When felons walked into Boulevard Sales and Service, a fortress-like gun store in Compton, they weren't turned away. Instead, law enforcement officials said they were coached.
Can't pass the background check? No problem, as long as they had a friend who could.
On Thursday, federal authorities who were working with state and local law enforcement officials shut down the operation, arresting the son of the longtime owners and an employee, and seizing thousands of weapons and rounds of ammunition at the Compton store and a sister operation near Ojai in Ventura County.
The raids put at least a temporary end to a retail gun outlet that authorities said had provided a steady stream of weapons used in crimes or possessed by felons not legally allowed to own them.
No other California gun dealer had more crime guns traced back to their stores than Boulevard Sales and Service in the last two years, according to federal firearms records.
Over the last five years, 892 weapons were traced to the store on Long Beach Boulevard by law enforcement officials who were investigating crimes, authorities said. Five others were traced to the sister store in Oak View. Twenty-eight guns were tied to homicide investigations, including the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
"The business we believe acted in concert with gang members and felons," said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent in Charge John A. Torres, as agents behind him stacked some of the more than 2,000 weapons that were being removed from the gun store.
Torres said Boulevard Sales and Service guns had been sold to members of gangs such as the Compton Crips and Fruit Town Pirus.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and top Los Angeles Police Department officials called the Compton sting a starting point in their plan to aggressively shut down gun retailers whose weapons disproportionately end up being used by gang members, an effort that they said would be a cornerstone of their joint anti-gang campaign that was launched earlier this year.
"Today is a new day in our effort to tell gang members your efforts to acquire guns will be reduced," said Baca, who vowed to continue to trace weapons that are recovered by his deputies and investigate high-volume sources of such guns. His department had not used that tactic in the past.
