LOS ANGELES — Last August, Los Angeles police officers arrested two people in Lincoln Heights carrying a pair of shiny new .22 caliber handguns.
The guns were clean, like they came right off the shelf — not at all like the ones typically found following arrests. Just days later, officers patrolling in neighboring Northeast L.A. arrested a person with a similar handgun, in the same pristine condition.
A trace of the weapons revealed they came from a batch of 36 handguns reported missing as they were being shipped by train to Tennessee, Los Angeles Police Department officials said.
