got an email from paper! (ooh, back on topic again!)
Queens DA revises release about powerful handgun
By:Stephen Stirling
07/21/2006
The Queens district attorneys office said Monday
a miscommunication was
to blame for inaccurate information it released
in a press release last
Thursday that was quoted in a TimesLedger story
on the newspapers Web
site Friday.
(newspeak for "the gunnies are on to me")
The DAs office issued the press release about the
July 19 arrest of
three Far Rockaway youths, who were allegedly
found in possession of a
bag of cocaine and a powerful handgun, the
Belgian-made Fabrique
Nationale (FN) 5.7. In the release, the DA said
that 425 of the 616
officers killed in the line of duty between 1994
and 2003 had been
killed with the FN 5.7.There was a
miscommunication between the officer
and the prosecutor of the case, said DA spokesman
Kevin Ryan. The
statement should have read that 425 officers were
killed with a
handgun, not with this handgun. The TimesLedger
story elicited a number
of e-mails and phone calls from Web readers
around the country who
questioned the DA s claim that the officers had
been killed by the FN
5.7. The DA said Monday that both the press
release and the criminal
complaint filed in Queens Criminal Court last
Thursday have
subsequently been changed to reflect the proper
information, but the
discovery of the gun in Far Rockaway was still a
concern.The FN 5.7 is
a lethal handgun imported from Belgium and
capable of easily
penetrating most police vets and plates, DA Brown
said in last weeks
release. While this is the first time that such a
deadly weapon has
been recovered in New York City, its presence is
troubling and makes
the job of street cops that much more dangerous.
The revised press
release retained Browns statement about the FN
5.7, which has only been
available on the commercial market since 2004.
The DAs original release
also raised questions about how powerful the
rounds fired by the FN 5.7
can be. A deposition given by Detective Marques
Stewart of the 100th
Precinct last Thursday said the FN 5.7 is
referred to as acop-killer
because it can be fired from up to 100 yards with
a great degree of
accuracy and because the bullet it fires travels
at more than 2,000
feet per second, making it capable of penetrating
most police vests and
plates. According a report issued by the company
that sells and markets
the handgun in the United States, FNH USA, the
only type of ammunition
compatible with the FN 5.7 sold for commercial
use in the United States
is the SS196 bullet, which was found to be
non-armor piercing by the
FBIs Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
in 2005. The Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms report said the SS196 had
been classified asnot
armor piercing ammunition under federal firearms
statutes. The FBI unit
report said the SS192 bullet, which also can be
fired by the FN 5.7,
did pierce level IIA kevlar vests, which are
widely used by police
officers in the United States. While FNH USA has
said that the SS192 is
no longer imported for commercial sale in the
United States, the Queens
DA was recently informed by FBI officials that
successful commercial
purchases of SS192 munitions were made by the
agency at a munitions
outlet in Virginia, Ryan said. FNH USA did not
immediately return calls
for comment. The controversy stems from a
court-authorized police raid
of the Far Rockaway home of William Davis, 21,
brother Clarence Davis,
18, and friend Gquan Lloyd, 18, on the morning of
July 19, Browns
office said. Police said they found a FN 5.7
handgun along with another
less-powerful handgun and a bag of cocaine. The
three Far Rockaway
residents, all of the Hammel Houses on 81-10
Rockaway Beach Blvd., were
arraigned last Thursday on charges of criminal
possession of a weapon
and a controlled substance at Queens Criminal
Court in Kew Gardens, the
DA said. If convicted, each could spend up to 15
years in prison.
