Titan6
member
We just want to know how guns cause crime XD. That is the confusing part. Please explain....
Crime way up in NJ cities - Lack of gun control cited as primary cause
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Titan6
Guns are easily obtained by a lot of people, including the ones who shouldn't have them. I haven't seen or read a single gun control law ever enacted that stemmed the sale of guns to criminals. Guns are a big business. What I don't like is the media dumping on legitimate owners and dumping them into the same pot with the criminals. I pity the victim that is forced to shoot the "kid" on a bike that pulled a gun on him/her. Their name will smeared over every news channel and papers and will be be condemned long before they ever end up in court, and the last I recall Judges are elected also.
Guns are easily obtained by a lot of people, including the ones who shouldn't have them. I haven't seen or read a single gun control law ever enacted that stemmed the sale of guns to criminals. Guns are a big business. What I don't like is the media dumping on legitimate owners and dumping them into the same pot with the criminals. I pity the victim that is forced to shoot the "kid" on a bike that pulled a gun on him/her. Their name will smeared over every news channel and papers and will be be condemned long before they ever end up in court, and the last I recall Judges are elected also.
I think one of the important points the anti-gun crowd misses is that it isn't so much the actual carrying and use of guns for self-defense that deters crime, but the FEAR generated in the criminal when he knows that the victim he picks on may be armed. If laws prohibit most or all citizens being armed in public, the criminal has less fear. If laws allow almost anyone who can legally own a gun to carry that gun concealed in public places, then even if not a single person chose to do that in a given municipality, the criminal would still have the fear implanted in him, and that would change things drastically.
The anti-gun folks do not, I think, work hard enough to understand the criminal mind: that the bad guy wants to avoid harm to himself! I live in an area with very liberal politics. It seems so hard for liberals to understand the extreme anti-social behavior of the criminal. People are shocked when their nice neighborhoods are victimized, thinking that no one decent would prey on nice people. They can't get "inside" the guy's head, understand the Darwinian, predatory way he works, and because they can't, they come up with ineffective, totalitarian solutions for crime. Better understanding of psychology leads to better solutions for crime, such as the willingness to arm citizens!
Riverblue
The anti-gun folks do not, I think, work hard enough to understand the criminal mind: that the bad guy wants to avoid harm to himself! I live in an area with very liberal politics. It seems so hard for liberals to understand the extreme anti-social behavior of the criminal. People are shocked when their nice neighborhoods are victimized, thinking that no one decent would prey on nice people. They can't get "inside" the guy's head, understand the Darwinian, predatory way he works, and because they can't, they come up with ineffective, totalitarian solutions for crime. Better understanding of psychology leads to better solutions for crime, such as the willingness to arm citizens!
Riverblue
Titan6
member
XD said- I haven't seen or read a single gun control law ever enacted that stemmed the sale of guns to criminals.
That is because gun control laws don't do that. No law can do that. In England where guns are practically banned gun crime is way up over pre ban.
That is because gun control laws don't do that. No law can do that. In England where guns are practically banned gun crime is way up over pre ban.
Feanaro
Member
"Arms Industry" does not equal "military spending," which is what Wikipedia's cite(a page certainly NOT constructed by an unbiased party) says. The actual number, according to the cite, is 30-35 billion in deliveries every year. For some perspective, the video game industry is worth 37.5 billion and will be worth nearly 50 by 2011.
I read this article and I wonder if it has to do more with cultural clashes minority on minority crime. The midwest is mostly poor white people, all having the same background and cultur, they might get in bar fights, but they dont go around shooting each other in general from what I have seen personally.
Of course, if it was a cultural thing, I would think California would be having the same rise...so I could very well be wrong.
Of course, if it was a cultural thing, I would think California would be having the same rise...so I could very well be wrong.
Let me see if I understand. The mayor is corrupt, the city council is corrupt, the police chief and 90% of the force is on the take, city businesses are either paying off or have moved out, drugs are sold on every street corner, along with illegal guns. The downtown is a wasteland, where the only businesses are drugs and prostitution. The few remaining honest citizens cower in their homes, disarmed by crooked lawmakers and as afraid of the crooked cops as they are of the crooks. The press is corrupt, with newspapers and TV blaming everything on "outsiders." Reporters smuggle drugs in cars with PRESS signs, while local TV news "personalities" go on the air so stoned they can hardly talk.
Of course, another gun law will solve everything!
Jim
Of course, another gun law will solve everything!
Jim
Dravur
Member
I dunno, I don't see Colt down in the ghetto handing out ARs. That was some peice of logic.
Both had some pretty good information on illegal guns and how they get into the US even though the Arms industry knew they were making illegal sales.
Keep in mind that this refers to non US manufacturers, US manufacturers come under the Arms Control Act for any export of firearms and need approval from both State and Commerce Departments. Many Eastern European manufacturers and China could give a hoot where their guns wind up as long as they're making money.
Having lived in NJ most of my life and having worked at least 20 years there in my LE career the cultural and economic issues related to crime amount to this.
Liberals have maintained the nanny/welfare state in NJ for years. If you look at the 2004 election map showing who voted how the cities Newark, Paterson, Camden, Trenton are all blue. The rest of the state is red. The call for more gun control keeps snowballing in NJ, assault rifles in the early 90s to one handgun a month last week. None has had any effect in crime. When a Republican canidate stated he was for CCW permits in the state the liberals portrayed as being for "hidden handguns" whatever that means. The liberals won as that was where the nanny state comes from.
A good example of the welfare state is something I observed while being staged for a rolling surveillance. We sat by this park for several weeks so we could move out when the BGs left their location. About 1 pm the basketball court would fill up with genuine athletes. They'd show up with their basketball and a 40 of malt liquor. They'd talk about how they needed to get on a "program" so they could get a check. Not a job so they could get a check but a "program". With fine citizens as these NJ will self destruct eventually.
I know many people on this forum are not fans of Guiliani. In his defense no new gun laws where enacted in NY when he was mayor. I am not a big fan of Rudy but I'll tell you a fact. He was the only mayor that cleaned up Times Square, rolled back the homicide rate to 20% of what it was, and made NY a lot safer than it was. Many will claim Gestapo tactics etc (I don't agree) but that's what it took to clean up NY. Rudy is very pro law enforcement but not pro cop.
Under Bloomberg ( a Democrat until 9 months before he was elected) NY is rolling back.
I think Bismarck said "only a fool learns by his mistakes, I learn by everyone else's".
Keep in mind that this refers to non US manufacturers, US manufacturers come under the Arms Control Act for any export of firearms and need approval from both State and Commerce Departments. Many Eastern European manufacturers and China could give a hoot where their guns wind up as long as they're making money.
Having lived in NJ most of my life and having worked at least 20 years there in my LE career the cultural and economic issues related to crime amount to this.
Liberals have maintained the nanny/welfare state in NJ for years. If you look at the 2004 election map showing who voted how the cities Newark, Paterson, Camden, Trenton are all blue. The rest of the state is red. The call for more gun control keeps snowballing in NJ, assault rifles in the early 90s to one handgun a month last week. None has had any effect in crime. When a Republican canidate stated he was for CCW permits in the state the liberals portrayed as being for "hidden handguns" whatever that means. The liberals won as that was where the nanny state comes from.
A good example of the welfare state is something I observed while being staged for a rolling surveillance. We sat by this park for several weeks so we could move out when the BGs left their location. About 1 pm the basketball court would fill up with genuine athletes. They'd show up with their basketball and a 40 of malt liquor. They'd talk about how they needed to get on a "program" so they could get a check. Not a job so they could get a check but a "program". With fine citizens as these NJ will self destruct eventually.
I know many people on this forum are not fans of Guiliani. In his defense no new gun laws where enacted in NY when he was mayor. I am not a big fan of Rudy but I'll tell you a fact. He was the only mayor that cleaned up Times Square, rolled back the homicide rate to 20% of what it was, and made NY a lot safer than it was. Many will claim Gestapo tactics etc (I don't agree) but that's what it took to clean up NY. Rudy is very pro law enforcement but not pro cop.
Under Bloomberg ( a Democrat until 9 months before he was elected) NY is rolling back.
I think Bismarck said "only a fool learns by his mistakes, I learn by everyone else's".
the silly article said:
This part made me laugh. With the exception of .357 or .44 Magnum, and some of the more exotic rounds like .50AE .500 S&W or (arguably) 5.7x28mm, have there really been any handgun cartridges designed in the nearly 100 years since the .45 ACP which could even be considered "more powerful than ever?" At least as far as things which are actually used in crime. And weren't semiautos invented in like the 1880s?
Yea, yea, I know, expecting the media to report facts and stuff is silly, but, still..
fast eddie
Member
It's a very strange article. Is the point that immigration is the solution to violent crime? If so my opinion is that the article is intended as an oblique way of justifying the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens. Or is the point that working people don't typically commit violent crimes? If so that's a long article to demonstrate a fact that should be obvious to anyone.
ConfuseUs
Member
Breathtaking. Theoretically then, simply banning black and Hispanic people in these neighborhoods (just like they are trying to ban guns) should solve all the problems, shouldn't it?
Now, why am I convinced that the editors just happened to miss this blatant racism? Could it be that liberals are not racists, ever?
22-rimfire
Member
I wonder what the unemployment rate in Newark is this year? There is no mention of any rates when it seems more likely that the information might be counter to the points made in the article.
If world arms sales was the cause of the crime problems in Newark and Philadelphia, you would see more crimes committed with military weapons (full auto). I believe it relates more to a residual population who are more likely to commit crime. The more industrious portion of the those cities got out, and you are left with a higher percentage of rift-raft.
The answer lies in law enforcement. But maybe if the gang members kill each other off at a faster rate, the problem could just work itself out??
I definitely think we need to hand out more money with "programs". Maybe some gun buy back programs?? That has to be the answer.
If world arms sales was the cause of the crime problems in Newark and Philadelphia, you would see more crimes committed with military weapons (full auto). I believe it relates more to a residual population who are more likely to commit crime. The more industrious portion of the those cities got out, and you are left with a higher percentage of rift-raft.
The answer lies in law enforcement. But maybe if the gang members kill each other off at a faster rate, the problem could just work itself out??
I definitely think we need to hand out more money with "programs". Maybe some gun buy back programs?? That has to be the answer.
Titan6
member
.22 Rimfire- I hope you were kidding about gun buy backs. You do realize whose gun they will be ''buying back''? It will be your gun most likely after the criminals break into your house and steal it. Having the police serve as the ultimate fence for stolen goods with no questions asked, cash money on the spot only serves to stimulate crime, not decrease it.
The unemployment rate is about 15%, one of the highest in the country. There is normally a correlation between the two after you get above the 5-7% of the chronically unemployed/ unemployable.
ConfuseUs- Being a liberal racist is okay so long as they provide the certain ethnic group with treats. Recall former Pres Clinton ''You People'' speech and Sen. Clinton's activties in Selma this year. Clearly racist yet not an eye batted.
The unemployment rate is about 15%, one of the highest in the country. There is normally a correlation between the two after you get above the 5-7% of the chronically unemployed/ unemployable.
ConfuseUs- Being a liberal racist is okay so long as they provide the certain ethnic group with treats. Recall former Pres Clinton ''You People'' speech and Sen. Clinton's activties in Selma this year. Clearly racist yet not an eye batted.
ConfuseUs
Member
Titan6 I am well aware that the liberal left is full of people who are essentially white supremacists. They are more subtle about it than racists on the right and I think many of them are in denial about how racist they really are. Essentially they buy votes in the minority community with social programs justified with soft racism. It says nothing good about either group IMHO.
The white liberal left could easily lose a lot of elections if the minorities who vote for them rediscovered the concept of "face" and decided to stop selling their personal integrity for the price of a few bribes.
The white liberal left could easily lose a lot of elections if the minorities who vote for them rediscovered the concept of "face" and decided to stop selling their personal integrity for the price of a few bribes.
Fulcrum of Evil
Member
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When I think liberal racist, the first name that comes to mind is Jesse Jackson. Are you saying he's a sheethead?
rocinante
Member
Well I like most found the articles 'logic' retarded at best especially concerning the immigrant factor. That is what I hate about opinion pieces, which this is disquised as news, because they see any two factors and attribute a cause and effect without any attempt to explain any direct correlation. Areas with exaggerated immigration have less gun crime therefore the immigrants themselves are the cause of the reduction. Astonishing. MAYBE areas that offer opportunity and economic hope and jobs are less prone to violent crime. MAYBE the liberals can improve everything by busing the illegal immigrants to areas of no jobs and high crime instead of passing yet another gun law. I mean after all they have PROVED the illegal immigrants presence cause such a beneficial effect.
geim druth
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- Jun 12, 2006
- Messages
- 270
From the front page of today's Newark Star Ledger
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/118326493913550.xml&coll=1
Tracking the flow of illegal weapons into city takes law enforcement sleuths to Florida
Sunday, July 01, 2007
BY JONATHAN SCHUPPE
Star-Ledger Staff
The gun was a black Hi Point C9 semi-automatic, cheaper than an iPod and small enough to cram into a hip pocket.
Plastic and metal, it was made in Ohio, shipped to a Florida gun shop and, in the summer of 2002, landed in the hands of a jittery 17-year-old from Newark named Wali Wolfe.
As Wolfe walked with his cousin down a dark street late one August night, two men approached and Wolfe feared he was going to be robbed. He pulled the trigger, launching three 9 mm full-metal-jacket bullets at 1,200 feet a second.
But his cousin, Larry Tobias, accidentally stepped into the line of fire. One bullet ripped through Tobias' chest and out his back, knocking him to the pavement.
Wolfe ran home to hide the gun. Minutes later, his cousin lay bleeding in his mother's arms. "I'm cold, Mommy," Tobias said.
He died before the ambulance arrived.
The weapon's 1,100-mile passage from gun store to killing scene was the work of a small ring of smugglers who helped feed Newark's lucrative underground arms market. Exploiting Florida's lenient gun laws, they bought dozens of high-powered pistols to resell on the streets of New Jersey, home to some of the country's toughest firearm restrictions.
Federal agents and local police spent four years investigating the gun-running pipeline. No one questioned the importance of stopping the flow: In addition to the gun that killed Tobias, at least nine others turned up at Newark crime scenes. One was used to pistol-whip a worker in a bodega robbery; others were found on suspected drug dealers.
The smuggling operation shows what local authorities face as they battle a resurgence in gun violence. Murders last year in Newark rose to the highest level since 1990. Nonfatal shootings rose for the fourth straight year. And police recovered nearly 900 illegal guns in 2006, a record.
At the heart of this struggle is the insatiable demand for weapons in cities and an inexhaustible supply from Southern states like Florida, where it is relatively easy to buy them.
"That's the way firearms trafficking works," said William McMahon, the top agent in the New York metropolitan region for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Smugglers take the path of least resistance and make a profit of it. It's a straight path into urban neighborhoods."
Uncovering such rings requires a mix of streetwise detective work, meticulous record checks and a little luck. Even after four years, agents don't have all the answers about the network.
Their investigation, outlined in police reports, federal court documents and interviews, started with agents following the trail backward, from that deadly night in Newark to a day seven weeks earlier, when a man walked into a store in central Florida and asked to buy a bunch of cheap handguns.
START OF THE PIPELINE
The buyer was Jonathan Joseph Prioleau, who ran his own bail-bond business out of a dilapidated storefront in Lake Wales, about an hour due east of Tampa. He lived in a small ranch house off a dirt road that passed through the orange groves of Polk County.
Prioleau stood about 6-foot-2, weighed 220 pounds but had an unimposing demeanor. He was 28, favored T-shirts and jeans, and, it seemed to agents, didn't have much ambition.
In June 2002, court records show, Prioleau met two men looking for guns to sell in New Jersey. Neither man could legally buy arms in Florida so they offered to pay Prioleau to purchase the weapons for them. He agreed.
As a licensed bondsman, Prioleau had no legal restrictions. He had a permit to carry a firearm, could buy as many as he wanted and he was not subject to Florida's three-day waiting period.
Prioleau was what authorities call a "straw buyer," a person who legally purchases cheap guns for traffickers who resell the guns at steep markups in cities where they are illegal.
One major smuggling route, nicknamed the "Iron Pipeline," begins in the South and moves along Interstate 95, snaking past Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York City and Boston.
Estimating the size of the gun flow is difficult. Authorities know about only the guns they recover, and some of them are untraceable. And even when they successfully trace the guns, Congress restricts the ATF from releasing the information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency investigating a criminal case.
Frustrated by the violence, dozens of mayors, including Newark's Cory Booker, have banded together to lobby Congress to loosen the restrictions. The mayors say the law makes it harder for local police to track the flow of illegal guns into their cities.
But data alone will not stem the tide. By the time the guns reach their destinations, most have had their serial numbers filed down, obscuring the code authorities use to track them.
That's what happened to Prioleau's purchases.
He bought at least 50 guns, including several Hi Point C9s, for the smuggling ring. Manufactured by Hi Point Firearms of Dayton, Ohio, the pistol is compact, reliable and retails for about $150 -- reasons why cops call it "the Hyundai of guns."
On July 2, 2002, Prioleau walked into Guns Galore in Lakeland, Fla., and bought four guns, including a Hi Point C9 with a matte black finish, an eight-shot magazine and the serial number P114520 etched on its frame. It cost $141.95.
In the next few weeks, the gun arrived in New Jersey.
Investigators haven't determined exactly how, but say they have learned over the years that smugglers use common steps to avoid detection: Rent a nondescript car, preferably with a trunk. Hide the guns in a backpack or duffel bag in the trunk. Limit the stops and stick to the busiest highways, always following the speed limit and other traffic laws.
(Gun traffickers particularly like weekends around July 4, authorities say, when the roads are clogged and police busy.)
Some traffickers avoid driving altogether. Investigators recently arrested a Newark man as he was getting off a Greyhound Bus in Penn Station with two duffel bags full of guns, they said.
Other traffickers make mistakes that can't help but draw attention.
A few years ago, a group of smugglers arrived at a Georgia gun store in a car with New Jersey license plates. After he sold them a batch of weapons, the store owner, curious about the out-of-state plates, called authorities, who determined the car had been rented at Newark Liberty International Airport.
Investigators ultimately detained it at a New Jersery Turnpike toll plaza. In the trunk they found suitcases stuffed with a couple dozen guns, their serial numbers filed off.
Agents say the days of large conspicuous hauls are over: Most smugglers now try to keep their take small and easy to hide. The men who bought Prioleau's weapons, they suspect, delivered just a few at a time for resale on the street.
They believe that's how Wali Wolfe got his Hi Point C9 in August 2002.
AN IRON BOND
Wolfe and his cousin, Tobias, were somewhat typical of the victims -- and perpetrators -- of street violence in Newark. Both were black men who had dropped out of high school -- Wolfe from Shabazz, and Tobias from West Side. Tobias had an arrest record, for minor theft and drug charges.
Neither worked. Both had guns.
Like brothers, they grew up in the same house, went to the same grammar school, rode bikes together, played ball together.
"Wali looked up to Larry. Larry was his idol," their grandmother, Mattie Greenhowe, said.
They lived with extended family on North Ninth Street, where, on Aug. 22, 2002, they were playing cards past midnight when Wolfe announced that he needed cigarettes. Tobias got up, too.
"This boy can't go outside by himself. I'll go with him," Tobias said, according to Greenhowe.
On their way out the door, both young men grabbed their guns.
As they were walking back home along Roseville Avenue, Wolfe and Tobias saw two men get out of a car and approach them. Thinking they were about to get robbed, the cousins started running. Wolfe fired behind him, squeezing the trigger three times.
One bullet hit Tobias.
Wolfe dragged his bleeding cousin onto the porch of a nearby house. Then he ran home, bursting through the front door. It was after 2 a.m.
"Larry was shot," the boy shouted.
Later that night, after being questioned by police, Wolfe admitted he accidentally shot his cousin. Police charged him with murder.
With Wolfe's help, investigators found the gun in the basement and took it to the Newark Police Department's Ballistics Lab.
THE 9MM TRAIL
Housed in a one-room office on Arlington Street, the lab processes every gun, bullet and shell casing taken from Newark crime scenes -- about 15,000 pieces of evidence a year. Detectives there confirmed that the bullet that killed Tobias came from Wolfe's gun. They also used chemicals to lift the obliterated serial number, and logged it in a blue three-ring notebook labeled "Serial Number Restoration Book."
Three months later, in November 2002, ATF Special Agent Mike Mohr walked into the lab and asked for the binder.
Mohr had been working on a case against a Colorado arms smuggler and wanted to see if Newark police had seized any guns that could be traced to him.
A native of suburban Union County, Mohr had been a probation officer and a deputy U.S. marshal before joining the ATF in 1998.
He came to the lab with his partner, Newark Police Detective Daren Coley, assigned to the ATF's New Jersey Firearms Task Force. Together, they spent a day writing down hundreds of serial numbers going back two years, hoping to link some to the Colorado smuggler.
Back at his desk in West Paterson, Mohr entered the numbers into databases to reveal the buyer's name, and if the gun had been part of a bulk sale -- a telltale sign of gun trafficking.
The name of the Colorado trafficker came up just once. But a new name kept showing up: Jonathan Joseph Prioleau.
Mohr noticed something else troubling. Two Hi Point 9 mm pistols that Prioleau bought were seized in Newark less than 60 days after he bought them in Florida. The so-called "time to crime" is usually a lot longer, often a year or two.
One of the guns was recovered in a car occupied by suspected drug dealers.
The other was used to kill Larry Tobias.
GUNS AND MORE GUNS
Mohr and Coley started a formal investigation, but knew it was going to be difficult. Even when confronted with evidence, most straw buyers don't admit it.
They started by asking an ATF agent in Tampa to visit Guns Galore, the store where Prioleau bought lots of guns, including the two found in Newark. Employees remembered the bondsman coming into the store with two other men -- another sign of gun running.
As a criminal enterprise, gun trafficking is not like drug trafficking, where participants can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single shipment that will ultimately be consumed by customers. Gun runners rely on transporting a high volume of weapons that rarely disappear. That increases the risk of getting caught.
Most straw buyers earn only about $50 a gun, or do it for drugs. Traffickers who sell them on the streets make hundreds of dollars more.
Prioleau was still buying guns, so the agents hoped to catch him in the act. Mohr flew to Tampa to join the investigation on the ground. But because Prioleau didn't have to wait three days to buy his guns, there was no way of knowing which store he would visit next. Agents decided it would be a waste of time and resources to put a nonstop tail on Prioleau.
Mohr returned home empty-handed.
Back in Newark, more Prioleau-bought guns were turning up at crime scenes. One was a Hi Point C9 taken from a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding on South Orange Avenue in January 2003. Another was an Accutek AT380 that officers pulled from the waistband of a passenger in a car that ran a red light on 7th Avenue a few days later.
The following spring, Prioleau's buying spree suddenly stopped. Agents figured he heard that the ATF was asking about him.
Then Mohr got an unexpected break, news from a fellow agent in Florida: Another bondsman had started his own shopping spree. And his guns were turning up in Newark.
CAUGHT INSIDE THE RING
Based in Jacksonville, agent Mark Padget told Mohr that he had just nabbed a 43-year-old bondsman named John Joe Wilson for buying batches of guns for suspected traffickers. Investigators found receipts showing a trail to New Jersey. And when agents confronted Wilson, he admitted being a straw buyer.
In Padget's case file, Mohr found a surprising link: a statement from one witness who said some of the guns went to Prioleau.
Now it looked like agents had uncovered an organized ring that was buying scores of guns from both Tampa and Jacksonville and smuggling them to Newark.
"Holy cow," Mohr recalled thinking. "Now you're talking three different cities and God knows what else is going on. Now it's a larger conspiracy with double the amount of guns."
Mohr kept monitoring gun recoveries in Newark for guns linked to Prioleau and Wilson. One was used in a bodega robbery where members of the Crips street gang pistol-whipped a clerk. Others were recovered in more routine police operations, including traffic stops.
Working backward from those incidents, Mohr and the Florida agents started drawing links between the men and their accomplices.
Every gun tells a story," Mohr said. "These guns told us a story that we all tried to piece together."
After months of digging, agents confronted Prioleau. At first, he denied his involvement. Gradually, he changed his story and began cooperating against the others.
In April 2006, Mohr recommended federal charges against more than a dozen people, including Prioleau, Wilson, their associates, the suspected ringleaders in Newark and people who had been arrested with the guns in New Jersey.
Federal prosecutors in Florida filed charges against Prioleau, Wilson and some of the associates who paid them for the guns.
Prioleau and Wilson both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make false statements to firearms dealers -- for filling out federal forms saying they were the actual buyers of the guns.
Because they cooperated, both received light sentences: a day behind bars, and probation -- Wilson got two years, Prioleau three. Prioleau was ordered to serve five months of it in home detention.
Three other suspects, including the two men with Newark connections, pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and were sentenced to between 18 months and 110 months in prison.
But the agents' suspicions about the Newark-based ringleaders remain just that. Nearly five years after Tobias' death, no one has been charged with actually smuggling the weapon that killed him. Nor have authorities determined how the other guns made it to Newark.
Most of the guns bought by the Florida ring remain unaccounted for.
"There are pieces we're still working on, and we're not going to stop working," Mohr said.
LETHAL LEGACY
Wali Wolfe pleaded guilty to reckless manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon in the incident that killed his cousin. In June 2003, he was sentenced to three years in state prison. He remains there today, because of repeated parole violations.
The rest of the family lives in a different house, in East Orange, where Greenhowe has banned even toy guns.
"We can't handle it," Greenhowe said. "No guns."
Mohr and the other agents always have new cases. In the past two months, members of the Firearms Task Force have traveled to Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Mississippi to investigate smugglers selling guns in Newark.
The job is getting harder, they say, because smugglers are getting smarter and buying guns in smaller quantities. New guns continue to show up.
"We'll stop them as soon as we can, but they will continue to show up on streets," McMahon said. "If someone traffics 20, 30, 40 guns today, some will still be showing up years from now. That's the thing about guns. They last forever."
Jonathan Schuppe may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 392-7960.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/118326493913550.xml&coll=1
Tracking the flow of illegal weapons into city takes law enforcement sleuths to Florida
Sunday, July 01, 2007
BY JONATHAN SCHUPPE
Star-Ledger Staff
The gun was a black Hi Point C9 semi-automatic, cheaper than an iPod and small enough to cram into a hip pocket.
Plastic and metal, it was made in Ohio, shipped to a Florida gun shop and, in the summer of 2002, landed in the hands of a jittery 17-year-old from Newark named Wali Wolfe.
As Wolfe walked with his cousin down a dark street late one August night, two men approached and Wolfe feared he was going to be robbed. He pulled the trigger, launching three 9 mm full-metal-jacket bullets at 1,200 feet a second.
But his cousin, Larry Tobias, accidentally stepped into the line of fire. One bullet ripped through Tobias' chest and out his back, knocking him to the pavement.
Wolfe ran home to hide the gun. Minutes later, his cousin lay bleeding in his mother's arms. "I'm cold, Mommy," Tobias said.
He died before the ambulance arrived.
The weapon's 1,100-mile passage from gun store to killing scene was the work of a small ring of smugglers who helped feed Newark's lucrative underground arms market. Exploiting Florida's lenient gun laws, they bought dozens of high-powered pistols to resell on the streets of New Jersey, home to some of the country's toughest firearm restrictions.
Federal agents and local police spent four years investigating the gun-running pipeline. No one questioned the importance of stopping the flow: In addition to the gun that killed Tobias, at least nine others turned up at Newark crime scenes. One was used to pistol-whip a worker in a bodega robbery; others were found on suspected drug dealers.
The smuggling operation shows what local authorities face as they battle a resurgence in gun violence. Murders last year in Newark rose to the highest level since 1990. Nonfatal shootings rose for the fourth straight year. And police recovered nearly 900 illegal guns in 2006, a record.
At the heart of this struggle is the insatiable demand for weapons in cities and an inexhaustible supply from Southern states like Florida, where it is relatively easy to buy them.
"That's the way firearms trafficking works," said William McMahon, the top agent in the New York metropolitan region for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Smugglers take the path of least resistance and make a profit of it. It's a straight path into urban neighborhoods."
Uncovering such rings requires a mix of streetwise detective work, meticulous record checks and a little luck. Even after four years, agents don't have all the answers about the network.
Their investigation, outlined in police reports, federal court documents and interviews, started with agents following the trail backward, from that deadly night in Newark to a day seven weeks earlier, when a man walked into a store in central Florida and asked to buy a bunch of cheap handguns.
START OF THE PIPELINE
The buyer was Jonathan Joseph Prioleau, who ran his own bail-bond business out of a dilapidated storefront in Lake Wales, about an hour due east of Tampa. He lived in a small ranch house off a dirt road that passed through the orange groves of Polk County.
Prioleau stood about 6-foot-2, weighed 220 pounds but had an unimposing demeanor. He was 28, favored T-shirts and jeans, and, it seemed to agents, didn't have much ambition.
In June 2002, court records show, Prioleau met two men looking for guns to sell in New Jersey. Neither man could legally buy arms in Florida so they offered to pay Prioleau to purchase the weapons for them. He agreed.
As a licensed bondsman, Prioleau had no legal restrictions. He had a permit to carry a firearm, could buy as many as he wanted and he was not subject to Florida's three-day waiting period.
Prioleau was what authorities call a "straw buyer," a person who legally purchases cheap guns for traffickers who resell the guns at steep markups in cities where they are illegal.
One major smuggling route, nicknamed the "Iron Pipeline," begins in the South and moves along Interstate 95, snaking past Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York City and Boston.
Estimating the size of the gun flow is difficult. Authorities know about only the guns they recover, and some of them are untraceable. And even when they successfully trace the guns, Congress restricts the ATF from releasing the information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency investigating a criminal case.
Frustrated by the violence, dozens of mayors, including Newark's Cory Booker, have banded together to lobby Congress to loosen the restrictions. The mayors say the law makes it harder for local police to track the flow of illegal guns into their cities.
But data alone will not stem the tide. By the time the guns reach their destinations, most have had their serial numbers filed down, obscuring the code authorities use to track them.
That's what happened to Prioleau's purchases.
He bought at least 50 guns, including several Hi Point C9s, for the smuggling ring. Manufactured by Hi Point Firearms of Dayton, Ohio, the pistol is compact, reliable and retails for about $150 -- reasons why cops call it "the Hyundai of guns."
On July 2, 2002, Prioleau walked into Guns Galore in Lakeland, Fla., and bought four guns, including a Hi Point C9 with a matte black finish, an eight-shot magazine and the serial number P114520 etched on its frame. It cost $141.95.
In the next few weeks, the gun arrived in New Jersey.
Investigators haven't determined exactly how, but say they have learned over the years that smugglers use common steps to avoid detection: Rent a nondescript car, preferably with a trunk. Hide the guns in a backpack or duffel bag in the trunk. Limit the stops and stick to the busiest highways, always following the speed limit and other traffic laws.
(Gun traffickers particularly like weekends around July 4, authorities say, when the roads are clogged and police busy.)
Some traffickers avoid driving altogether. Investigators recently arrested a Newark man as he was getting off a Greyhound Bus in Penn Station with two duffel bags full of guns, they said.
Other traffickers make mistakes that can't help but draw attention.
A few years ago, a group of smugglers arrived at a Georgia gun store in a car with New Jersey license plates. After he sold them a batch of weapons, the store owner, curious about the out-of-state plates, called authorities, who determined the car had been rented at Newark Liberty International Airport.
Investigators ultimately detained it at a New Jersery Turnpike toll plaza. In the trunk they found suitcases stuffed with a couple dozen guns, their serial numbers filed off.
Agents say the days of large conspicuous hauls are over: Most smugglers now try to keep their take small and easy to hide. The men who bought Prioleau's weapons, they suspect, delivered just a few at a time for resale on the street.
They believe that's how Wali Wolfe got his Hi Point C9 in August 2002.
AN IRON BOND
Wolfe and his cousin, Tobias, were somewhat typical of the victims -- and perpetrators -- of street violence in Newark. Both were black men who had dropped out of high school -- Wolfe from Shabazz, and Tobias from West Side. Tobias had an arrest record, for minor theft and drug charges.
Neither worked. Both had guns.
Like brothers, they grew up in the same house, went to the same grammar school, rode bikes together, played ball together.
"Wali looked up to Larry. Larry was his idol," their grandmother, Mattie Greenhowe, said.
They lived with extended family on North Ninth Street, where, on Aug. 22, 2002, they were playing cards past midnight when Wolfe announced that he needed cigarettes. Tobias got up, too.
"This boy can't go outside by himself. I'll go with him," Tobias said, according to Greenhowe.
On their way out the door, both young men grabbed their guns.
As they were walking back home along Roseville Avenue, Wolfe and Tobias saw two men get out of a car and approach them. Thinking they were about to get robbed, the cousins started running. Wolfe fired behind him, squeezing the trigger three times.
One bullet hit Tobias.
Wolfe dragged his bleeding cousin onto the porch of a nearby house. Then he ran home, bursting through the front door. It was after 2 a.m.
"Larry was shot," the boy shouted.
Later that night, after being questioned by police, Wolfe admitted he accidentally shot his cousin. Police charged him with murder.
With Wolfe's help, investigators found the gun in the basement and took it to the Newark Police Department's Ballistics Lab.
THE 9MM TRAIL
Housed in a one-room office on Arlington Street, the lab processes every gun, bullet and shell casing taken from Newark crime scenes -- about 15,000 pieces of evidence a year. Detectives there confirmed that the bullet that killed Tobias came from Wolfe's gun. They also used chemicals to lift the obliterated serial number, and logged it in a blue three-ring notebook labeled "Serial Number Restoration Book."
Three months later, in November 2002, ATF Special Agent Mike Mohr walked into the lab and asked for the binder.
Mohr had been working on a case against a Colorado arms smuggler and wanted to see if Newark police had seized any guns that could be traced to him.
A native of suburban Union County, Mohr had been a probation officer and a deputy U.S. marshal before joining the ATF in 1998.
He came to the lab with his partner, Newark Police Detective Daren Coley, assigned to the ATF's New Jersey Firearms Task Force. Together, they spent a day writing down hundreds of serial numbers going back two years, hoping to link some to the Colorado smuggler.
Back at his desk in West Paterson, Mohr entered the numbers into databases to reveal the buyer's name, and if the gun had been part of a bulk sale -- a telltale sign of gun trafficking.
The name of the Colorado trafficker came up just once. But a new name kept showing up: Jonathan Joseph Prioleau.
Mohr noticed something else troubling. Two Hi Point 9 mm pistols that Prioleau bought were seized in Newark less than 60 days after he bought them in Florida. The so-called "time to crime" is usually a lot longer, often a year or two.
One of the guns was recovered in a car occupied by suspected drug dealers.
The other was used to kill Larry Tobias.
GUNS AND MORE GUNS
Mohr and Coley started a formal investigation, but knew it was going to be difficult. Even when confronted with evidence, most straw buyers don't admit it.
They started by asking an ATF agent in Tampa to visit Guns Galore, the store where Prioleau bought lots of guns, including the two found in Newark. Employees remembered the bondsman coming into the store with two other men -- another sign of gun running.
As a criminal enterprise, gun trafficking is not like drug trafficking, where participants can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single shipment that will ultimately be consumed by customers. Gun runners rely on transporting a high volume of weapons that rarely disappear. That increases the risk of getting caught.
Most straw buyers earn only about $50 a gun, or do it for drugs. Traffickers who sell them on the streets make hundreds of dollars more.
Prioleau was still buying guns, so the agents hoped to catch him in the act. Mohr flew to Tampa to join the investigation on the ground. But because Prioleau didn't have to wait three days to buy his guns, there was no way of knowing which store he would visit next. Agents decided it would be a waste of time and resources to put a nonstop tail on Prioleau.
Mohr returned home empty-handed.
Back in Newark, more Prioleau-bought guns were turning up at crime scenes. One was a Hi Point C9 taken from a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding on South Orange Avenue in January 2003. Another was an Accutek AT380 that officers pulled from the waistband of a passenger in a car that ran a red light on 7th Avenue a few days later.
The following spring, Prioleau's buying spree suddenly stopped. Agents figured he heard that the ATF was asking about him.
Then Mohr got an unexpected break, news from a fellow agent in Florida: Another bondsman had started his own shopping spree. And his guns were turning up in Newark.
CAUGHT INSIDE THE RING
Based in Jacksonville, agent Mark Padget told Mohr that he had just nabbed a 43-year-old bondsman named John Joe Wilson for buying batches of guns for suspected traffickers. Investigators found receipts showing a trail to New Jersey. And when agents confronted Wilson, he admitted being a straw buyer.
In Padget's case file, Mohr found a surprising link: a statement from one witness who said some of the guns went to Prioleau.
Now it looked like agents had uncovered an organized ring that was buying scores of guns from both Tampa and Jacksonville and smuggling them to Newark.
"Holy cow," Mohr recalled thinking. "Now you're talking three different cities and God knows what else is going on. Now it's a larger conspiracy with double the amount of guns."
Mohr kept monitoring gun recoveries in Newark for guns linked to Prioleau and Wilson. One was used in a bodega robbery where members of the Crips street gang pistol-whipped a clerk. Others were recovered in more routine police operations, including traffic stops.
Working backward from those incidents, Mohr and the Florida agents started drawing links between the men and their accomplices.
Every gun tells a story," Mohr said. "These guns told us a story that we all tried to piece together."
After months of digging, agents confronted Prioleau. At first, he denied his involvement. Gradually, he changed his story and began cooperating against the others.
In April 2006, Mohr recommended federal charges against more than a dozen people, including Prioleau, Wilson, their associates, the suspected ringleaders in Newark and people who had been arrested with the guns in New Jersey.
Federal prosecutors in Florida filed charges against Prioleau, Wilson and some of the associates who paid them for the guns.
Prioleau and Wilson both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make false statements to firearms dealers -- for filling out federal forms saying they were the actual buyers of the guns.
Because they cooperated, both received light sentences: a day behind bars, and probation -- Wilson got two years, Prioleau three. Prioleau was ordered to serve five months of it in home detention.
Three other suspects, including the two men with Newark connections, pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and were sentenced to between 18 months and 110 months in prison.
But the agents' suspicions about the Newark-based ringleaders remain just that. Nearly five years after Tobias' death, no one has been charged with actually smuggling the weapon that killed him. Nor have authorities determined how the other guns made it to Newark.
Most of the guns bought by the Florida ring remain unaccounted for.
"There are pieces we're still working on, and we're not going to stop working," Mohr said.
LETHAL LEGACY
Wali Wolfe pleaded guilty to reckless manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon in the incident that killed his cousin. In June 2003, he was sentenced to three years in state prison. He remains there today, because of repeated parole violations.
The rest of the family lives in a different house, in East Orange, where Greenhowe has banned even toy guns.
"We can't handle it," Greenhowe said. "No guns."
Mohr and the other agents always have new cases. In the past two months, members of the Firearms Task Force have traveled to Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Mississippi to investigate smugglers selling guns in Newark.
The job is getting harder, they say, because smugglers are getting smarter and buying guns in smaller quantities. New guns continue to show up.
"We'll stop them as soon as we can, but they will continue to show up on streets," McMahon said. "If someone traffics 20, 30, 40 guns today, some will still be showing up years from now. That's the thing about guns. They last forever."
Jonathan Schuppe may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 392-7960.
Limeyfellow
Member
Not all of them. Various areas actually seen a substantial drop in crime and areas with large amounts of guns being quite violent. You can't really make a statement pro or against firearms with relationship to the amount of crime as there are dozens of other factors which are far more important, the number one being poverty. If guns were one of the major deciders if an area is polite and civil Iraq should be a shining example right now of the lack of crime and violence.
We still haven't seen the violent crime rates that plagued the US from the Mid 80s up until about 1991 when its been steadily going down across the union, especially in states like New York while being going up massively in states like Florida. Not much to do with guns either. More to do with poverty, education levels and the living conditions of people.
ConfuseUs
Member
Well NJ being the Soviet Union of the USA aside, where there is demand there is profit. Someone will supply that demand as a result. Of course, NJ attempting to shut off supply by legislative fiat just makes the profits higher than they would be other wise.
Apple a Day
Member
Couple of beefs:
From the original article it mentions that victims are being shot 40 and 45 times. So your problem is GANGS of goblins massing on someone or everybody standing around while some goblin shoots, reloads, shoots, reloads... Which is it?
From the second article:
I have a simple solution to the gun running problem. Give them all the Internet address of THR. Within three threads they will run into one telling everyone how awful Hi Point guns are and they will all go home to save up their pennies to buy Glocks. Of course, gangstas won't have the fiscal discipline to save up that much and the problem will be solved. Go THR!!!
From the original article it mentions that victims are being shot 40 and 45 times. So your problem is GANGS of goblins massing on someone or everybody standing around while some goblin shoots, reloads, shoots, reloads... Which is it?
From the second article:
I have a simple solution to the gun running problem. Give them all the Internet address of THR. Within three threads they will run into one telling everyone how awful Hi Point guns are and they will all go home to save up their pennies to buy Glocks. Of course, gangstas won't have the fiscal discipline to save up that much and the problem will be solved. Go THR!!!
Titan6
member
The only thing I can't figure is why they couldn't drive another 50 miles into NYC and sell them there. Thus causing a higher crime rate in NYC. Maybe guns have nothing to do with it? naahh couldn't be... could it?
As posted bt Limeyfellow
"We still haven't seen the violent crime rates that plagued the US from the Mid 80s up until about 1991 when its been steadily going down across the union, especially in states like New York while being going up massively in states like Florida. Not much to do with guns either. More to do with poverty, education levels and the living conditions of people."
Unfortunately this seems to be reversing again. As related to Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), after the violence peaked in the 90's, we saw a gradual reduction in violence as a causitive factor. We are now seeing a large increase across the country in violence as the cause for new SCI patients. This is from data taken from the 14 SCI Model Systems across the US. Just a little data point to consider.
Also it's not just Newark, crime is also up in Camden, Trenton, Atlantic City, and Paterson just to name a very few of the many
We are hoping to move from NJ to America within the next year.
"We still haven't seen the violent crime rates that plagued the US from the Mid 80s up until about 1991 when its been steadily going down across the union, especially in states like New York while being going up massively in states like Florida. Not much to do with guns either. More to do with poverty, education levels and the living conditions of people."
Unfortunately this seems to be reversing again. As related to Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), after the violence peaked in the 90's, we saw a gradual reduction in violence as a causitive factor. We are now seeing a large increase across the country in violence as the cause for new SCI patients. This is from data taken from the 14 SCI Model Systems across the US. Just a little data point to consider.
Also it's not just Newark, crime is also up in Camden, Trenton, Atlantic City, and Paterson just to name a very few of the many
We are hoping to move from NJ to America within the next year.
mike101
Member
The laws in NJ are so over-the-top now, the next steps are going to have to be a handgun ban, and then confiscation. They already have everything else covered, even .60 caliber flintlock muskets. The last person to commit a crime with one of those, was the guy who stole Paul Revere's horse.
And it still won't do a thing to reduce the crime rate.
And it still won't do a thing to reduce the crime rate.
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