DC police dealt thousands of guns; ATF demands answers after concerning number found at crime scenes

By Ted Oberg, News4 Investigative Reporter, Rick Yarborough and Steve Jones
• Published April 2, 2024
• Updated on April 3, 2024 at 9:49 am

For at least seven months in 2020 and 2021, the D.C. area’s largest police department was the only legal gun dealer in the nation’s capital. It was the only place D.C. residents could legally get a handgun.

That much was reported at the time, but now the News4 I-Team has the federal documents proving a concerning number of guns the Metropolitan Police Department helped bring into the District ended up at crime scenes. So many guns recovered at crime scenes, in such a brief period, that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives placed D.C. police into a program designed to give extra scrutiny to dealers with higher levels of so-called crime guns.

MPD’s gun dealing was different than what many gun owners may be used to. Theirs was not a typical gun store with display cases and racks of guns to peruse. When a D.C. resident wants a legal handgun, they usually go to a gun store in Virginia or Maryland or to an online site. They pick the gun out, pay for it and have it shipped to a licensed dealer in D.C. – at the time, D.C. police headquarters. That D.C. dealer plays an important role in the sale process as the only place a federal background check is conducted, looking for past crimes or other disqualifications.

In recent weeks, the group Brady United Against Gun Violence released hundreds of letters sent by the ATF to gun dealers across the country that sold 25 or more guns recovered at crime scenes in a single year. The I-Team found one sent to MPD in May 2022. ATF calls it the Demand 2 Program.

“We are not anti-gun dealers at Brady,” Josh Scharff, the group’s general counsel, told the I-Team. “We are anti-irresponsible-gun dealing.”

According to Brady, just 2% of gun dealers across the country are in the ATF program any given year. The I-Team found 14 dealers in D.C., Northern Virginia, and the Maryland suburbs. That includes both currently licensed dealers in D.C. along with MPD from the time when it was an active gun dealer.

That means at least 25 of the guns MPD helped sell to D.C. residents in 2020 and 2021 were recovered at crime scenes in 2021 alone.

“It was a little bit surprising to see that the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department receive a demand letter,” Scharff said.

Federal firearms licensees (FFLs) play an important part in crime investigations.After a gun is found at a crime scene, the ATF traces it all the way back to the original sale with dealers and then follows the trail to see who else may have bought the gun before it was used in a crime. Detectives use the traces to develop suspects.

Short ‘time-to-crime’ with DC police dealt guns
According to the ATF, a gun found at a crime scene is on average 10 years along from its first sale – a calculation the ATF calls "time-to-crime." The ATF explained to the I-Team, “Shorter time-to-crime periods could be indicators of illegal trafficking and provide crucial intelligence to investigators.”

The agency says if that happens within three years of the first sale, it deserves extra scrutiny into the gun dealer. For the dozens of guns recovered at crime scenes that D.C. police helped sell, the time-to-crime was at most 20 months – less than two years.

MPD is ‘ultimately responsible’
D.C. police has since stopped operating as an FFL, but Scharff told the I-Team the department should want to know why that time-to-crime was shorter and be able to tell D.C. families if their loved one was shot with a gun they helped bring into the District.

“MPD is ultimately responsible for the public safety of the residents of the of Washington, D.C.,” Scharff said. “Everything that they do should have an eye towards protecting the public safety. If Washington Metropolitan Police Department is engaged in selling firearms to the public, they have an obligation to the residents of D.C., to make sure that they are doing so safely and responsibly.”

Gun dealer had concerns about MPD’s practices
Shawn Poulin opened DC Security Associates in 2021. He is one of two FFLs in D.C. currently working with the public. He said he sees himself as the last check on responsible sales.

“We have a conscience just like everyone else. And we believe in responsible ownership,” he said.

Poulin opened his business months after MPD started operating as an FFL. At that time, MPD was the only licensed operating gun dealer in the District. D.C. police were then – and, according to everyone the I-Team talked to, is still – the only police department in America to help sell or have sold guns to the public. Federal records show D.C. police held a Type 1 federal firearms license, which the ATF defines as a “dealer in firearms other than destructive devices.”

Even before Poulin opened, he said D.C. police told him they wanted out of the gun business.

“They asked us to open early by four weeks?” Poulin told the I-Team at his D.C. location. “They were getting sick and tired of managing all those firearms they had down there. They had thousands of firearms waiting to be processed.”

D.C. police would not talk to the I-Team about Poulin’s claim.

When asked if he agreed with D.C. police getting into the gun business, “Heck, no,” Poulin told the I-Team, explaining, “My biggest point there for a while was if your firearms branch screws up, you're going to inspect and enforce your own firearms branch?”

Looking back, Poulin said he was not surprised to see D.C. police on the list of dealers with guns that ended up at crime scenes.

“Does not surprise me one bit,” he said. “I walked in there, and it was, it was archaic. The processes, the systems they were using, to manage that process. It was archaic. I offered advice and offered little suggestions.”

D.C. police did not respond to that concern, either.

The I-Team also found Poulin’s business and the other D.C. FFL also received an ATF Demand 2 Program letter. Poulin told the I-Team his managers submit quarterly reports as required by the program and responded, “We don’t play games with (requests from the ATF).”

Few answers from DC police
After weeks of trying to obtain even basic answers from both D.C. police and the mayor’s office, the I-Team received few answers about the department’s time as an FFL. Brady’s Scharff told the I-Team D.C. residents deserve to know more about how their police department legally moved more than 8,000 handguns into the hands of District residents.

The trail started in 2012. At the time, D.C. had recently and repeatedly been in court over its stringent gun regulations and the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller had upended many of them.

The D.C. Council passed a law in 2012 allowing the city to seek a license to sell guns to D.C. residents if no other private business would do so.

Eight years later as COVID-19 took hold in the District (and, as federal statistics show, gun purchases rose rapidly), D.C.’s longtime lone licensed dealer closed his business. A D.C. police spokesperson told the I-Team, “MPD was required to operate as an FFL from April 3, 2020, until January 4, 2021, to uphold a constitutional right in the District.”

The department would not say how many guns were eventually tracked to crime scenes, or if they told families D.C. police helped sell a gun used to injure their loved one. D.C. police would not tell us how many people were assigned to the gun dealing unit. Nor would they say if they ever refused a sale – as is a dealer’s right.

While D.C. police didn’t answer most specific questions the I-Team sent, even basic answers the department offered were confusing. D.C. police said it started dealing guns more than two weeks before Mayor Muriel Bowser’s order allowing them to do so. D.C. police has not offered any explanation.

The law that allowed D.C. police to get into the gun business also allowed them to charge $125 per firearm transfer. D.C. police confirmed it charged that much, meaning they brought in more than a million dollars. A spokesperson said the funds collected from the transfers went to the city’s general fund.

In a statement to the I-Team, a D.C. police spokesperson wrote, “MPD has never sold guns. MPD was required to operate as an FFL from April 3, 2020, until January 4, 2021, to uphold a constitutional right in the District. During that period, the department facilitated the legal transfer of 8,038 firearms.”

That spokesperson also said once MPD ceased operations as a gun dealer, the department complied with requirements to submit transaction records to the ATF.

DC mayor told Virginia to better oversee gun dealers months before DC became one
Before Bowser told D.C. police to get into the gun business, she criticized Virginia lawmakers for not overseeing dealers in the commonwealth strictly enough.

In a letter she sent Virginia legislative leaders on Jan. 8, 2020, Bowser urged Virginia legislative leaders to do more to keep guns legally sold in Virginia from being used in DC crimes. “Illegal guns originating in Virginia are a key driver of gun crime in D.C.,” Bowser wrote. She continued, “According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, ATF data show that criminal or negligent gun dealers are responsible for ‘nearly half’ of the total number of trafficked firearms uncovered in ATF investigations.”

Four months later, she signed that mayor’s order authorizing D.C.’s police department to become a dealer themselves, and those ATF records show clearly, D.C. helped bring guns into the District eventually used in crime, too.

The I-Team asked about the letter and D.C. police’s role as a gun dealer two weeks ago. The mayor’s office acknowledged the questions but never answered them.