By Larry Keane
Miami police chief Art Acevedo has some explaining to do. The vocal advocate for enacting strict gun control on the rest of America can’t seem to control the firearms in his own police department.
Twenty-five AR-15 rifles were reported “missing” from the Miami Police Department in what some officials are saying is just a matter of “administrative record keeping.” Miami’s Chief Acevedo sent a memo to all 1,400 police officers on the force warning them if the rifles weren’t returned by May 17, they would be considered stolen.
Nothing to See Here
“I don’t think this is a theft issue. I think it’s an inadequate check and balance issue, and an inadequate records management and surveillance issue,” Chief Acevedo told media. Still, he had a stern warning.
“If a gun is not found, it will be reported — anything in the system will be lost or stolen — and anyone who subsequently finds a gun must suffer from the consequences,” he explained.
By the time the deadline passed, six of the 25 rifles were recovered, leaving 19 rifles still missing.
This isn’t the first time firearms went missing in Miami’s police department. Five years ago, 11 firearms were reported missing from the training academy. They were never recovered.
Chief Acevedo is no stranger to the spotlight. He’s a perennial gun control witness in Congress, testifying for gun control while he served in his previous job as Houston’s police chief. It was during that tenure, he told a Texas publication he supported limiting gun rights of those who are law-abiding and of sound mind.
“And I believe that we can do better in terms of limiting access to firearms to law-abiding Americans of sound mind,” he told Texas Monthly.
That’s not all. Chief Acevedo is the president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which supports reinstating the failed 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and instituting universal background checks, which is unworkable without a national registry of gun owners.
Idiocy at its worst. Texas law enforcement has clearly spoken out against this measure. @GregAbbott_TX and @DanPatrick and TX Senators, you either back the blue or the fringe who don’t represent the majority of responsible, and thoughtful gun owners in Texas. Act responsibly.
— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) April 17, 2021
Chief Acevedo testified before the U.S. Senate earlier this year for Major Cities Chiefs Association and called for bans on standard capacity magazines and a ban on internet ammunition sales as well as a scheme of record-keeping of licensing and record-keeping of sales by vendors.
To be fair, the Miami police rifles went missing before Chief Acevedo took the job and were only discovered when an audit was initiated after he started. Inventory audits of everything from firearms to vehicles aren’t uncommon when new leadership takes over, but this presents something different.
AR-15s Are Only For Police
Chief Acevedo has publicly used his uniform and his authority to advocate for denying law-abiding citizens their rights. He’s also sparred on Twitter with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) arguing that AR-15s, or Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), should be barred from civilian possession.
“In 32 years policing I’ve yet [to] encounter a case of a community member using an AR-15 for self-defense. I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I’d bet the house they’ve been used many, many times to slaughter innocent Americans as opposed to self-defense,” he tweeted in 2018.
Chief Acevedo must have missed it when an AR-15 was used in self-defense in Houston, where he was in charge of policing in 2017, or when an AR-15 was used to stop the horrific murders in Sutherland Springs, Texas the same year. Those are just a couple of dozens of instances that are easily verified.
Stolen firearms are a serious concern. That’s why NSSF partners with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) through Operation Secure Store to prevent the theft of firearms from retailers and to match reward offers when firearm retailers are victims of smash-and-grab crimes. NSSF wants these missing firearms to be found and properly accounted for and secured.
This incident should end Chief Acevedo’s preaching that AR-15 rifles can only be trusted to be used by the police. With over 20 million of these rifles in circulation, the law-abiding gun owners who know exactly where their rifles are locked up aren’t the problem.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
one more democrat cockroach heard from chirping in the background ..time for some bug-spray..
He came from California to be police chief in Austin before he jumped to Houston.
Him now being the Miami chief goes to show that Texas **can** dispose of its toxic waste by shipping it to Florida . . . . .
What is it with Texas?
Chicago got David Brown from Dallas.
Is Texas dumping it’s inept police chiefs on other cities?
To be fair, find another line of work.
No, inept police chiefs just move from city to city, screwing them up as they go.
When you “back the blue,” you are backing slimeballs like Art Avocado.
This guy is not one of the men and women in blue. Don’t take the democratic appointed leadership positions in law enforcement as the opinion as the entire rank and file. He hasn’t risen in the ranks from Patrolman to Chief in any organization. He can be found scurrying about always looking for more power.
What’s your favorite flavor boot polish, bubba?
Well for starters I am a cop so….
Next I wear Solomans and no polish necessary. However on a serious note I kiss no ones a$$ and don’t need mine kissed either. I hold a firm belief that people need to have personal responsibility for their actions and well we need people like police to deal with times when people fail to do that. Police aren’t mindless drones incapable of individual thought. I find a situation where someone needs a ticket or get arrested to correct a behavior, I do just that. Other times it’s a warning or how about we act or do something a bit differently. I am open minded to every new person I meet while working. Maybe you should try the same when it comes to law enforcement. If you always have a negative interaction with cops, regardless of who or where you are, might want to look at your own behavior.
That’s why he is in charge of a police department as large as Miami’s? Because he is not a police officer? GTFO he is representative of many large police departments and their leadership. Another reason why I believe the police are one of the standing armies the founders of this country warned us about.
He is the head of said department because he is a yes man who can be counted on to toe the party line. These people are bureaucrats to their core not cops.
Yeah right. Your kind love to claim no true Scotsman when it comes to the myriad scumbag cops out there, but at a certain point if an entire groups walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…. when the rank and file start blatantly refusing en masse to follow the orders of asshole Chiefs, your words will have some merit, but until then, kindly reconsider your position.
Maybe you were brought up differently, but I was raised to believe in personal responsibility. At the end of the day, just because someone tells you to do something messed up and then pays you to do it, doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. We rightfully condemn the actions of hitmen as being fundamentally immoral (even though they’re just doing their jobs and they don’t make the rules, they just enforce them), and yet somehow we’re supposed to give individual police officers a pass when they sodomize the citizenry in illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional actions? I don’t think so
You talk of personal responsibility, yet you seem to be the type that if a cop gives you a speeding ticket or one for driving like a jack a$$ you complain “police state”. You sound like nothing more than the liberals complaining. I further that argument with the fact you lump all cops in with whichever ones you don’t like. Some gun owners can be bad or negligent, should we all just give up our guns until we fix that or treat gun owners as individuals and held responsible for individual actions?
Having worked under that dip stick I can agree. When he came to my department, literally no patrol officer wanted him around. He immediately went about changing rules, giving patrol more and more responsibility and oversite, and then when people started to push back he acted like he’d fire people.
He’s a greaseball politician and not a cop.
It’s funny that you complain but still work for him. If he orders you to go door to door confiscating guns you will. You are only proving my point.
Chiefs are NOT cops, they are politicians
Hey Art, I know where all my guns are!!! He wants to control US????
And how many of those guns will be found in officer’s gun safes?
“Honestly, I don’t know how that got there!”
And as for restricting guns for police use, I’ve seen the standards for police marksmanship, and I’m not impressed.
Glad we got that moron out of Texas. What a buffoon. Everywhere he goes a problem pops up. It’s almost as if wherever he goes LEO’S know they can pull stuff and get away with it.
Oh I’m sure the guy who replaced him in Houston is as bad if not worse. Houston is probably the worst large city in Texas and they are keeping with that image.
Houston has always had it’s problems, but Katrina certainly sped up the downward spiral.
⬆️Was not gonna bring that into it but pretty much sums it up.
Art sold those guns to the cartels for a nice profit. How else do you think crooked cops retire so well? He knew, he got a cut for sure.
When I lived in Texas some police friends of mine told me that he was referred to as Assholeveda by his own cops. He hasn’t changed except to get dumber.
My name for him has been the Asshole Diva for years.
Sometimes I coin a phrase that catches on.
That one has not.
If that was a Miami gun dealer that lost 19 rifles, he’d be putting the finishing touches on the crucifix by now.
“Stolen firearms [from a government agency] are a serious concern. That’s why NSSF partners with [a government agency] …”
Newsflash: government agencies are notoriously inept and inefficient.
It makes no sense whatsoever for the National Shooting Sports Foundation to partner with a notoriously inept and inefficient government agency for much if anything, much less an agency which works tireless to infringe on our inalienable right to keep and bear arms.
Oh noes! They’ll be reported!
If I find one I’ll be in trouble apparently so I guess I’ll keep my mouth shut.
I wish we had a better class of tyrant in this country. As it is these clowns are like frazzled parents dropping “because I said so!” onto their demonstrably more intelligent children to justify their irrational dictates.
If you’re going to come at me, my property and my liberty come strong not like some ineffective bureaucrat hiding insecurities behind a poorly smithed armor of feelings.
It sure looks to me like HE is the one being irresponsible for what he’s incharge of. People like him art part of the problem.
I know exactly what I have and exactly where everything is. Even a Bible given to me in high school.
Spoiler. It won’t: “This incident should end Chief Acevedo’s preaching that AR-15 rifles can only be trusted to be used by the police.”
What he said. 👆🏽
Just like us peons would be, Chief Acevedo should be considered “unsuitable” and should be required to relinquish all firearms under his control, including the department’s.
Ummm…do any of those “missing” AR’s have a giggle switch?!? Asking for a friend😏🙂😜
I am also betting they have either full auto or 3 round burst…UNLIKE civilian AR-15s
Grade A joke in there somewhere…lol
Betting they have the 3-round burst or full-auto giggle switch, too…UNLIKE civilian AR-15s
anyone know for sure one way or the other?
Normally SWAT only has the “fun switch” ones!
He can’t find 25 of his own ARs? Then he definitely won’t find mine… 😉
Wait, did I read that correctly? The ones who find the guns must suffer consequences? Sounds like an incentive to turn a blind eye, and quickly “dispose” of any missing gun that turns up.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if he got shot with one of them.
Ironic would be if he did a Lee Paige on camera.
Art should apply for a job in Cuba or China. He would fit in well with the genocidal communists.
“If a gun is not found, it will be reported — anything in the system will be lost or stolen — and anyone who subsequently finds a gun must suffer from the consequences,”
So… they’re not looking for the guns or are they just strongly discouraging anyone who might try to look for them?
Lol. I thought this too.
It’s bullshit. Hell use it as a campaign. Guns were found, people were let go, faith in system restored. See what good I did? I did that. Me me me me me. All me.
Upon retirement the hardest part was returning the M-16 that was assigned to me for the last ten years that had be turned in. The Training Dept. was very generous with ammo and encouraged us to practice with the weapons on our own time. Then I had to buy my own automatic weapons.
Not the first time evidence is vanishing from the Miami PD…Miami is as corrupt as New Orleans and the likes.
Miami River Cops seized so much cocaine and cash that even the drug dealers called them out years ago.
How hard is it? Serial #123456 AR issued to Officer “x” ….thats some challenging record keeping. Corrupt Miami Cops? Who knew?
Oh and I’m a local So Flo resident.
Couple years back under the tenure Chief Acevedo in Houston I arrived on scene to transport an injured person. Three individuals had broken into her home and began beating them and threatening them with guns striking them in the face in the head till they were cut up bloody and a flap of skin hanging loose from one persons head. During the Ruckus the family who lived in the house next door heard what was going on in a family member came from next door with an AR-15. Needless to say the three people with handguns were outgunned and one of them died after being hit multiple times. Another was believed hit and got away. The third had most of the muscle blown off of his calf.
There were steel shell casings from wolf or tulammo all over the street.
These stop making prey upon what they thought were defenseless immigrants. Thankfully someone in the family was a law-abiding gun owner and took care of business.
The police arrive later…
Acevedo is a turd and Houston is better off without him. Look at how history in Austin and CHP. He has been a political hack and NOT a good cop.
One also wonders how many confiscated firearms have vanished from his department’s property room over the years.
He’s probably running guns to his communist buddies in Cuba. I bet there’s a Che Guevara shirt under that uniform.
Art Assevedo is more like it.
He is where is is because the City of Miami is run by Marxists. In fact all of South Florida is controlled by Marxist Mayors who hire Marxist police chiefs and sheriffs. How do I know ?
I have lived in the region for 66 years and witnessed the decay and blight brought on by liberalism, which today is communism.
If Florida did not have a strong Republican Governor even pocket knives would be banned in the region, possibly the entire state
Don’t forget, this is the same raging hemorrhoid that called the murdering & lying cops that killed Dennis Wayne Tuttle and Rhogena Ann Nicholas heros, even months after the bullshit story behind the no-knock raid was obviously falling apart.
This problem exists at every level. The ATF has lost hundreds of guns, laptop computers, enormous amounts of public property bought by taxpayers. There have been criminal cases of ATF agents selling confiscated guns on the side, pocketing the money.
So it would not surprise me in the least that these AR-15’s missing from the police are not missing at all. They were sold off by some dirty cops.
Pretty sure I recall a “gun buyback” in Miami early this year. Check there Artie.
“and anyone who subsequently finds a gun must suffer from the consequences”
So if an officer happens to find one of the rifles, but didn’t steal it, they’ll be blamed for the theft, and be punished. That’s some of the dumbest sh*t I’ve ever heard. It gives honest officers zero incentive to actually look for them. I’m guessing that most, if not all the rifles, will never be found.
My previous job had a policy like that for missing money. They fired several people for simply finding the money. So if missing money was ever found, whoever found it just kept it and said nothing.
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