A sock stuffed with 20 shotgun shells in a laundry room. A baggie of marijuana stashed in mechanical storage. A loaded, sawed-off shotgun tucked behind a ceiling lighting fixture on the same floor where a teen was shot and killed just two weeks ago.

Those are just some of the more troubling items Toronto Police recovered in “readily accessible” areas in a two-day raid that targeted community housing complexes across the city.

In the wake of gun violence that has taken the lives of five youth in the past month, eight divisions of Toronto Police conducted the sweep — dubbed “Project Walk-In” — with the cooperation of Toronto Community Housing on Feb. 21 and 22. It’s something police are vowing to do more often.

In total, they recovered two handguns, a shotgun, one replica handgun, an air pistol, multiple rounds of ammunition, swords, blades, a baseball bat, drugs and other paraphernalia from multiple buildings.

The shotgun — a 12-gauge, sawed-off, Lakefield-Mossberg pump-action model — was found stored behind a fluorescent light in the ceiling of a third-floor hallway at 40 Turf Grassway, where on Feb. 11, 15-year-old St. Aubyn Rodney was fatally shot inside his own apartment. A 17-year-old, said to be Rodney’s friend, is charged with manslaughter.

Insp. Shaun Narine, of 31 Division in the city’s north end, where the raids were initiated and the bulk of the items were recovered, said people who try to conceal weapons in the open are fighting a losing battle.

“I think they’re on the run,” Narine said. “They’re trying to outsmart us, but they’re not.”

In explaining why someone would stash weapons in the hallway ceiling, Narine pointed to a trend of weapons shared among multiple people — “community guns.”

“We’ve got the bad guys . . . now (purchasing) guns together,” he said. “It’s readily accessible. And whoever wants them, who knows that they’re there, go get the guns and commit their criminal acts.”

Of the eight divisions that conducted searches, four in Etobicoke and the city’s west end found illegal items, including a sword, two knives and a baseball bat from a Jamestown Cres. housing complex where 15-year-old Jarvis Montaque was gunned down one week ago.

“It is troubling that by hiding weapons and drugs in such areas, people engaged in criminal activities have put the safety of all residents and staff at risk,” TCH said in a statement released Monday. “We trust that future searches will bring similar results and lead to arrests.”

Narine said that despite the weapons recovered, he believes TCH security — which includes 107 community patrol officers and 4,400 cameras — is not the problem.

“The security measures that are in place are adequate,” he said. “The constant challenges we face there, is the people that we are up against constantly use tactics against us.”

Those tactics, he said, include impeding or destroying security equipment such as surveillance cameras, sometimes by spray-painting over the lens.

David Hyde, a security consultant with Toronto-based David Hyde & Associates, said the weapons recovered show that security measures are still inadequate in these complexes.

“The very buildings that are designed, supposed to be designed, to protect the residents are actually serving as facilitators of crime,” he said. “When you’ve got the ability for criminals to openly and easily secret (weapons) without any fear of being (detected) . . . That’s like bees to honey.”

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The last time 31 Division carried out such a raid was in August 2011, Narine said. Police are now thinking about conducting more frequent sweeps like the one they did last week, which — because the areas searched are public — don’t require search warrants.

Police said the weapons seized last week are still undergoing forensics and ballistics testing. No arrests have been made as a result of the raids.