Guns bite the dust in crusher

Keith Paul

Friday, July 7, 2000 | 9:12 a.m.

North Las Vegas Police officers on Wednesday loaded about 2,700 pounds of guns into wrecked cars that were then fed into a crusher to ensure the guns never find their way back to the street.

"They're confiscated guns from bad guys who we arrest. They are also found property or guns that had their serial numbers altered," Lt. Chris Larotonda, department spokesman, said Wednesday. "They were guns this morning, now they're hubcaps."

Actually the guns were crushed into chunks about the size of a fist or smaller.

Several times a year, once cases are adjudicated or no longer needed as evidence, the guns in the police evidence vault are hauled to a North Las Vegas recycling plant and crunched.

The police load the "couple of thousand" guns into wrecked cars because it's easier than watching a conveyer belt to ensure that none of the guns fall out, Larotonda said.

To make sure that no guns are overlooked, two officers and two identification technicians watch and videotape the whole process from the time the guns are loaded from the vault into a police van for the trip to the crusher.

The large crusher can eat a car and spit it out as twisted bits of metal in about 45 seconds, said Harold Friedman, manager of Silver Dollar Recycling.

"When you toss something in there, believe me it can't be used again," he said.

The pieces of metal will be sold -- most likely to a company in another country -- melted down and made into something else, Friedman said. The company doesn't charge the police for the crushing since it would be smashing up the cars anyway.

North Las Vegas Police keep some of the guns for department use, but all others are destroyed.

"Several of the guns in there have killed people," Larotonda said. "We don't want them to get back on the street."

A couple of the guns were high-powered assault rifles, but others were collector's items, including a musket, a Colt .45-caliber revolver from 1886 and a Russian World War I rifle.

Some of the guns are worth $1,000 each or more.

The total value of the guns wasn't known, but Larotonda estimated the crushed guns would be worth more than $100,000.

After the trip through the crusher, Sgt. Mike Judd was able to find only a cylinder from a large caliber revolver that was still somewhat intact. It still had all six holes for the cartridges, but was bent enough out of shape that it was no longer functional.

"That was the most intact piece I could find," he said. "There was nothing useful left.

"We realize this is just a drop in the bucket for getting guns off the street, but we don't want to be responsible for releasing guns onto the streets," Larotonda said.