This article misspells the name of an agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He is Joe Bisbee, not Joe Brisbee.
| Page 2 of 3 < > |
Fighting Gun Traffickers Involves Lots of Legwork, a Little Luck
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
On Aug. 16, about a week after Lewis abandoned his motorcycle and fled, an informant told ATF about three illegal gun dealers in the District who were traveling in a red Ford Expedition. Agents stopped the sport-utility vehicle on Randle Place SE and arrested Brandon L. Williams, Joseph M. McGhee and Hassan Z. Abdelqader, all 24. In the SUV, agents found two stolen pistols, including a Beretta semiautomatic taken from Dominion.
The men eventually admitted to buying more than a dozen guns from Lewis for resale on Washington area streets, according to court documents. They recently pleaded guilty to federal charges and received prison terms ranging from 18 to 51 months.
"We don't know what Lewis was doing between the burglaries and when we caught him, so we may never know where the rest of the guns went in the criminal pipeline," said Mike Campbell, spokesman for the ATF office in Washington. "If we were to venture a guess," he said, "they went straight to D.C."
While the ATF deals mainly with trafficking, looking to take down suppliers, D.C. police work the front lines, seizing guns from the hoodlums who buy them.
"The number we get fluctuates," said police Lt. Mike Whiteside, a supervisor in a plainclothes unit that focuses entirely on confiscating guns from the streets. "But I don't think we've ever had less than 30 in a month. We had a couple of months in the high 40s."
And those were just the weapons found by the 30-member gun recovery unit, which was reactivated in October after a long hiatus. Officers throughout the department seized 2,924 guns last year.
Buying a firearm on city streets "is reasonably easy if you know the right people," said Whiteside's boss, Capt. Brian Harris. His unit saturates neighborhoods citywide, hunting for weapons. "We do everything out there," Whiteside said. Police break down doors with warrants, stop and search suspicious vehicles, frisk known drug dealers on street corners.
"Whatever it takes to lead us to a gun," Whiteside said.
Domenech said his ATF field office collects the serial numbers of all guns seized by police and tries to determine how the weapons ended up in the District -- often the first step in a gun-trafficking case.
If a seized gun has not been reported stolen, Domenech said, his office submits the serial number to the ATF's National Tracing Center. Researchers follow a paper trail, contacting the gun's manufacturer, then the distributor, then the owner of the store that took delivery of the weapon. By law, the store must keep a record of who purchased the firearm on an ATF form that the buyer fills out.
Usually within a week or so, Domenech said, the tracing center can lay out the gun's route from factory to purchaser.
Agents consider it a red flag if a firearm is seized from a criminal within a year and a half of it being purchased by someone else at a store. About 10 percent of the guns confiscated by D.C. police fit that definition, Domenech said.
