Sheriff alarm fails in gun store theft

ROBINSON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) - Since 1998, Felix Pytlinske's gun shop in rural Ottawa County has been burglarized six times, including this past weekend when 30 guns were stolen.

The Ottawa County Sheriff's Department was so concerned they installed one of their own security systems in the store in 2009.

But that alarm failed when thieves hit the store a few days ago.

"In this particular case there was a system available at the time, on Friday night or Saturday morning, and we are checking to see why that system didn't operate," Lt. Mark Bennett told 24 Hour News 8. "We still have to run that down and figure out why, but for some reason it didn't go off."

To be clear, this type of alarm was never meant to be a replacement for a permanent system. The sheriff's department has less than a dozen of these alarms they use as investigative tools in crime hotspots.

Bennett admitted this alarm had not been properly maintained and will be replace. All the other units in the county have been checked, he said, and are functioning.

Most of the guns stolen in this most recent crime were handguns.

Pytlinske, whose parents opened up this shop on July 4, 1929, does not have insurance and estimates the loss in the thousands of dollars.