The Mercury News14%
An M4 rifle was stolen from an SJPD assistant chief’s SUV. What happens now? 24%
By Robert Salonga36%
7/18/2026, 11:30:14 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Representativeness Heuristic, Negativity Bias, and Overconfidence Bias, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 11% saturation with 123 hits. Analysis detected 1,416 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,119 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36.9% and a BS Rank of 24% (13,778 of 17,974 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 76.70% of the article peer group.
SAN JOSE — Investigators were searching Friday for a police-issued M4 rifle stolen this week from a mounted lockbox inside an SUV parked overnight in the driveway of the San Jose Police Department’s second-in-command.
Miri discovered Tuesday morning that someone had entered his unmarked, department-issued SUV outside his San Jose home and pried open the lockbox, leaving it “severely pried and damaged beyond repair,” police said.
The theft has prompted an internal investigation into whether Miri complied with department policy and renewed scrutiny of the risks posed when law enforcement officers leave firearms in vehicles overnight.
“The San Jose Police Department has made removing illegal firearms from our streets a top priority, so having one of our own guns stolen is devastating,” the agency said in a statement to this news organization.
“Detectives and Special Operations personnel are doing everything possible to recover it and apprehend those responsible.”
The department did not say whether the SUV was locked, whether the rifle was loaded or whether ammunition or magazines also were stolen.
Why was the rifle left in Miri’s vehicle overnight?
Police said command officers are eligible to carry rifles and cited two reasons Miri possessed the weapon.
Miri is a former officer and current firearms trainer for MERGE, which stands for Mobile Emergency Response Group and Equipment and is essentially SJPD’s equivalent of a SWAT team.
Police also said Miri inherited the weapon from his predecessor, Brian Shab, who left the No. 2 post earlier this year to become Watsonville’s police chief.
But those explanations address why Miri was authorized to possess the rifle, not why it was stored in his vehicle overnight.
For Brian Higgins, a former police chief in Bergen, New Jersey, and adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Miri’s possession of the rifle seemed unusual.
Higgins said the primary reason for an executive-level officer to carry a rifle would be an expectation that the officer might respond to an urgent crime scene.
“I have never heard of a scenario where an officer is authorized to carry a weapon of this type, locked in his car, because he might respond to a training session,” Higgins said.
“The setup that we’re talking about, where it’s in a vehicle in a lockbox, is so that the officer can deploy that weapon at a scene in an emergency quickly.”
James Dudley, a retired San Francisco Police Department deputy chief who is now a criminal justice lecturer at San Francisco State University, viewed the circumstances differently.
“He is authorized to carry the firearm, that he is a former SWAT officer, and that he still does training for SWAT officers,” Dudley said.
“So that doesn’t seem inappropriate to me.”
Was Miri targeted?
The Police Department did not comment on how the intruder accessed the SUV’s cargo area.
Higgins and Dudley said the damage to the lockbox raised the possibility that the thief knew a weapon was stored inside, although police have not said they have evidence that Miri was specifically targeted.
“With the lockbox being broken into … it sounds to me, and I’m going to make some speculation here, that somebody probably saw him load the firearm in there at some point, whether at the department or him getting in or out of the vehicle at his home,” Dudley said.
Higgins said common burglary tools, such as consumer-level screwdrivers, generally would not be sufficient to pry open a police-grade lockbox.
How commonly are police guns stolen?
The disappearance of police-issued firearms, while statistically rare, is not unheard of in California.
A 2016 Bay Area News Group investigation found that nearly 1,000 law-enforcement guns were unaccounted for, with 20% of those definitively stolen.
Most were taken from officers’ vehicles, including locked and unlocked personal and police vehicles, while officers dined out or went shopping.
The danger drew wider public attention after the 2015 fatal shooting of Kate Steinle at San Francisco’s Pier 14.
The gun involved had been stolen from the vehicle of a federal Bureau of Land Management agent.
Jurors later determined the shooting was inadvertent.
Dudley cited that case to underscore the urgency of recovering Miri’s missing rifle.
“I would imagine they’re talking about it at the executive level, at the supervisory level, at every briefing,” he said.
“Everyone who has confidential informants are asking about where this gun might turn up or who might be bragging about taking it.
I’m sure all the video from blocks and blocks around this location are being examined.”
Could Miri face discipline?
The department did not rule out disciplinary action against Miri.
“Any time a department-issued firearm is stolen, a thorough investigation is completed to include whether any possible violations of department policy or the law occurred by the employee,” the department said.
“That same investigation will happen in this case.
If a violation is found to have occurred, it may result in appropriate discipline as it would with any other police employee.”
Dudley said he doesn't see grounds for a serious individual punishment for Miri.
“I don’t see it as a disciplinary issue,” he said.
“I think there are some mitigating circumstances there considering the background and training of the individual.”
Higgins said the potential consequences of failing to recover the weapon outweigh any embarrassment or concern about discipline.
“The embarrassment I would imagine they’re having right now would be amplified if a crime was committed or somebody was hurt with a department weapon,” he said.
Will the theft prompt policy changes?
Practices now under scrutiny in San Jose have been addressed by other Bay Area law enforcement agencies, particularly after Steinle’s death.
San Francisco police and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, for example, barred their officers and deputies from leaving their firearms in vehicles overnight.
The state Legislature followed by passing a law requiring mounted safes in police officers’ vehicles to secure their handguns, after the BANG investigation found a plurality of guns being stolen from locked car trunks.
SJPD said it would consider its own changes after completing the investigation.
“Upon completion of the investigation and review of its findings, the department will implement appropriate changes to department policy, practices or equipment to better safeguard against similar thefts in the future,” the agency said.
Higgins and Dudley said the department should begin by addressing the circumstances of this week’s theft.
“I would say that no firearm shall be stored in a vehicle unless the vehicle can be secured within a locked facility, whether it’s in the individual’s garage or at a police facility behind a locked gate,” Dudley said.
“Anything secured in a locked vehicle really isn’t that secure.”
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