An owner of DCF Guns, a three-location chain of gun stores and firing ranges in Colorado, told RedState that criminal gangs targeted two of his locations, which is part of a streak of criminals targeting gun stores and is more evidence of the breakdown of law and order in his state.
In a brazen attack, would-be burglars backed up a car into the glass door of his DCF Guns West store here in order to gain entry and loot the inventory, said Joe Oltmann, a businessman and host of the Conservative Daily Podcast.
“They used minors to do it, and frankly, it’s pretty clever,” Oltmann said. “They hit five stores in less than two weeks.”
If they are arrested, the minors are sent to the juvenile system and emerge with clean records upon their 18th birthday, he said.
Oltmann said the modus operandi is to have two stolen cars driven by adults, with underage confederates. The thieves use one car to smash through the windows or entryways to the store. Then, the minors rush in and grab whatever they can until they make their escape in the second car.
Shock video: Bad actors attempt to smash their way into a @DCFGuns store in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the retailer’s multi-layered security thwarts them. pic.twitter.com/rtcOEISFEQ
— ReporterMcCabe (@ReporterMcCabe) September 3, 2024
In the case of the hit on his DCF Guns West store, Oltmann said the car smashed through the glass door, but the robbery was thwarted by other layers of security.
“I have five levels of security,” he said. “We have the glass barriers, breezeway, two sets of doors, a screech alarm on the inside, and rolls.” The rolls are metal rolldown curtains, as one would see in an urban neighborhood storefront.
“The last one is that we have rotators—we put a person inside the store, and they sleep. They rotate through the store,” he said.
Oltmann said the company has made it known that their stores have a 24-hour armed presence, but that did not stop the attempt with cars or other bad actors from scoping out another store in the dark morning hours with flashlights.
“If you break through and we put it out there, we told people, look, if you come through this deal, we’re here for our life,” he said. “If you get to any one of these guns and you start putting ammo in it, you could kill us, so we’re going to light you up.”
Yet, Oltmann said he was impressed by their brazenness.
“They still hit them. They still tried,” he said.
Surveillance footage of would-be thieves scope out the @DCFGuns location in Colorado Springs. pic.twitter.com/4sIEAXAUOr
— ReporterMcCabe (@ReporterMcCabe) September 3, 2024
As of publication, Oltmann said he still has not spoken with law enforcement leadership about the two incidents.
“They hit the West store, and here’s the bad part: it took 73 minutes for a police officer to roll up on scene from a robbery from a gun store,” he said.
The show host said he believes the people who hit his stores were connected to the Venezuelan gangs who took over apartment buildings in Aurora.
“The Venezuelan gang—the guns that they stole from some of these other gun stores, they literally were on video holding the guns inside the apartment complex that they took over in Aurora,” he said.
“They run off the owners and the staff, they beat them up, and then they literally take over the apartment complex and make all the people pay rent to them.”
