East Bay gun shop burglarized for 3rd time in 2 years; $40,000 in guns stolen
By CBS Bay Area
Damon Butts, who owns and operates East Bay Firearms with his brother, saw his family gun store in Livermore victimized for the third time in two years on Saturday.
“Thieves are the worst type of people, and I want to see them brought to justice,” he said. “If this can happen to us here, in what we believe is a very secure facility, it can happen to your business as well.”
Officers responded to the gun store around 4:30 a.m. and found a car rammed through the glass storefront, according to the Livermore Police Department. More than 30 guns worth about $40,000 were stolen.
The Livermore Police Criminal Investigations Bureau and the ATF are currently investigating the burglary. No arrests have been made.
“It’s not the financial losses for us,” Butts said. “It’s the things that they stole that could be used to hurt the community. I’m never going to be okay with that.
Jeff Harp, a security analyst and former FBI agent, is also the son of a former gun store owner.
“My dad’s guns that were stolen in the ’70s were still entered in NCIC (National Crime Information Center) when I was in the FBI in 1995. That’s kind of the course of action that takes place. All these firearms are entered into NCIC in the event they’re used in a crime and recovered,” he said. “Now, catch-22 – if they’re recovered.”
Harp said stolen guns tend to be used in other crimes, sold on the black market, or never found again.
“ATF monitors these stores very closely: their transactions, and the things they do to make sure it’s all above board and above the books. But it doesn’t prevent the bad guys from conducting any sort of surveillance, then hitting the store when they’re not there,” Harp said. “Certainly, you can have a more robust safe, a robust security system, and all those things. But if somebody rams a car in the front of your building, (it) doesn’t do a whole lot of good.”
