Glendale police serving a search warrant recently at the home of a suspected meth dealer found a whole lot more than meth -- including Scottsdale Police Department uniforms and a badge.
The alleged meth dealer, 30-year-old Colt Weber, who's also the owner of a pawn business, told police that he took in the Scottsdale PD uniforms and badge as pawn items.
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Whether Weber's claim about taking the items in as pawn is true or not, Scottsdale Police Sergeant Mark Clark tells New Times that the three uniforms and the badge were stolen from the home of a retired Scottsdale police sergeant in a burglary.
Glendale police also found many other items in the home that are bound to cause Weber some legal trouble.
Glendale Police Officer Tracey Breeden says police received a tip on the department's narcotics hotline about drug sales at Weber's house, near 51st and Peoria avenues, and started surveillance on the house.
The raid of the home came early on May 23 following the arrest of "numerous" people found with drugs after leaving Weber's house, some of whom admitted to buying meth from Weber, court documents obtained by New Times state.
Police saw that Weber had construction spackling all over his hands and clothes, and that there was fresh spackling on the wall. Weber had made himself a little hiding spot behind the drywall, it turned out.
In addition to finding a stolen handgun near the front door, police found a dozen more guns hidden in the wall, several of which were reported stolen.
Breeden says 10,000 rounds of ammunition were found to go along with those guns.
Also hidden in the wall were the police uniforms and badge, as well as a police-duty belt and two bulletproof vests, according to the documents.
Police also recovered nearly 50 weapons found in the house that weren't firearms, including a compound bow, swords, nunchucks, throwing stars, a hatchet, and a smoke grenade.
On top of that, police also found what they were in there to look for -- the meth.
According to the court documents, between three and four grams of meth was found in Weber's bedroom, along with multiple baggies with meth residue, as well as some sort of homemade bong.
Weber denied being a meth dealer, but did admit to using meth, according to the court documents. He said most of the guns found in the home were brought in by "customers," which seems to mean the customers from his day-job.
Weber claimed he didn't know any of the guns were stolen, and only hid them inside the wall of his house to prevent customers from trying to steal the guns back from him. As for the police uniforms, Weber admitted to taking this in on pawn, but claimed he didn't believe that they were "actual" police uniforms, the documents state.
As you can imagine, Weber was booked into jail on a lot of felony charges.
It's not clear if Weber's pawn shop is an actual shop, or just his home, as he told police he registered a limited liability company. The Arizona Corporation Commission database says he did not register anything.
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