Im new to OC and to the site.. But as I read through sooo many of these it occurs to me that the cops often (hold your weapon for their saftey) I wander if they are cataloging who they stopped and what gun (serial #) they had.. like a secret registration against our will.. (I know I know.. conspiracy theorist..) But you have to admit its not that far fetched right??
thoughts??
In retrospect, your post made me realize that I can't recall EVER making a terry stop of a person found to be (granted, many terry stops don't involve a frisk, and of course sometimes a person carrying concealed lets you know, sometimes they don't) carrying concealed or OC. I've had TONS of contacts with persons carrying concealed, as witnesses, victims, etc. etc. but never as the subject of a terry that I can recall. I have had a DUI with a ccw and a handgun, but that's the only suspect I've contacted that was legally carrying a firearm as far as I can remember. Your post made me realize that. I've of course contacted MANY MANY people with illegal guns (convicted felon, etc.) of course and in those cases, the serial # etc. would of course be noted in the report, since the gun was seized.
So, bearing in mind that I;'ve never seized a gun from a lawful carrier for "safety", cops can document stops of course and many would record the serial # in the case they knew it. I just can say it's never come up that I've had to seize a gun from a CCWer (apart from 1 dui), or an OCer.
If the intel is "non criminal", then generally it cannot be shared outside of the police agency. I know many agencies write reports on 'verbal' domestics, which are noncriminal, but they actually take case reports, so not sure if they share those, but the rule is that LEA's cannot share noncriminal intel.
There ARE intel groups where people share info that are NOT law enforcement agencies and thus they do share intel. Some LEOs are members of these NONlaw enforcement intel groups.
If a guy seized your gun and recorded the serial # I assume he would run it to check for stolen. THAT would leave a record in the computer aided dispatch records. I would assume, to answer your question, that many LEO's would write up a field contact report in such circ's and that report could have the serial # in it, if the officer chose to include it. There is nothing preventing him from doing so, but again if the contact was noncriminal in nature, it cannot be shared outside the agency.
Contrary to a lot of TV portrayals, the databases we have aren't the way they appear on TV, like one could easily search for that data, because different agencies often have proprietary report writing programs etc. Otoh, some databases (like Linx) in SOME cases allow text searches of narratives etc. such that that info could be shared outside the agency reporting.
I can just state that no agency I have worked for (3) has any sort of database like you are referring to.
