Bloomberg, City Stall on Releasing Evidence Regarding Illegal Guns

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More than three months after Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement that he had sent private investigators into five states to catch gun dealers making illegal sales, he is refusing to turn over the evidence they’ve gathered to the federal agency that investigates illegal guns.

Analysts said the impasse may have slowed the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in its investigation of and possible action against gun dealers that broke the law.

The city won’t turn over the evidence, which includes videotapes of gun dealers allowing so-called straw purchases of guns, until the ATF signs an evidence-sharing agreement that would prohibit the agency from “publicly disclosing evidence without notice and consent from the city,” the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said.

The inability of the two sides to come to an agreement is due in part to what the ATF perceived as the mayor’s infringement on its jurisdiction, analysts and law enforcement sources said.

At a May press conference announcing the sting operations, Mr. Bloomberg criticized the agency, saying it was “asleep at the switch” when it comes to stemming the flow of illegal guns to the city. Soon after, the ATF, which says it was given no prior information about the private investigations, announced it would be looking into not only the dealers the mayor alleged were illegally selling guns, but the mayor’s investigators as well.

The city did give the ATF two videotapes immediately after the announcement. Mr. Feinblatt complained that the ATF had yet to get back to the city with its analysis of the tapes.

If a gun dealer realizes a gun is not for the person who is buying it — for example, if a second party starts asking questions about the gun or trying to touch it — it is required to stop the sale immediately. The city is using what Mr. Feinblatt said was “innovative prosecution” to shut down crooked gun dealers with civil lawsuits.

Because the investigators are private citizens, they would have broken the law if they actually made straw purchases or intentionally filled in incorrect information on the gun licensing forms. Also, some states have stringent rules about hidden video equipment. Law enforcement sources said it is unlikely the investigators would be prosecuted, but that the ATF was sending City Hall a message to stay off its turf.

A special agent with the ATF in New York, Joseph Green, said in a statement: “We have been in contact and working with the city and are awaiting all of the information they gathered so that we can evaluate it’s content and, where necessary, forward the findings to the appropriate ATF and U.S. Attorney’s Offices.”

Mr. Green refused to say whether the ATF was investigating any of the gun dealers targeted by the mayor because it doesn’t comment on open investigations.

“Why would they have to sign some kind of agreement with the mayor of a locality?” a Second Amendment lawyer in Virginia, Steven Halbrook, said. “The feds don’t have to sign an agreement if there’s evidence of criminality. … It demonstrates that Mayor Bloomberg lacks sincerity in this so-called crusade, because if he believes crimes have been committed, he would want them to take federal enforcement action.”

Experts said an information sharing agreement is unnecessary because the ATF, like all law enforcement agencies, does not publicly disclose evidence about open investigations.

“Law enforcement rarely discloses anything,” a criminal law professor at New York University, James Jacobs, said. “The mayor is showing a kind of unprecedented vigor in promoting the interests of the city … but the inability to work with a federal agency seems disappointing. ATF has the legal responsibility for regulating this system and for investigating and even taking away the licenses of irresponsible federally licensed firearm dealers.”

Spurred in part by the deaths of two police officers late last year and early this year, the mayor launched an ambitious campaign against illegal guns. Aside from the sting operations conducted by the James Mintz Group, he has testified in Washington, D.C., and held a summit of mayors to address the issue.

The impasse between City Hall and the ATF is nothing new in the history of the city’s battle against illegal guns, the executive director of the Second Amendment Research Center at Ohio State University, Saul Cornell, said. DeWitt Clinton, the mayor of New York between 1803 and 1815 and governor between 1817 and 1823, grappled with the same issue, he said.

“Basically, since handguns became a serious part of the commercial market Americans have been trying to deal with consequences,” he said. “It’s amazing that the mayors of New York are dealing with the same problem. I think it’s kind of sad.”

“We are hopeful that they will modify their position so that we can provide them with the balance of the evidence,” Mr. Feinblatt said.

“My sense is if it was up to the local ATF and the mayor’s office, it would have been done,” Mr. Cornell said. “I would suspect that there’s something happening in Washington to create a political rift between the mayor and the ATF.”


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