The Brief

Eight months before Cole Tomas Allen sprinted past a security checkpoint with his shotgun in an alleged attempt to kill President Donald Trump, he walked into Turner’s Outdoorsman in Torrance, California, and purchased the weapon, a Mossberg pump-action 12-gauge.

If convicted, Allen would join a long list of criminals armed with guns from the Turner’s Outdoorsman chain. Between 2022 and 2024, California law enforcement traced nearly 8,000 crime guns — those used in a crime, suspected to have been used in a crime, or illegally possessed — back to Turner’s locations.

With over 30 outlets across California, Turner’s Outdoorsman is the biggest gun seller in the nation’s most populous state. A first-of-its-kind analysis of California Department of Justice data by The Trace shows that Turner’s is connected to more crime guns than any other California dealer or chain. And that’s not only because Turner’s sells so many guns. Among the findings:

• Turner's stores account for a fifth of guns sold in California, but make up a quarter of all crime guns.
• The chain accounted for 7,922 crime guns from 2022 to 2024. Guns it sold showed up at crime scenes at a rate 35 percent higher than other dealers in the state.
• Guns sold at Turner’s locations wound up at crime scenes quickly — less than a year after purchase — 40 percent more often than guns from other dealers. (Regulators consider a “time-to-crime” of less than one year an indicator of trafficking.)
• The Torrance store where Allen bought his shotgun sold 642 firearms later recovered as crime guns, the second-highest number of any store in the state. 
• Eight of the 10 stores with the most crime gun traces were Turner’s locations in Southern California.
• Sales at Sacramento and Stockton Turner’s stores ended up at crime scenes in under a year at some of the highest rates in the state.

It’s not clear why Turner’s is overrepresented in the data, but there are several potential reasons some dealers are tied to high numbers of crime guns. Factors such as store location, lax sales practices, the types of guns sold, and low prices can contribute to higher numbers of traces, according to academics and former law enforcement.

However, the large numbers of crime guns traced to Turner’s Outdoorsman stores warrants regulatory scrutiny, said Steve Lindley, the former head of the Bureau of Firearms at CADOJ, who now works at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It was shocking how many of the top 25 crime gun dealers in California were Turner's Outdoorsman,” Lindley told us. “Turner's has a responsibility to figure that out and do whatever they can to try and minimize that,” he said, including reviewing its training and hiring practices.

Authorities should give Turner’s stores “some extra love and attention when it comes to inspections, because there’s something going on there different than other dealers,” he added.

Turner’s Outdoorsman did not respond to interview requests.

“There’s something beyond just, ‘You sell a lot of guns, you have more crime guns,’” said Hannah Laquer, a professor at the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis. Laquer’s research has found just 15 percent of California dealers account for 98 percent of the state’s crime guns.

Guns take several paths to crime scenes. Some are stolen from their owners. Others are bought through straw purchases — the act of buying a gun on behalf of someone else — or trafficked into the underground market. And some are legally purchased by a person who later commits a crime.

Turner’s past customers include Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Berardino mass shooter, who purchased a pistol at a San Diego Turner’s store. An acquaintance of Farook’s also bought rifles from Turner’s locations in San Diego and Corona, which Farook and his wife used in the 2015 massacre. The couple killed 14 people and injured 22 in the worst terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11.

California — where the most recent data covers 2022 to 2024 — is the only state that releases detailed figures on the dealers connected to crime guns. The federal government does not, because Congress has prohibited the ATF from sharing retailer-level data since 2003.

Allen’s shotgun purchase was reported by Bloomberg, citing law enforcement records. The firearm would not appear in the data because he purchased it after the period captured by the numbers, and it was recovered by law enforcement outside the state.

Challenges Tracking Crime Guns

Those who investigate and study crime guns say there’s likely no single reason Turner’s accounts for a disproportionate share of those traced by CADOJ — and no obvious path for the public to determine why that disparity exists. But they cite several general reasons Tuner’s may account for large numbers of crime guns.

“It’s a question of geography, it’s a question of social economics. It’s a question of, is there any competition within a legitimate walking area or driving area?” said Scot Thomasson, a former special agent with the ATF.

A store’s inventory, prices, and clientele are all related to how many crime guns are traced back to it. According to research done in California by Laquer and her colleagues:

• Cheaper handguns are more likely to be recovered in crimes
• Dealers where a greater percentage of background checks are rejected have higher rates of sales later traced as crime guns
• Younger buyers purchase a disproportionate share of crime guns
• Dealers in areas with higher gun robbery and assault rates sell more crime guns

Large chains are unlikely to engage in risky sales, much less trafficking, said Joseph Bisbee, a former ATF agent who has trained over 1,000 officers on firearms trafficking investigations. “It doesn’t make sense from a business perspective,” he said. Lax sales practices may be a factor in other crime gun sales, he said, including dealers “not taking the responsibility seriously enough, or making a mistake that allows that straw purchase.”

At least one Turner’s location, in Pasadena, displays posters from the gun industry’s anti-straw purchase program “Don’t Lie For The Other Guy.” The ATF calls dealers “the first line of defense” against straw purchasing.

Four current and former Turner’s employees said the company’s sales and inventory practices are relatively tight. ATF inspection paperwork from 2015, while citing one store’s failure to file required reports, noted that “overall, [Turner’s] recordkeeping is meticulous.” The chain doesn’t allow sales in which a background check comes back “undetermined” to proceed. A former employee called the chain’s more stringent sales practices a notable distinction from dealers that take a less cautious approach. The current and former employees interviewed for this story asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.

Most dealers and employees make a genuine effort to follow federal and state laws, according to Michael Eberhardt, a former firearms operations division chief at ATF. But dealers often fail to draw a line between their sales and subsequent criminal activity, he said. A store employee should realize that a gun “is just my carelessness — or my ignoring of the rules — away from being used to kill somebody,” he said.

Eberhardt advocates for informing dealers when guns they have sold turn up at the scenes of violent crimes. “I guarantee you that changes behavior without enacting another gun law,” he said. For its part, the public rarely learns where guns used in crimes were sold.

Experts interviewed by The Trace called for additional regulatory scrutiny on stores with high numbers of crime guns or low times-to-crime. In practice, that step might be difficult. The ATF’s inspections division, long a target of Republicans on Capitol Hill, has been understaffed for years. And last year, the Department of Justice shuttered an ATF program that monitored stores that had sold significant numbers of crime guns with low times-to-crime.

Even when inspections happen, the agency has no baseline to compare stores against one another because it doesn’t track sales. “It’s insane how in the dark we are on so much of this stuff,” said Daniel Semenza of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University.

In addition to federal oversight, states can employ their own inspectors, which California does. But in 2024, the majority of those positions — 12 out of 23 — were empty. “A very small percentage of dealers across the country are getting audited, in a way that is really shocking,” said Semenza.

Chains as the source of crime guns haven’t been the subject of academic research, he said, in part because the data simply doesn’t exist in most places. Semenza’s work has found that, in Atlanta, the presence of gun dealers in disadvantaged communities appeared to drive additional gun violence. Another study documented that shootings increase in neighborhoods after a gun dealer opens.

California’s data exists thanks to a 2021 measure introduced by Assemblymember Kevin McCarty. “This bill was a way to better trace and track guns that were used in serious crimes,” said McCarty, who is now the mayor of Sacramento. The measure drew bipartisan support in the statehouse, where only a single legislator voted against it.

“If you look at our gun violence rates versus other industrialized places across the globe, it’s atrocious,” McCarty said.

Advocates say data like California’s can assist dealers in preventing sales to suspicious buyers, equip lawmakers with the knowledge to craft better policy, and help law enforcement fight gun trafficking.

Law enforcement sources said that regulators should assess operations across chains, something that is not standard practice in an industry in which locations are individually licensed.

In late February, the Midwestern chain Fleet Farm settled a suit brought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. The company agreed to pay $1 million, change training and discipline related to straw purchases, and implement a new system that informs staff when a buyer’s previous purchases were recovered as crime guns. Federal prosecutors had previously alleged the retailer sold dozens of guns to a straw purchaser.

“States have mechanisms and abilities to push dealers to be responsible,” said David Pucino, legal director at the gun safety nonprofit Giffords Law Center. “And they also have the ability to take action against those who fail to do so, or refuse to do so.”

Editorial support for this story was provided by The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state, with NPR as its national partner. This story was published in connection with The Trace, where Mendelson is a news developer.

In April 2023, the FBI discovered that Rafael Silva, an officer with the Delano Police Department in California’s Central Valley, had made violent threats against transgender people on TikTok.

Under a pseudonym, Silva posted several comments that the FBI found imminently dangerous. One read, “You ain’t safe. We finna change your pronouns soon. Was/were.” Another said that Silva’s “AR will track y’all down.” And yet another read, “The only power you’ll see is the one from a barrel and a 9mm,” according to investigative documents.

Silva is one of the 148 California law enforcement officers who engaged in explicitly biased conduct between 2014 and 2024, according to an investigation by The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program. Records show the officers used racist, sexist and homophobic slurs; mocked transgender people; made violent comments about Black people; and demeaned members of the public, co-workers and incarcerated people, records show.

Yet only about 12% were fired because of their conduct. Silva was not one of them. After leaving Delano, he went on to work for police departments in Avenal and Wasco.

The news organizations reviewed thousands of pages of internal affairs investigations, disciplinary records and court filings obtained from nearly 500 law enforcement and oversight agencies. The records show that some officers accused of overtly biased behavior often faced limited consequences, such as a letter of reprimand or training.

The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, determines whether to decertify officers, barring them from working in law enforcement in the state. However, the responsibility to investigate misconduct and impose discipline generally falls to individual agencies and local oversight boards, according to POST.

An investigation of California law enforcement records found officers accused of racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ conduct often remained employed.

(

Alex Emslie

/

KQED

)

Despite that system, more than 40% of officers identified by the news organizations still work in California law enforcement, excluding corrections officers.

Silva did not respond to requests for comment. The Delano Police Department confirmed that Silva worked there until 2023, but declined further comment.

Attorneys, law enforcement officials and academics said the behavior erodes public trust, raises questions about officers’ credibility in court and undermines efforts to recruit and retain diverse police forces.

Law enforcement officers stand guard during a protest on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. 

(

Ethan Swope

/

AP Photo

)

Law enforcement officers should be held to a high standard, said Vida Johnson, a Georgetown University law professor who has testified before Congress on white supremacy and policing.

Johnson said people who express explicit bias have no place in law enforcement.

“With such an important job, if someone is exhibiting any type of bias against a member of their community, I just don’t think they should have that job,” she said.

How biased conduct can undermine public trust and the courts

When officers exhibit explicit bias, it erodes trust between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect.

“It undermines our cohesion as a country when you have different perceptions of who our institutions work on behalf of,” Johnson said.

Experts said bias against protected groups — including Black people, LGBTQ people and immigrants — sends a clear message to those communities: We are not here to serve you.

A billboard put up by the Orange County District Attorney’s office that reads, “crime doesn’t pay in Orange County. If you steal, we prosecute,” stands on the southbound 710 Freeway near Del Amo Boulevard in Long Beach, California, on March 11, 2024.

(

Jeff Gritchen

/

MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

)

In a 2022 case, Orange County District Attorney’s Office investigator Eric Franke called a security guard who had asked him to leave a building an “angry Black lady.” In a separate incident, he remarked that Mexican people drink excessively. He received a letter of reprimand and still works for the DA’s office.

In separate cases in 2015 and 2018, Los Angeles Police Officer Armando Magana and San Diego Police Officer Alan Dyemartin ridiculed people for not speaking English. Both received letters of reprimand and kept their jobs.

The LAPD declined to comment on the incident for this story. Spokespersons for the Orange County DA’s office and the San Diego Police Department said the agencies take prejudiced behavior seriously and noted that both employees were disciplined. Franke did not comment. Magana declined to comment, and Dyemartin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The distrust created by explicitly biased behavior can have real-world consequences, experts said.

When people believe police are prejudiced against them, they are less likely to call 911 or seek help from law enforcement, according to Stefan Vogler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Vogler and other experts refer to this as the “overpolicing, underprotection paradox,” a phenomenon they say is common in communities of color and LGBTQ communities.

“They’re not getting the services that they’re promised by the state,” Vogler said.

Explicit bias can also undermine trust in the courtroom.

“You become concerned about using their testimony without corroboration,” said Richard Drooyan, former Los Angeles police commissioner. Drooyan recalled the O.J. Simpson case, when defense attorneys used audio recordings and witnesses to discredit an officer who had been a key witness.

Under the Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, defense attorneys have a right to any information that impacts the credibility of officers who are called to testify.

For justice to be served, it’s imperative that information affecting an officer’s credibility makes its way before the court, said Joseph Trigilio, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and executive director of the Loyola Project for the Innocent.

“A fact finder should look at all that and consider it,” he said. “A jury should hear all of that and ask that question.”

Reporters requested lists of officers whose records must be disclosed to the defense if they’re called to testify, commonly called Brady lists, from every district attorney’s office in counties where the investigation found cases of biased behavior. One office — the Madera County District Attorney’s Office — said it does not maintain such a list. Several district attorneys said they could not locate Brady material on the officers in question, while most declined to say whether the officers appeared on their lists.

Bias extended beyond the public to incarcerated people and fellow officers

The investigation also revealed dozens of instances of biased behavior against Black people, including 23 officers who were disciplined for using the n-word.

“In our profession, there’s no room for us to be able to do that,” said Sheryl Victorian, the chief of police in Waco, Texas, who advocates for strong relationships between police and the communities they serve.

The cases include a number of officers who made comments or shared images mocking George Floyd in the wake of his murder by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Two weeks after Floyd’s death, an officer shared a meme congratulating Floyd on being “2 weeks drug free.” Another shared a photo of Floyd being held on his stomach with a photoshopped image of a naked man sitting on him.

Two children view a mural of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Friday, as a Hennepin County court weighed the sentence to impose on former police officer Derek Chauvin. 

(

Brandon Bell

/

Getty Images

)

Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University, said negative bias is especially troubling because of the vast power given to police officers. He described officers as “street-level bureaucrats” with the capacity to use force, arrest people and put them in jail.

“The idea that these decisions that are really high stakes might be influenced by things like racism, sexism, homophobia — those should raise really serious concerns for everyone,” he said.

More than half of the 61 correctional officers identified by the investigation were still employed at the end of 2024, according to state controller data. CDCR, which employs more law enforcement officers than any other state agency, would not confirm whether they remain employed today.

In two cases at Pelican Bay State Prison, officers made casual comments about killing or shooting at Black people, and both received reprimands. At the California Men’s Colony, an officer taunted a transgender inmate to put lipstick on before going out to the yard, and the officer’s salary was temporarily reduced.

In response to questions from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, a CDCR spokesperson said the agency takes corrective and disciplinary action when appropriate and that it has “implemented new staff misconduct regulations, designed with the goals of eliminating bias, increasing transparency and improving staff accountability.”

Correctional officers wield immense power over incarcerated people, who depend on them for their basic needs and access to programs that can help them successfully reenter society, said James King, program director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a criminal justice reform organization.

“It becomes much deeper than mere words because there’s so much power and authority behind those words,” King said.

Witnessing prejudiced behavior, even when it happens between officers, undermines rehabilitation, he said.

James King stands for a portrait outside the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, on June 9, 2026. King, who is formerly incarcerated, is now Director of Programs at the Ella Baker Center, where he oversees and works on legislation that provides opportunity for communities that have historically been left out of policy considerations. 

(

Juliana Yamada

/

KQED

)

“If we are really committed to creating a safer world for all of us, then it starts with how we treat people, even as they are incarcerated and preparing to return to society,” he said.

Most of the cases we analyzed — 79% — involved comments or actions between police officers and other members of the criminal justice system, including fellow officers, court clerks, civilian employees and even a judge while court was in session.

In the case files, officers described how explicit bias in the workplace impacted them.

In the Southern California city of Orange, a Black officer reported applying to a different law enforcement agency due to Orange Police Sgt. Darrin Hall’s use of racist jokes and homophobic slurs in the workplace between 2020 and 2022. Hall received a letter stating that he would be demoted and retired later that month.

The Orange Police Department declined to comment on the incident, as it was a personnel matter.

A Los Angeles police officer wears an AXON body camera.

(

David McNew

/

Getty Images

)

Drooyan, the former L.A. police commissioner, said prejudiced behavior can create difficult working relationships between officers, leading to a morale problem, and even physical danger in high-risk or volatile environments.

“When they get into a tough situation, if they can’t trust each other, I think it becomes problematic,” he said.

Grunwald said fraught relations among law enforcement officers pose an existential problem as law enforcement leaders are trying to diversify their ranks.

“At a time when police departments are really struggling to retain good officers, and especially at a time when [departments] are struggling to attain officers of color, you’d think that this could be an important area of policy,” he said.

Uneven discipline allowed many officers to remain on the job

Despite the seriousness of explicitly biased behavior — and the fact that it can get an officer decertified — discipline varied across the 148 officers in the investigation.

Of these officers, 39% were demoted, suspended or had their pay reduced. About 20% received a letter of reprimand or were ordered to undergo training — discipline that may not permanently remain in their personnel files.

Experts said the cases uncovered by the investigation likely represent only a fraction of incidents involving explicit bias.

“We have every reason to believe that most of these types of incidents go unreported,” Johnson, the Georgetown law professor, said. “The Blue Wall of Silence. The fact that people are fearful of police. Making a police complaint isn’t easy.”

Even with those barriers, people filed more than 19,600 complaints alleging prejudiced behavior by California law enforcement officers between 2016 and 2024, according to data submitted to the state. Agencies sustained just 349 of those complaints. The figures do not include racially biased traffic stops.

Reporters were only able to examine cases that fell within a narrow band of misconduct dictated by California’s public records laws.

King said officers like Silva, the Delano police officer who threatened to shoot and kill transgender people, are not simply just “a few bad apples.”

“Law enforcement [officers] develop deep-seated cultures that you cannot train away, you cannot address through the hiring process or through the selection process,” he said.

Swift, appropriate action — via verbal reprimand, retraining or more severe discipline — is key to creating a culture of service to the community, according to Victorian, the Waco police chief.

“If nobody actually addresses the behavior when it occurs, then they continue to talk that way, and that behavior becomes acceptable,” she said.

Some officers appealed discipline and succeeded in having penalties reduced at least 38 times. Others resigned before agencies completed disciplinary proceedings.

Silva was allowed to resign rather than be terminated. The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training declined to decertify him.

The city of Wasco confirmed that Silva was still one of its police officers as of June 24, 2026.

Nicole Nguyen of Stanford’s Big Local News and Marquis Mahone-Chambers, Katey Rusch, Elizabeth Santos and Julian Wray of UC Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program contributed to this story. A grant from the Google News Initiative supported the project.

About the data analysis

The Police Records Access Project obtains records from law enforcement and oversight agencies across California involving cases in which agencies determined that officers violated certain policies, including policies prohibiting prejudice against members of protected groups. Project staff compile those files and use algorithms to identify cases in which agencies found policy violations. Staff then review the records to confirm that an agency sustained the allegation.

Reporters from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program searched the text of the files and AI-generated summaries of misconduct cases using slurs and terms such as “racist” and “prejudice” to identify cases for further review. Reporters consulted academics, attorneys and law enforcement officials to develop a definition of explicit bias. Three journalists analyzed the cases to determine whether officers exhibited explicit bias against members of a protected group. Experts also reviewed a subset of cases.

To determine whether officers challenged discipline or sought to seal misconduct records, reporters searched local courts for civil lawsuits. Staff also obtained certification and employment records from POST and the state controller’s office to determine whether officers remained employed in law enforcement, including those working for CDCR.

Reporters reached out to district attorneys in the counties where we identified officers who were disciplined for biased conduct to determine if they were on Brady lists. While a few offices confirmed that the officers did not appear in their Brady materials, most said those records are exempt from public disclosure and declined to provide the information.

Los Angeles city property owners voted down a fee increase that sought to address a massive backlog of streetlight repairs.

The L.A. city clerk certified the results Wednesday: Just under 80% of the weighted votes cast rejected the idea.

The city sent ballots to owners of more than 580,000 public, commercial and private parcels in April. They were asked if they would pay more in a yearly assessment to boost the city’s streetlight budget, which has essentially been frozen since the 1990s.

Currently, it takes about one year to repair streetlights from the time the issue is reported.

In a joint statement, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and other leaders said they remain committed to improving the city’s streetlighting network.

“Every Angeleno deserves to feel safe walking their dogs, returning home from work and parking their cars at night, and the city is committed to delivering the reliable street lighting that makes that a reality,” the statement said. It was signed by Bass, L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Katy Yaroslavsky.

The background

Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property near streetlights pay on their county property tax bill.

The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights.

According to a report from the city, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the needs of the city’s streetlights in the upcoming fiscal year is nearly $112 million. That's well over double the amount the city will collect during that time period now that property owners rejected the fee increase.

Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights. This year’s vote was the first attempt to increase the fees.

What happens now?

Nothing changes, really.

According to the Bureau of Street Lighting’s website, the city “will operate within its parameters, including funding … in other words, status quo.”

Had property owners voted in favor of the higher assessment, the extra funds would have been used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and to procure solar streetlights, according to Miguel Sangalang, the head of the Bureau of Street Lighting.

In previous interviews with LAist, Sangalang said that with a larger budget, the timeline to repair simple fixes could be brought down to a week.

What else is the city doing to turn the lights back on?

In March, Mayor Bass announced an initiative to convert 60,000 streetlights to solar power over the next two years. The Mayor’s Office has said the partnership with LADWP will not have an impact on the city’s general fund.

Then in May, she said hundreds of solar streetlights had already been installed as part of the initiative near city parks, including those hosting World Cup watch parties.

City Council members have also used discretionary dollars to convert lights to solar technology, which are less vulnerable to theft, and also to fund overtime for repair teams.