Bubbles
Member
Albany PD is not the only one to engage in these practices. As long as the '86 ban remains in place they will continue; it's just too tempting for people in positions of power to exploit the ban for personal gain.
Cops source of gun sales
Albany police arranged to illegally obtain weapons for personal use; a federal probe went nowhere when some were offered to the public
By BRENDAN J. LYONS, Senior writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, August 26, 2007
ALBANY -- Federal agents were sifting through the weaponry of a troubled Colonie gun store several years ago when they spotted a banned, fully-automatic assault rifle propped on a shelf and listed for sale.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents would soon learn the dangerous weapon, a machine gun which could not legally be resold, had been obtained by the store's owners from an Albany police officer, Michael Romano, and that the gun was still registered to the department.
It was a troubling discovery a cop's machine gun in a gun store but it turned out to be only the beginning of a major ATF investigation that years later, despite unearthing a mountain of evidence, would be brushed aside by the region's U.S. Attorney's office.
A Times Union investigation has found that Romano was one of dozens of city cops, along with at least one Albany County assistant district attorney and possibly a judge, who used the department to illegally purchase an arsenal of automatic assault rifles and ammunition for personal use at tax-exempt, discount prices in the mid-1990s.
The illegal gun purchases, which were concealed from the public, did not result in any disciplinary or criminal charges, and ultimately they exposed more than just wrongdoing on the part of the police force. To this day, it is unclear how many of the weapons were never recovered.
The purchases took place in 1993 and 1994 and were approved by Assistant Chief William Murray, a gun enthusiast who retired several years ago and has since died.
The assault weapons, which included numerous Belgian-designed assault rifles, were ordered on the Albany Police Department's official stationery, which bore the names of Mayor Jerry Jennings and then-Chief John Dale and carried Murray's signature.
One of the gun orders, dated Nov. 19, 1994, was addressed to Century International Arms in Vermont and included the false statements: "These weapons will be used for official duties only, purchased by the department for departmental use only."
In fact, the machine guns were not part of any official purchase. The officers and others paid with their own money -- about $200 per weapon -- and because they were being purchased through a police force were able to avoid hundreds of dollars in federal excise taxes, police sources said. The guns were also illegal to possess under New York state law.
"It's illegal for the city to let someone else use their tax exempt status for a private purpose," city Comptroller Thomas Nitido said last year, when the Times Union began inquiring about police gun purchases.
After the ATF's discovery of an Albany Police Department machine gun for sale at the Colonie store, former Albany Police Commissioner John C. Nielsen quietly ordered an intensive audit to recover the remaining weapons. The outcome, according to sources close to the matter, was that other guns, not part of the illegal purchase, were missing from the department's arsenal and that many of the assault weapons were gone. City police, with the help of federal agents, recovered one of the weapons at a gun store in Texas.
Several of the assault weapons, which remain missing, are known to have been taken home by officers who retired. In other cases, the people suspected of buying them, including an Albany-area judge, denied ever receiving one.
The judge, who is not being identified by the Times Union because there is no documentation he received a gun, told the newspaper last week that he has no idea how his name surfaced in the scandal.
"I never bought one of those," the judge said. "I imagine they thought I did because I'm a gun guy (enthusiast)."
The judge disclosed that he had seen an assault weapon purchased by Assistant District Attorney Brian Farley, who obtained it when he was working for District Attorney Sol Greenberg. Farley did not respond to repeated requests for comment but reported his purchase to Albany County District Attorney David Soares after being contacted by the Times Union several weeks ago.
Farley, also a gun enthusiast, returned his weapon to Albany police, sources said.
Top city officials, including Mayor Jennings and Police Chief James W. Tuffey, have taken steps to conceal the full scope of what occurred, including going to court to fight a Freedom of Information Law request by the Times Union seeking the department's records related to the gun purchases.
In early 2006, shortly after being appointed chief by Jennings, Tuffey told the newspaper he was reviewing the department's files regarding the assault weapons. He said he intended to release documents as part of what would be his administration's efforts to be "transparent." But about two weeks later, a police spokesman contacted the newspaper and said he'd just left a meeting at City Hall with Jennings, Tuffey and the city's corporation counsel. The spokesman said he was instructed to tell the newspaper its FOIL request would be denied.
Two months later, in April 2006, the city denied the Times Union's appeal for the records, stating: "Disclosing the weapons that are used by the police force in fighting crime in the City of Albany could endanger the life of the officers using them against criminals."
At the time the letter was written, city officials would have known their own internal investigation determined the guns were unsuitable for urban policing, had never been deployed or used by the department in any official capacity, and that some of the weapons were missing and had been purchased by individuals other than police officers, according to interviews with people familiar with the case.
The possibility that dozens of Albany police officers had illicitly acquired assault weapons also fueled, in part, a decision by the U.S. Attorney's office to drop a criminal investigation of the former Colonie gun store, B & J Shooting Supply, and its owners, James Frampton and Louis Brian Olesen II, according to sources close to the investigation. The men, who are both still in the gun sales business, were already under investigation for numerous firearms violations when ATF agents began inspecting their businesses in December 2002.
That investigation resulted in just one federal conviction of Michael Scarnato, a Rensselaer County restaurant owner and underground gunsmith who later went to prison. Scarnato, who cooperated with authorities, admitted making illegal gun silencers after ATF agents and State Police raided his home and found ample evidence, including discarded gun parts and a firing range, in the basement of his Schodack home.
Scarnato told federal authorities that some of his illegal handiwork, including threading gun barrels to handle silencers and flash suppressors, had been done for Olesen and Frampton, according to court documents.
Frampton surrendered his federal firearms license in the wake of the ATF probe. He was never arrested and opened a new gun outlet in Guilderland with a different partner, John H. Smith, who holds the federal firearms license for their store, J & J Guns. But allegations of criminal behavior followed Frampton, who was arrested along with Smith in May by the State Police. The new allegations against Frampton again involved undocumented gun sales and dealing in banned assault weapons. That case is still pending.
Olesen, meanwhile, who has a smattering of minor arrests and a few convictions in his criminal history, struck out on his own and applied in Albany County in late 2002 for a state pistol dealer's license. Without Frampton and his federal firearms license, Olesen needed the state license to sell handguns in New York state. The state permit also is a prerequisite for obtaining a federal firearms license.
After his state application was rejected, Olesen withdrew his federal firearms request, records show. Weeks later, his mother, Barbara Olesen, applied for and was approved for a state pistol dealer's permit and also a federal firearms license. The permits were for the Colonie shop operated by her son.
Meanwhile, rejected once, Olesen continued to pursue state credentials to sell guns. In 2005, he re-applied for a state pistol dealer's license in conjunction with his opening a small gun store on Columbia Turnpike in Rensselaer.
Rensselaer County Judge Patrick McGrath approved Olesen's request, although the judge last week said Olesen had checked "no" in response to a question about whether he'd ever been denied a permit.
U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby said the decision by his office not to prosecute Olesen or Frampton had nothing to do with dozens of police and at least one county prosecutor buying assault weapons.
"No, that is not something that was part of any investigation or any referral that was ever brought to our office," Suddaby said. "That issue was never brought to us by ATF."
Suddaby said the decision to decline prosecution had more to do with the job done by the ATF.
"It was quality of evidence issues," he said. "There are a number of issues which led us to make a decision that we were unable to go forward with the prosecution based on the investigation that was presented to us by ATF."
Another source close to the investigation disputes Suddaby's account. That source said federal prosecutors in Albany were fully aware of the Albany police situation and had expressed concern that prosecuting Olesen and Frampton could have triggered "a mess" because of the potential scandal. Frampton's attorney, Donald T. Kinsella, a former federal prosecutor, said the ATF investigation of his client five years ago was based on minor charges that had to do with bookkeeping issues.
On the new felony charge against his client, for selling assault rifles, Kinsella said they intend to fight the case.
"They were legally federally. There's a changing definition about what is legal and illegal for New York state purposes," he said. "As far as they know anything they sold complied with both state and federal laws."
Olesen, meanwhile, contends he has done nothing wrong and was the target of a vindictive investigation headed by John Morgan, who was agent-in-charge of the ATF's Albany field office at the time the case was unfolding.
"The biggest thing I'd like to see is my name cleared," Olesen said.
Attempts to reach Morgan for comment were not successful and he is not currently assigned to the Albany field office.
Joe Green, ATF spokesman for the New York Field Division, said he could not discuss the specifics of their investigation.
"It's up to the prosecutors to determine whether they're going to accept or decline for prosecution," Green said. "We only conduct the investigation."
Meanwhile, the assault weapon registered to the Albany police force that was seized by ATF in 2002 was returned to the department last December. Several weeks ago, Albany's police chief said he ordered it and all the recovered guns to be destroyed.
That event, he said, was videotaped.
Brendan J. Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Illegal gun purchases by Albany police
In the early 1990s, police in Albany used their employer's status as a police agency to purchase fully and semi-automatic military weapons, banned from sale to the public, for their personal use.
JENNINGS: For more than a year, the administration of Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings has refused a Freedom of Information Law request regarding the guns.
MURRAY: Now-deceased Assistant Police Chief Bill Murray arranged to buy assault rifles and machine guns from a Vermont importer.
cutline: Although police officials assured a licensed arms importer their purchase was intended for official law enforcement use only, the guns were never used in the Albany department's police work, according to a number of sources.
An off-duty arsenal
Albany police sought out serious firepower when they illegally arranged to buy guns for personal sport, ordering NATO-quality, fully and semi-automatic assault rifles.
M14 Military rifle:
The M14 is a lightweight shoulder rifle designed primarily for semi-automatic fire, but fully-automatic capable. The M14 was a standard U.S. Army infantry rifle until it was superseded by the M16 in the late 1960s.
Other characteristics:
44.14 inches long
22-inch barrel
11.0 lbs. fully loaded
7.62mm ammo in 20-round clip
Max effective range: 1,500 feet
20-30 rounds per minute semi-automatic
40-60 rounds per minute automatic
7.62mm NATO rounds:
The 7.62x51mm rifle cartridge became a standard among North American Treaty Organization nations in the 1950s. The ammo is widely available in a number of forms, including:
Standard--Ball cartridge
Armor Piercing-- black cartridge tip
Tracer--orange cartridge tip
Grenade--grenade launching blank
Long Range/Sniping hollow point
Duplex--two-bullet round
Match--designed for competition
L1A1 military rifle:
The L1A1 is a British-licensed version of a design from the Belgian arms maker Fabrique National. The original Belgian Fusil Automatique Legere (FAL) was created to work with a standard 7.62mm NATO cartridge. The rifle is semi-automatic only and was later replaced with the 5.56mm SA80 for British military use. Other characteristics:
41.47 inches long
30-inch barrel
11.2 lbs. fully loaded
7.62mm ammo in 20-round clip
Max effective range: 1,970 feet
20 rounds per minute semi-automatic
Source: City of Albany partial response to FOIL request, various firearms references.
Cops source of gun sales
Albany police arranged to illegally obtain weapons for personal use; a federal probe went nowhere when some were offered to the public
By BRENDAN J. LYONS, Senior writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, August 26, 2007
ALBANY -- Federal agents were sifting through the weaponry of a troubled Colonie gun store several years ago when they spotted a banned, fully-automatic assault rifle propped on a shelf and listed for sale.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents would soon learn the dangerous weapon, a machine gun which could not legally be resold, had been obtained by the store's owners from an Albany police officer, Michael Romano, and that the gun was still registered to the department.
It was a troubling discovery a cop's machine gun in a gun store but it turned out to be only the beginning of a major ATF investigation that years later, despite unearthing a mountain of evidence, would be brushed aside by the region's U.S. Attorney's office.
A Times Union investigation has found that Romano was one of dozens of city cops, along with at least one Albany County assistant district attorney and possibly a judge, who used the department to illegally purchase an arsenal of automatic assault rifles and ammunition for personal use at tax-exempt, discount prices in the mid-1990s.
The illegal gun purchases, which were concealed from the public, did not result in any disciplinary or criminal charges, and ultimately they exposed more than just wrongdoing on the part of the police force. To this day, it is unclear how many of the weapons were never recovered.
The purchases took place in 1993 and 1994 and were approved by Assistant Chief William Murray, a gun enthusiast who retired several years ago and has since died.
The assault weapons, which included numerous Belgian-designed assault rifles, were ordered on the Albany Police Department's official stationery, which bore the names of Mayor Jerry Jennings and then-Chief John Dale and carried Murray's signature.
One of the gun orders, dated Nov. 19, 1994, was addressed to Century International Arms in Vermont and included the false statements: "These weapons will be used for official duties only, purchased by the department for departmental use only."
In fact, the machine guns were not part of any official purchase. The officers and others paid with their own money -- about $200 per weapon -- and because they were being purchased through a police force were able to avoid hundreds of dollars in federal excise taxes, police sources said. The guns were also illegal to possess under New York state law.
"It's illegal for the city to let someone else use their tax exempt status for a private purpose," city Comptroller Thomas Nitido said last year, when the Times Union began inquiring about police gun purchases.
After the ATF's discovery of an Albany Police Department machine gun for sale at the Colonie store, former Albany Police Commissioner John C. Nielsen quietly ordered an intensive audit to recover the remaining weapons. The outcome, according to sources close to the matter, was that other guns, not part of the illegal purchase, were missing from the department's arsenal and that many of the assault weapons were gone. City police, with the help of federal agents, recovered one of the weapons at a gun store in Texas.
Several of the assault weapons, which remain missing, are known to have been taken home by officers who retired. In other cases, the people suspected of buying them, including an Albany-area judge, denied ever receiving one.
The judge, who is not being identified by the Times Union because there is no documentation he received a gun, told the newspaper last week that he has no idea how his name surfaced in the scandal.
"I never bought one of those," the judge said. "I imagine they thought I did because I'm a gun guy (enthusiast)."
The judge disclosed that he had seen an assault weapon purchased by Assistant District Attorney Brian Farley, who obtained it when he was working for District Attorney Sol Greenberg. Farley did not respond to repeated requests for comment but reported his purchase to Albany County District Attorney David Soares after being contacted by the Times Union several weeks ago.
Farley, also a gun enthusiast, returned his weapon to Albany police, sources said.
Top city officials, including Mayor Jennings and Police Chief James W. Tuffey, have taken steps to conceal the full scope of what occurred, including going to court to fight a Freedom of Information Law request by the Times Union seeking the department's records related to the gun purchases.
In early 2006, shortly after being appointed chief by Jennings, Tuffey told the newspaper he was reviewing the department's files regarding the assault weapons. He said he intended to release documents as part of what would be his administration's efforts to be "transparent." But about two weeks later, a police spokesman contacted the newspaper and said he'd just left a meeting at City Hall with Jennings, Tuffey and the city's corporation counsel. The spokesman said he was instructed to tell the newspaper its FOIL request would be denied.
Two months later, in April 2006, the city denied the Times Union's appeal for the records, stating: "Disclosing the weapons that are used by the police force in fighting crime in the City of Albany could endanger the life of the officers using them against criminals."
At the time the letter was written, city officials would have known their own internal investigation determined the guns were unsuitable for urban policing, had never been deployed or used by the department in any official capacity, and that some of the weapons were missing and had been purchased by individuals other than police officers, according to interviews with people familiar with the case.
The possibility that dozens of Albany police officers had illicitly acquired assault weapons also fueled, in part, a decision by the U.S. Attorney's office to drop a criminal investigation of the former Colonie gun store, B & J Shooting Supply, and its owners, James Frampton and Louis Brian Olesen II, according to sources close to the investigation. The men, who are both still in the gun sales business, were already under investigation for numerous firearms violations when ATF agents began inspecting their businesses in December 2002.
That investigation resulted in just one federal conviction of Michael Scarnato, a Rensselaer County restaurant owner and underground gunsmith who later went to prison. Scarnato, who cooperated with authorities, admitted making illegal gun silencers after ATF agents and State Police raided his home and found ample evidence, including discarded gun parts and a firing range, in the basement of his Schodack home.
Scarnato told federal authorities that some of his illegal handiwork, including threading gun barrels to handle silencers and flash suppressors, had been done for Olesen and Frampton, according to court documents.
Frampton surrendered his federal firearms license in the wake of the ATF probe. He was never arrested and opened a new gun outlet in Guilderland with a different partner, John H. Smith, who holds the federal firearms license for their store, J & J Guns. But allegations of criminal behavior followed Frampton, who was arrested along with Smith in May by the State Police. The new allegations against Frampton again involved undocumented gun sales and dealing in banned assault weapons. That case is still pending.
Olesen, meanwhile, who has a smattering of minor arrests and a few convictions in his criminal history, struck out on his own and applied in Albany County in late 2002 for a state pistol dealer's license. Without Frampton and his federal firearms license, Olesen needed the state license to sell handguns in New York state. The state permit also is a prerequisite for obtaining a federal firearms license.
After his state application was rejected, Olesen withdrew his federal firearms request, records show. Weeks later, his mother, Barbara Olesen, applied for and was approved for a state pistol dealer's permit and also a federal firearms license. The permits were for the Colonie shop operated by her son.
Meanwhile, rejected once, Olesen continued to pursue state credentials to sell guns. In 2005, he re-applied for a state pistol dealer's license in conjunction with his opening a small gun store on Columbia Turnpike in Rensselaer.
Rensselaer County Judge Patrick McGrath approved Olesen's request, although the judge last week said Olesen had checked "no" in response to a question about whether he'd ever been denied a permit.
U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby said the decision by his office not to prosecute Olesen or Frampton had nothing to do with dozens of police and at least one county prosecutor buying assault weapons.
"No, that is not something that was part of any investigation or any referral that was ever brought to our office," Suddaby said. "That issue was never brought to us by ATF."
Suddaby said the decision to decline prosecution had more to do with the job done by the ATF.
"It was quality of evidence issues," he said. "There are a number of issues which led us to make a decision that we were unable to go forward with the prosecution based on the investigation that was presented to us by ATF."
Another source close to the investigation disputes Suddaby's account. That source said federal prosecutors in Albany were fully aware of the Albany police situation and had expressed concern that prosecuting Olesen and Frampton could have triggered "a mess" because of the potential scandal. Frampton's attorney, Donald T. Kinsella, a former federal prosecutor, said the ATF investigation of his client five years ago was based on minor charges that had to do with bookkeeping issues.
On the new felony charge against his client, for selling assault rifles, Kinsella said they intend to fight the case.
"They were legally federally. There's a changing definition about what is legal and illegal for New York state purposes," he said. "As far as they know anything they sold complied with both state and federal laws."
Olesen, meanwhile, contends he has done nothing wrong and was the target of a vindictive investigation headed by John Morgan, who was agent-in-charge of the ATF's Albany field office at the time the case was unfolding.
"The biggest thing I'd like to see is my name cleared," Olesen said.
Attempts to reach Morgan for comment were not successful and he is not currently assigned to the Albany field office.
Joe Green, ATF spokesman for the New York Field Division, said he could not discuss the specifics of their investigation.
"It's up to the prosecutors to determine whether they're going to accept or decline for prosecution," Green said. "We only conduct the investigation."
Meanwhile, the assault weapon registered to the Albany police force that was seized by ATF in 2002 was returned to the department last December. Several weeks ago, Albany's police chief said he ordered it and all the recovered guns to be destroyed.
That event, he said, was videotaped.
Brendan J. Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Illegal gun purchases by Albany police
In the early 1990s, police in Albany used their employer's status as a police agency to purchase fully and semi-automatic military weapons, banned from sale to the public, for their personal use.
JENNINGS: For more than a year, the administration of Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings has refused a Freedom of Information Law request regarding the guns.
MURRAY: Now-deceased Assistant Police Chief Bill Murray arranged to buy assault rifles and machine guns from a Vermont importer.
cutline: Although police officials assured a licensed arms importer their purchase was intended for official law enforcement use only, the guns were never used in the Albany department's police work, according to a number of sources.
An off-duty arsenal
Albany police sought out serious firepower when they illegally arranged to buy guns for personal sport, ordering NATO-quality, fully and semi-automatic assault rifles.
M14 Military rifle:
The M14 is a lightweight shoulder rifle designed primarily for semi-automatic fire, but fully-automatic capable. The M14 was a standard U.S. Army infantry rifle until it was superseded by the M16 in the late 1960s.
Other characteristics:
44.14 inches long
22-inch barrel
11.0 lbs. fully loaded
7.62mm ammo in 20-round clip
Max effective range: 1,500 feet
20-30 rounds per minute semi-automatic
40-60 rounds per minute automatic
7.62mm NATO rounds:
The 7.62x51mm rifle cartridge became a standard among North American Treaty Organization nations in the 1950s. The ammo is widely available in a number of forms, including:
Standard--Ball cartridge
Armor Piercing-- black cartridge tip
Tracer--orange cartridge tip
Grenade--grenade launching blank
Long Range/Sniping hollow point
Duplex--two-bullet round
Match--designed for competition
L1A1 military rifle:
The L1A1 is a British-licensed version of a design from the Belgian arms maker Fabrique National. The original Belgian Fusil Automatique Legere (FAL) was created to work with a standard 7.62mm NATO cartridge. The rifle is semi-automatic only and was later replaced with the 5.56mm SA80 for British military use. Other characteristics:
41.47 inches long
30-inch barrel
11.2 lbs. fully loaded
7.62mm ammo in 20-round clip
Max effective range: 1,970 feet
20 rounds per minute semi-automatic
Source: City of Albany partial response to FOIL request, various firearms references.
