Update: ATF's 'Project Gunrunner' Weapons Turning Up in Arizona Crimes

A local Arizona news station has uncovered some startling new evidence showing the extent of the ineptitude surrounding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and it's failed "project gunrunner program." According to the station, guns that the ATF allowed to be purchased by suspicious individuals in the U.S. and then "walked" to and distributed in Mexico are turning up in area crimes.

According to ABC15 in Phoenix, several weapons from local investigations match weapons in the ATF-approved sales:

“I believe that these firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes on both sides of the border for years to come,” Phoenix Special Agent Peter Forcelli testified last week before Congress. And it seems he was right:

The ABC15 Investigators uncovered documents showing guns connected to at least two Glendale criminal cases and at least two Phoenix criminal cases also appear in the ATF’s Suspect Gun Database, a sort-of watch list for suspicious gun sales.

All four cases involve drug-related offenses. In one Glendale police report dated July 2010, police investigators working with DEA agents served search warrants at homes near 75th and Glendale avenues in Glendale, and 43rd and Glendale avenues in Phoenix as part of a “large scale marijuana trafficking” investigation.

Police investigators reported they “obtained information that members of the (trafficking) organization were using the homes…as stash houses used to store large amounts of marijuana temporarily.”

They reported finding hundreds of pounds of marijuana, more than $63,000 in U.S. currency and three guns inside the homes. One of the recovered weapons, a Romarm/Cugir WASR-10 rifle, appeared in an official ATF Suspect Gun Summary document in November 2009, proving agents knowingly allowed the suspicious gun sale, months before the weapon turned up at the crime scene.

In a separate Glendale Police Department case, dated November 2010, detectives discovered “bulk marijuana and weapons” inside a residence near 75th Avenue and Bethany Home Road in Glendale. Investigators recovered nearly 400 pounds of drugs and several firearms from the home.

One of the recovered weapons, another Romarm/Cugir WASR-10 rifle, appeared in an official ATF Suspect Gun Summary document in February 2010.

The project's guns have already been linked to the death of U.S. border agent Brian Terry.

(H/T: Hot Air)