Good luck,,, I had 30,000.00 worth of guns stolen in Dallas Co. and never heard a word from detectives,, I had to even talk them into coming out to take finger prints and file a proper report.The experience with the Dallas Police Dept. was pathetic...

John Ray

I hope ypu have better luck with the Brown Cnty authorities then I did. Its been a long time since I had a gun stolen, but when it happened I asked the deputy (as he was about to leave) if he checked for fingerprints and, no lie, he said "hmm...that's a pretty good idea" and then took some.

My wifes car got broke into very recently while working nights at the hospital. My entire mechanics tool box was stolen out of the trunk. About $3500 worth of tools or more. After about a month, my wife had to keep calling the police dpt just to get them to come to the hospital to pick up the parking lot surveilence camera footage. Seems to me that would have been the second step, right after she (same as I had to) had to ask them to take fingerprints.

 Sorry, I guess I'm not helping matters here. But my point is STAY ON THEIR A** ABOUT THIS!!! Because if you don't show an interest, they sure as hell wont. But, don't be an A**, cause then they'll just quit trying out of spite. Don't anybody here try to claim that doesn't happen either. I have heard officers brag about that fact first hand. 

Guns don't kill people....Its those pesky little bullets making lots of holes that all the blood leaks out of.

As a police officer I'll first appologize to all who had a bad experience in making reports.  I don't mean to defend poor police work but will say that fingerprinting is often over rated.  The leyman usually gets their info regarding latent fingerprints (and other law enforcement techniques) from what they saw on TV (CSI or some other make believe police drama). 

I've been doing this for 20 years now and have only had a handful of cases made from fingerprints. My dept. requires that prints are attempted at all burglaries.  The bad guys often wear gloves or socks over their hands.  If you do get prints they are more often than not illegible because the print is just a smudge or is just a partial print and there are not enough points to compare. 

As for car burglaries, you can thank the Texas Legislature for the cops no longer taking prints of your car.   A few years ago the Legislature made vehicle burglary a misdemeanor.  The state crime lab will only compare prints if the offense is a felony or some other special circumstance exists.  So there's little point in fingerprinting a car when cannot submit the prints to the crime lab.  Also, most prints recovered from exterior of the car will not be admissable as evidence since anyone from the general public can touch the outside of your car (you can thank defense attorneys for that one). 

Unfortunately, many larger departments don't even respond to "property crimes" calls anymore.  They frequently forward you to some civilian sitting the office that takes your info and gives you a case number to give to your insurance company. 

"Well, what can I do"? 

Record the make, model, caliber, serial numbers and take a pic of your guns and other valuables.  Create a file on you hard drive to store it AND burn a copy of this file onto a CD to put in a safe place.  That way if you have a fire or theft you'll be able to provide the info to the police/insurance. 

The police will enter the info (only if serial numbers are available) into a national computer database operated by the FBI.  If your gun is ever checked by police afterward they will receive a "hit" or stolen notification and can seize the gun. 

Check local pawn shops.  You'll need to do this several times since some items taken on pawn won't be placed onto the floor "for sale" for several months after they were taken in. 

Most pawn shops are required to report their transactions to police through an on-line system that allows police from across the state to check pawns anywhere within the state.  Folks, thats a bunch of transactions so without a serial number it's impossible to find your one item out of those thousands. 

Furthermore, check local flea markets.  Flea markets are totally unregulated and the criminals know it.  They are shying away from the highly regulated pawn shops for this reason. 

Check e-bay and Craigslist.  Again, it's another way for criminals to circumvent pawn shop regulations. 

In the end none of this may work because your property was "fenced" to a drug dealer, your mother's jewelry was given to a crook's mom or girlfriend or wife as a present.  Your guns traded to a drug dealer and are now in the hands of gang member.  Or they may have kept your stuff for themselves (not likely, though). 

If the police are deligently doing their job all they need is one item to show up in a pawn shop.  Afterward it takes only a little work to learn the identity of the pawner which usually leads to us finding the majority of your stuff.  That one item can snowball into the solving of multiple burglaries. 

If you find an item at a pawn shop, flea market, etc. DO NOT tell the seller that it's stolen and it's yours.  Simply excuse yourself and call the police.  Have your case number handy to give to the dispatcher and responding officers. 

Now, if you didn't have serial numbers that can positively identify your property (or some owner applied number like your SS #) don't expect the police to be able to seize the items.  At this point it's your word against the bad guy so without proof your probably out of luck.

Get out there and record your serial numbers.  It's the best tool you've got. 

Mike is absolutely correct, I have my entire collection logged on my computer, my wifes computer, my external hard drive, on a disk, and on hard copy. I took pictures of each individual weapon, logged the pictures by serial number. You can never have too much information. Like one of my favorite sayings goes: "It's better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it".

Guns don't kill people....Its those pesky little bullets making lots of holes that all the blood leaks out of.

Mike, I meant to ask you, if you have the serial numbers to give to the authorities then do the numbers go into a database of some kind. So if someone tries to pawn the gun, it comes up in the database.

Guns don't kill people....Its those pesky little bullets making lots of holes that all the blood leaks out of.

Dana,

There are two seperate databases that unfortunately do not cross reference each other automatically.  One database is operated by the FBI.  This is where all stolen items and wanted persons are entered.  It is accessible only to law enforcement.  This is where your serial numbers and property descriptions are entered.  The other database is run by DPS and is where all pawn shops state wide download their transactions.  This requires someone from law enforcement to manually cross reference their list of stolen items with this database.  It's still not perfect but better than a few years ago where you had to physically cross reference each individual pawn ticket and then you could only check you local pawn shops.  Now we can check pawn shops state wide. 

Once an officer locates a stolen item in a particular pawn shop they call the shop and place a law enforcement hold on the item to retrieve later. 

I really appreciate everyone taking the time to answer my questions in such depth.  It is great to have an expert in the situation on the forum.

Thanks again,

Alan

Just as an update apparently I should have been buying lotto tickets lately because my pistol has been recovered.  I don't have all the details yet, but the investigator said the crook told the arresting officer that he bought it from someone yada yada.  Once I know more I will update the post and hopefully my situation can help someone else.

One down and one more to go.  I know the odds of getting both back are extremely small but there is still hope.

Alan,

Glad to hear everything is going to work out on that. thats gotta be a great feeling.

Guns don't kill people....Its those pesky little bullets making lots of holes that all the blood leaks out of.

Alan, that's great news.  Recently I took a report from a guy that had only one serial number for a pistol that was stolen along with several long guns.  I entered the pistol and wouldn't you know San Antonio PD recovered that gun while doing a search warrant on a drug dealer's home several weeks later.  

Guys, these two incidents alone should show how vitally important it is to have those serial numbers recorded. 

John Ray
I have to apologize for my coworkers lack of effort.  I worked on a burglary task force for a number of years and a group of 4 of us...yes 4 in Dallas, made a huge dent in the burglary problem despite the lack of support from the management. We worked tirelessly throwing every theif we could find in jail to the tune of 473 arrests in one year. One month we cleared 85 offenses...10 times what the detectives cleared.  When a burglary call came out we got there first, or sometimes soon after patrol but only because of traffic or just the distance to travel. Point is we were afforded the opportunity to do real police work by not having to deal with all the baby's-daddy's- mommas dramas calls all day, and try and make a difference. I will not make excuses for anyone that didn't follow up on or just plain do their job right...i will try to give you some insight as to what we deal with.  The month we had the 85 cleared offenses we got a new Chief at our division...the new Chief began making some changes and then came after us because of a personal vendetta against the Lt. that ran our squad. The Chief came into one of our 5 man meetings and basically asked what we did, so we told him we put burglars in jail. He said he needed numbers so we provided him with the numbers. The only reason we had any clue as to how many arrest we had made and how many offenses we had cleared was because we had to go back for several months and collate and combine our activity and spit out the numbers. 2 weeks later we were back in patrol answering 911 calls at separate divisions.  This is only one SMALL example. We are hamstrung by Chiefs and city council members.

I reccomend that everyone that has firearms they want to keep get a gun safe. If you do not spend a grand and have it anchored in the foundation you are wasting your time. If the burglars want what you have they will get it. That being said, most burglars are punk kids not professionals. They are in a hurry, so get some kind of safe and lock them up. Mine stay at the station.

"It takes 32 muscles to frown, 17 to smile, but only 3 for a proper trigger pull."

For Officer "Fish Fear Me" or other:

Like many shooting sportsmen I have a collection of firearms I have accumulated over the years by trading and buying some new from shops or stores and many from gun shows like Bigtown and Market Hall in Dallas for which no paper work was required at that time 10 or more years ago.

Now I am wondering how to determine that any of the firearms I own are not listed in the NCIC database as stolen and if one or more is found to be on the database, how to handle it with law enforcement so I don't get in trouble for buying a gun I did not know was stolen.

I know that only law enforcement officers have access to the NCIC database so that means they are the ones who will have to run the numbers either at my request or through someone else.

So far I have not seen any posts by anyone who has actually gone through this process and what the outcome was. Can it be handled by the individual or should a person hire a lawyer or what?

Let's say that you wanted to buy a firearm from an individual and you wanted to rule the possibility that it's stolen.  You could contact your local Sheriff's Office or Police Dept. or Constable and ask them to run it (by serial number) for you.  You could also do the same with guns in your own collection.  

Now, if one (or more) come back as stolen the officer must seize it/them and they would be placed into evidence.  You should be able to prove quite easily that you honestly and unwittingly purchased the firearm with no knowledge of it's status. 

Once you've proven this your next step would be to contact your local Justice of the Peace and request a "Property Hearing" to determine who is going to get the gun.  Since you bought it honestly you now have a claim to it.  But so does the guy it was stolen from. 

Chances are that if the guy it was stolen from collected insurance reimbursment then the gun would be awarded back to you.  At that point he really wouldn't have a claim to it anymore.  But his insurance company would.  Most insurance companies wouldn't attempt to collect on something so minor and probably wouldn't even attend the hearing.  You would be awarded the gun by default and then would be the legal owner. 

However, if the previous owner was not reimbursed and he contested your claim to ownership then it would be up to the judge to decided who gets the gun.  

Once seized, some departments may have their crime lab check the ballistics on the gun and if they matched it to some other crime, such as a murder or robbery, you probably wouldn't get the gun back as it would be held indefinitely in evidence and then it would be up the District Attorney to decide when or if you get it back or not.  You'd be out whatever you spent on the gun which you might be able to claim on your insurance as a loss. 

Thanks for the info FishFearMe.

Since these guns were bought at shows from individual "collectors" there was no bill of sale and I can't prove that I purchased them other than simply stating that as a fact. I don't even know which show any particular gun came from among the 3 or so I frequented.

I am not even worried about the $$ loss of a particular firearm since I am afraid the consequences of possesing it in the first place and esp if a violent crime had been committed with it are far worse than any $$ loss. I would give it up in a heartbeat and be well rid of it, lesson learned.

I am more concerned that I might be charged with something related to that stolen gun even though I took the initiative to have it checked in the first place. I guess it depends on the politics of the local police, which in this small town in the North  Dallas Co is fairly conservative. That is why I wondered if I should check out a lawyer familiar in firearms cases. Or maybe a personal friend that is a LEO.

In fact the cost of the entire collection would be far smaller than even 1 serious court case and the price of a lawyer.

I gather from other posts that they may actually require a person to bring in the gun to have it checked so if it comes back stolen they can sieze it then on the spot. I don't know how they would handle a list of 20+ guns to check or how I would present them to be checked.

Looks like I have some more homework to do.  Thanks again for the response. I am sure others have concerns along the same lines these days.

Great discussion guys...thanks for all your help.  In fact, after reading this thread I went home and did a little additional 'cleanup' and documentation.