For Scot Thomasson, the chance that a police weapon could fall into a criminal’s hands wasn’t a far-fetched possibility. It was a reality.

On a clear day in 1997, Thomasson sat in a diner in Colorado Springs, Colorado, waiting to meet with a neo-Nazi who had robbed drug cartel members in California and made his way eastward, offloading cocaine and weapons along the way. Thomasson was an undercover ATF agent disguised as an interested buyer – of both drugs and guns.

“He said he didn't have any other cocaine, that he just sold me his last bit. But they might have a gun,” Thomasson said.

The dealer agreed to meet later in a hotel parking lot and sell Thomasson a Smith & Wesson revolver.

“It's kind of an old-school firearm,” Thomasson said. “But I do notice there's a San Diego Sheriff's Department symbol on it.”

Retired ATF agent Scot Thomasson recalls buying a police gun from a neo-Nazi in an undercover sting. Photo by Alain Stephens. Retired ATF agent Scot Thomasson recalls buying a police gun from a neo-Nazi in an undercover sting. Photo by Alain Stephens.

After leaving the parking lot, Thomasson called the San Diego Sheriff’s Department to let officials know he found one of their weapons in the hands of a drug dealer.

“There was a long silence and pause on the phone,” he said. The department had sold the gun and said it would stop selling to the public.

“They were horrified that a revolver that was once carried by a police officer could have injured another law enforcement officer or somebody else because it was in the hands of criminals,” he said.

Thomasson since has retired from the ATF. He says former police weapons are typically quality guns, chosen by departments for their high lethality and ease of use – all selling points to criminals. He doesn’t think departments should sell weapons back to the public but says they’ve been put in a bind by a lack of funding.

“Is it wrong? Yeah,” Thomasson said. “It's wrong that police have to resort to selling their guns because they’re not funded. That’s what’s wrong with the whole thing.”

Because of stories such as Thomasson's, public interest in police weapons spiked in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Using trace information, which was publicly available through the ATF, reporters started tying guns used in crimes back to police departments across the country.

The Denver Post uncovered that police weapons were found in the hands of criminals three times a day, using Thomasson as its lead character.

The Washington Post showed in 1999 how used D.C. police guns had been used in at least eight killings after 9,000 guns were sold in the previous decade. One had been used in a homicide in St. Louis. Guns from other police departments were linked to gang murders in New York and a white supremacist who fired on a Jewish community center.

CBS revealed in 1999 that Detroit ridded itself of 14 tons of weapons in seven years and that police in Irving, Texas, sold military-style grenade launchers.

That same year, New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, a proponent of gun control, was embarrassed on live television when an attorney for Glock Inc. exposed how the city’s Police Department had used the gunmaker to dump weapons in other states.

Cities started using trace information as well, pointing fingers at gun dealers they believed were responsible for arming criminals and supplementing violent crime, going so far as to file lawsuits to hold them responsible.