BELLEVUE, WA – Before anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg calls on firearms dealers, gun shows and law-abiding citizens to stop the flow of so-called “illegal guns” to the Big Apple, he needs first to explain a gun trafficking loophole in his own city’s police department, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

In an exclusive story, the New York Post reports that a 31-year-old police officer has been identified as a suspect in the theft of firearms from the locker room at the Ninth Precinct headquarters in the East Village. At least four handguns were taken and allegedly sold on the street, the newspaper said.

“How many times must Bloomberg be told to keep his own house in order before he runs around complaining about the rest of the country,” asked CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “While he goes looking for headlines in other states, one of his own cops apparently has added to the crime problem right under the mayor’s nose.”

Bloomberg, founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, has made a habit of pointing fingers at gun shows and gun shops in other states for “flooding” his city’s streets with guns. In April, other NYPD officers were successfully prosecuted for dealing drugs while carrying department-issued 9mm pistols.

“Mayor Bloomberg wants the entire country to buckle under to his gun control agenda,” Gottlieb observed, “yet in his own jurisdiction, he’s had bad cops putting drugs and now guns on the streets. He’s a busybody who ought to confine his activities to the shores of the Hudson River and tend to his own business instead of interfering with everybody else’s.

“While Bloomberg has been playing the role of ‘gun cop’ all over the map,” he concluded, “some of his own real cops have been misbehaving. If Bloomberg can’t lead his own administration, he’s got no right to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.”