Most of us shake in our boots at the thought of even putting a flash hider or tele-stock on a posty in the fear we'll spend 20 years playing catcher, but someone steals 523 guns and gets probation.
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Man gets proof Tidwell took guns
EVIDENCE: A report documents what Floyd Whitson long suspected: theft by law enforcement.
01:04 AM PDT on Friday, May 14, 2004
By SHARON McNARY / The Press-Enterprise
Twenty-one years after the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department seized and claimed to have lost Floyd Whitson's gun collection, he found out who actually took it.
A San Bernardino County prosecutor's report says former Sheriff Floyd Tidwell took the guns, and then ignored a 1985 court order to return them. Tidwell, who was sheriff from 1983 until early 1991 pleaded guilty this week to four felony counts of concealing stolen property.
Whitson said. He never got them back and was not reimbursed for their 1983 value, about $16,000 to $20,000.
Former Sheriff Floyd Tidwell took at least 523 weapons, documents say. Tidwell also took weapons that were not documented, investigators say.
"We were treated like criminals. I said, 'We're not thieves, you're the thieves.' But their officers are above the law and that's the way a heck of a lot of them act," Whitson said in a phone interview from his Missouri home.
Reached at home Thursday, Tidwell declined to comment, on the advice of his attorney.
Sheriff's deputies seized Whitson's collection of 20 weapons, including an antique Owl Head revolver, after he was arrested on a charge of possessing hashish and marijuana in 1983, he said.
When Whitson finished his 90-day jail term and asked for his weapons, the Sheriff's Department insisted they were lost.
He hired a lawyer who obtained a court order for their return.
The effort failed to secure the guns' return and Whitson couldn't afford to take the next step of filing a lawsuit.
Unknown to Whitson, inside the Sheriff's Department officials in charge of the evidence and property rooms knew Tidwell was taking guns that belonged to other people.
Tidwell's habit of taking 20 and 30 guns at a time led then-Sgt. Gary Eisenbiesz to hide the most valuable guns when Tidwell came around so that enough decent weapons remained to sell at the department's public auction, the prosecutor's report said.
Deputy Vince Palermo wrote a memo dated Nov. 11, 1985, that asked a sergeant in the property division what to do about some missing guns, the prosecutor's report said.
Palermo had been given a court order for the return of the guns to the Whitsons, and he knew that Tidwell had taken the guns, he told a sheriff investigator in March.
"Palermo said he wrote many memos regarding the guns Floyd (Tidwell) took," the report said. "Palermo even wrote on his copy of the memo the fact that Floyd did not return the guns as instructed in the court order."
Efforts to reach Palermo and Eisenbiesz were not successful Thursday. Tidwell's attorney, David Call, could not be reached.
The Whitson weapons were not among the 89 guns and rifles that Tidwell returned to sheriff's investigators Nov. 12.
The handguns filled two milk crates.
Whitson predicted the former sheriff would not be jailed.
"If it was me, I would go straight to jail with stolen weapons. I believe that anybody would, but he'll get probation," Whitson said.
Tidwell's plea agreement imposes no jail time, and it gives him and those to whom he gave weapons immunity from prosecution if they cooperate with the effort to return the weapons. Sentencing is in November.
Tidwell's plea agreement requires him to pay $10,000 to a victim restitution fund. Whitson said he might seek some of that money, but it would not fully cover his loss.
Tidwell took at least 523 weapons, according to memos that property room deputies wrote to document the incidents.
Tidwell also took other weapons that were not documented, the property room staffers told investigators.
Said Whitson, "In my heart I always believed that they stole my guns, and lo and behold, I was right."