Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said during a press conference on Tuesday that an article from the Albuquerque Journal last year caused him concern and led his agency to get involved in a federal investigation that led to an indictment naming both his predecessor and a previous undersheriff.
Allen hosted the press conference following the news that the previous Bernalillo County Sheriff and undersheriff were named, but not charged, in a federal indictment concerning machine guns and a questionable firearm importation scheme.
The BCSO first became interested in the case following a Nov. 5, 2022 Albuquerque Journal story which named two Albuquerque gun stores. One of those stores, JCT Firearms, was named in the federal indictment of defendants including Jacob Tafoya of Albuquerque, who used to own JCT Firearms.
The article caused “concern,” Allen said.
The timeline began with April 2015 when BCSO personnel were sent to Laguna Pueblo Police Department to collect 30 AK-47 automatic rifles and related accessories, Allen said.
On June 23, Allen was told that the BCSO armory had 30 AK-47s that belonged to a private citizen. The following week, Allen ordered staff to investigate the AK-47s in the armory and he then called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to begin an audit of the BCSO armory.
Allen said he did not know that semi-automatic or fully-automatic weapons were in the armory until it was brought to his attention and “that was a huge concern for me.”
He gave a command for a full internal audit of the armory “to make sure that we’re looking at everything we have in our armory and making sure that we know what happened during the previous administration.”
Allen had questions about the weapons and why they were there in the first place. This was how he found that the previous administration, that of then-Sheriff Manny Gonzales and then-Undersheriff Rudy Mora, had ordered the weapons to be picked up from Laguna Pueblo Police Department. Allen said the 2015 order did not come from Gonzales or Mora.
Throughout July, BCSO tried to contact the guns’ owner to no avail.
On Aug. 1, all 30 AK-47s and accessories were tagged into Metro evidence. On Aug. 18, a letter was sent to the firearms’ owner notifying them that the firearms were on the list to be destroyed, the owner contacted BCSO on Sept. 28 about how to claim the weapons.
When the federal indictment naming Tafoya and others was released on Oct. 24, Allen contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where the case was filed, and spoke to a case agent the following day.
“We met ATF to review all guns at Metro evidence. All guns which are the AK-47s thus far have been cleared and eventually will be released to the owner with no suspected involvement,” Allen said.
On Oct. 27, an unnamed BCSO deputy provided a list of all fully automatic weapons in the BCSO inventory. On Oct. 30, ATF was called in to audit the inventory and will provide a National Firearms Act list to compare with BCSO’s inventory, Allen said.
The BCSO armory has 17 weapons including historical weapons such as a Thompson submachine gun and others dating as far back to World War II.
These historical weapons cannot legally be sold since they are automatic and if the ATF clears them, BCSO “will keep in our own possession in our own armory without being utilized to make sure that that firearm is safe and it does not get into the wrong hands,” Allen said.
BCSO is investigating when and how the automatic weapons got in its armory since automatic weapons were phased out from the SWAT team’s use beginning in 2014, when Allen was the SWAT sergeant.
“I asked for that specifically as the SWAT sergeant. I did not feel that that was necessary at full auto semi automatic for standard defensive responses,” Allen said. “All our deputies are trained. I think that was more of my time to not only train our deputies, but specifically a specialty team in a special weapons and tactics team.”
Neither Gonzales nor Mora have been charged with a crime in the case.
