Cook County Judge William Stewart Boyd turned over two old guns at Immaculate Conception Church in South Chicago nearly two decades ago.They were among more than 5,900 guns the Chicago Police Department recovered at buybacks that day — its most successful haul ever.But five years later, one of the guns Boyd had given up resurfaced at the scene of a fatal police shooting in Cicero.The Better Government Association, which publishes the Illinois Answers Project, and the Chicago Sun-Times first reported that story in 2017, prompting a Chicago police internal investigation.After the city of Chicago initially refused to release records from that investigation, saying it was still open, Illinois Answers sued to obtain the findings.The records show there was no attempt to determine what went wrong or how to fix the problem.Boyd was never interviewed. Nor were any of the officers who might have handled the gun.“It didn’t surprise me, to tell you the truth,” Boyd says. “For me to turn in a weapon to CPD and it ends up in Cicero, what does that tell you?” Related ‘Where is the Glock?’ Gun turned over to Chicago police wound up in the hands of a teenager, records show A fatal shooting, then a suicideChicago police processed more than 3,000 guns during the first citywide buyback in 2006, according to news reports.The event was prompted by a series of violent deaths. Two Englewood girls had been struck by bullets fired into their homes, and a musician was gunned down in a church parking lot in Roseland.The following summer, Boyd took his guns to Immaculate Conception, where police eventually processed 264 firearms.Records from the investigation show a Ruger Security-Six .357-caliber revolver was destroyed. But his late father’s Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver later was found beside Cesar Munive when he was fatally shot by a Cicero police officer on July 5, 2012. Cesar Munive was shot and killed by a Cicero police officer on July 5, 2012. He was found next to a revolver that had been turned over to Chicago police years earlier.Provided Officer Don Garrity told investigators that Munive pointed the gun at another officer after they responded to a call of a gang fight.Boyd later signed an affidavit saying the weapon belonged to his father and had been turned over to Chicago police.Munive’s family sued Garrity and the town of Cicero, saying the gun had been planted on Munive. Cicero settled the case for $3.5 million.Garrity slammed the settlement on social media.“A POLICEMAN GETS INTO A SHOOTING WITH ANOTHER MAN WITH A GUN AND THE COP AND HIS FAMILY GO TO HELL IN THE MEDIA! ... AND KEEP BASHING THE POLICE EVERY TIME THAT THEY HAVE TO USE ANY TYPE OF FORCE LET ALONE LETHAL FORCE.” Garrity wrote in a Facebook post in February 2018.About four months later, Garrity shot himself in the head with his Glock 17 pistol — the same gun he killed Munive with.Garrity had told family and medical providers he had post-traumatic stress disorder he linked to the encounter with Munive and another on-duty shooting.But he also traced his struggles to his experience working in an Abrams tank during the U.S. government’s 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas, where 76 people died. The Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, engulfed by flames on April 19, 1993.AP Investigation went nowhereWhile Garrity was still alive, Chicago police announced an internal investigation into the missing gun after the BGA and Sun-Times reported on the case. It was one of the department’s longest-running internal affairs cases between 2017 and 2023.The city refused to turn over records in the case, prompting Illinois Answers to sue. At one court hearing, Salvador Serrano, the former records supervisor for the Bureau of Internal Affairs, said there was an “unwritten rule” against releasing findings of ongoing investigations.But Cook County Judge Anna Loftus, who presided over the civil case, ruled that the department’s claims of open investigations “allows CPD to maintain potentially a shadow file to avoid production of the documents to the public.”According to records obtained through the lawsuit, Officer Shawn Pickett led the investigation. He estimated that hundreds of cops might have been involved in the buyback and said it would have been impractical to interview them all — so he didn’t talk to anyone.“Trying to contact an incomplete amount of department members, with many being retired, would be difficult and unwise,” Pickett wrote. “Asking if any of them had information about a missing firearm and why they didn’t report it for more than a decade would be problematic.”Officer George Onate's name appeared on most of the paperwork documenting the buyback.Onate told reporters he processed about 1,500 guns a month that came into police custody, including ones from buybacks.He was responsible for calling the FBI and Illinois State Police to check whether the guns were connected to other crimes. Then, he’d put them in a box that other cops would take to be destroyed.Onate says the evidence unit was partially staffed by hard-working officers who had gotten in trouble.He was moved to the evidence unit after he was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. He told internal affairs investigators he took her to a motel room, which he paid for, but that no physical contact occurred.They met while he was working on an anti-dogfighting team that was part of the department’s Special Operations Section. The unit, commonly known as SOS, was tasked with combating gangs in high-crime areas. It was disbanded when some officers in the unit were charged with murder-for-hire, tax evasion and robbing drug dealers.Onate resigned from the department in March 2008 after then-interim Supt. Dana Starks moved to have him fired over the assault allegations. He never faced any criminal charges.Onate says he quit to save his family from embarrassment.“If you don’t have any protection,” he says, “they throw you to the wolves.”Casey Toner and Peter Nickeas report for the Illinois Answers Project. Tom Schuba is a Sun-Times reporter. ...read more read less