduce costs. However, because of federal law, it's impossible to know whether any of those weapons were ever used in a crime later on, a CBS 2 investigation found.
Local impact
Chiquita Jones and a group of young outreach workers, the Englewood First Responders, have a front-row seat to the violence in their community.
"You know, we could walk down this block right here. And could make this turn, and someone could just come out the car shooting," Jones said.
"If you just hear gunshots and you don't hear [the ambulance siren in the distance], then you know maybe someone is OK. They may have shot at them and kept it going. Who knows."
Jones said easy access to guns may be the biggest driver of the violence.
To get those guns off the streets, many local departments, including the Chicago Police Department, hold gun buyback events.
But one source of the guns in circulation surprised Jones and Anneliese Dickman, who heads the Combating Crime Guns Initiative at Brady United.
"I don't think the average taxpayer has any idea how this works. That the local law enforcement and the gun industry are tied together in a lot of ways," Dickman said.
Many departments across the country sell or trade their service weapons when they believe they need an upgrade. It is a practice that concerns experts like Dickman, who worries it is just another way for guns to be put back into public circulation.
"It's painful to those of us working in gun violence prevention to know that this is happening," Dickman said.
After a lengthy legal battle with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), CBS News and Reveal obtained records that showed 52,529 guns, once owned by law enforcement agencies, have turned up at crime scenes nationwide between 2006 and 2022.
"Wow," Jones said. "I know about the buybacks, as far as people individually. I didn't know the police did that."
To figure out whether it's a common practice in the Chicago area, CBS 2 filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several of the largest police agencies around Chicago. We found:
- The Chicago Police Department, Cook County Sheriff's Department, and McHenry County Sheriff's Department said they don't buy or sell guns for their officers.
- Chicago Police officers must purchase their own department-approved firearms. The Cook and McHenry County Sheriff's departments said they provide stipends to officers, who are then responsible for buying their service weapons.
- The Elgin Police Department sells older guns to police supply shops for credit to replace them with newer guns.
- The Joliet Police Department exchanges older service weapons with police supply shops to get a discount on newer models.
- The Illinois State Police also trades older weapons for new ones.
Proponents of the trading and selling process argue it can provide significant savings to taxpayers. However, critics say that the overall financial impact of gun violence outweighs that benefit.
Transparency in question
It's impossible to know whether any police guns ended up at crime scenes in the Chicago area. Every department—the ones that sell or trade their guns and the ones that leave the process up to their officers—said they do not track what happens to the old guns when an officer upgrades to a new weapon.
Federal law also prohibits the ATF from releasing most firearm trace data. The data obtained as part of the legal battle between Reveal from The Center of Investigative Reporting and the ATF only shows how many total police guns were recovered at crime scenes yearly and nationwide. But it does not say where, which is frustrating for community members like Jones, and experts like Dickman, who work to prevent gun violence.
"We can't get specifics. And we also can't get the big picture," Dickman said.
"[It's'] just something that hits deep pit of your stomach and it just hurts," Jones said. "Just hurts."
In a recent news conference in Chicago to announce the opening of the Crime Gun Intelligence Center, ATF Director Steven Dettelbach acknowledged those limitations.
"At ATF, we don't make the laws. We follow them," he said. "There are restrictions that Congress has placed on both types of information and the kinds of individuals that we can share information with."
Local police agencies declined CBS 2's requests for interviews about their policies and any transparency concerns about where guns might end up after they're sold or traded.
