In other countries, law enforcement doesn't even routinely carry firearms, onlys special units do. Think what a difference there would be if abandoning our violent and anachronistic gun culture made that possible here. We could avoid crap like this from dirty cops. If we had fewer firearms, if we moved away from the fantasy of firearms and out mythologizing violence, and replaced those false notions with more objective reality and civilization, we could attain that alternative.
The gun culture is not the solution; it is part of the problem.
The gun culture is not the solution; it is part of the problem.
NYPD cop charged with stealing, selling guns from work
View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.
An NYPD officer has been arrested in connection with a months-long firearms trafficking investigation after he allegedly stole guns from his precinct to be sold on the street and arranged drug buys while on duty, authorities said.
Nicholas Mina was arrested late Thursday and charged with conspiracy, grand larceny and sale of a firearm, among other crimes. Information on an attorney wasn't immediately available. He and four co-conspirators who were also arrested were scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
Authorities say the group allegedly trafficked at least 10 guns over a two-month period. The alleged ringleader of the group, Ivan Chavez, is accused of procuring firearms from various sources and removing serial numbers before selling them, prosecutors said.
See the original report at NBCNewYork.com
Four additional firearms were recovered from his home when a search warrant was executed. Charges against him are pending and information on an attorney wasn't available.
Five of the firearms involved in the trafficking network allegedly came from Mina. The 31-year-old officer allegedly stole four of them from his colleagues' lockers at the Ninth Precinct station house in the East Village. The fifth was his own. Wiretaps of phones for Mina and Chavez reveal incriminating and explicit conversation about gun sales, the indictment says.
The district attorney's office says further charges, including drug conspiracy, are possible.
Also charged Friday were Meryl Lebowitz, 64, and Jennifer Sultan, 38. Lebowitz allegedly delivered guns and drugs for the ring. According to the indictment, she confessed to having picked up two guns that had been sold to Chavez and lived one floor below him. Investigators intercepted phone calls between the two, the indictment said.
The indictment alleges Sultan was a gun trafficker and that she had been communicating with Chavez about providing him guns. She and Chavez allegedly engaged in extensive, daily conversation about the guns, as well as providing and selling drugs, the indictment says.
There was no information on attorneys for either of the woman charged in the indictment.
Shimon Prokupecz is WNBC's investigative producer. Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent.
See the original report at NBCNewYork.com
Four additional firearms were recovered from his home when a search warrant was executed. Charges against him are pending and information on an attorney wasn't available.
Five of the firearms involved in the trafficking network allegedly came from Mina. The 31-year-old officer allegedly stole four of them from his colleagues' lockers at the Ninth Precinct station house in the East Village. The fifth was his own. Wiretaps of phones for Mina and Chavez reveal incriminating and explicit conversation about gun sales, the indictment says.
Law enforcement sources say one of the buyers was an undercover officer.
A six-year veteran of the force, Mina was part of a 24-hour security detail and had been assigned to guard the lockers after a series of thefts that included bulletproof vests, cash and an iPad along with the guns. One of the bulletproof vests Mina allegedly stole from a locker was recovered by authorities.
Mina was arrested following an investigation by the NYPD Firearms Suppression Unit, Internal Affairs Bureau and Manhattan District Attorney's office. He allegedly confessed to investigators that he stole the guns to support his drug habit.The district attorney's office says further charges, including drug conspiracy, are possible.
Also charged Friday were Meryl Lebowitz, 64, and Jennifer Sultan, 38. Lebowitz allegedly delivered guns and drugs for the ring. According to the indictment, she confessed to having picked up two guns that had been sold to Chavez and lived one floor below him. Investigators intercepted phone calls between the two, the indictment said.
The indictment alleges Sultan was a gun trafficker and that she had been communicating with Chavez about providing him guns. She and Chavez allegedly engaged in extensive, daily conversation about the guns, as well as providing and selling drugs, the indictment says.
There was no information on attorneys for either of the woman charged in the indictment.
Shimon Prokupecz is WNBC's investigative producer. Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent.
We must close the locker room loophole. New York is awash in gun violence because of it.
ReplyDeleteClose FWM; we need to make illegal gun sales and trafficking much less common.
DeleteLike in NYC where you are not allowed to have a gun without the city's permission? Where you can only keep it at home and not carry it? Where you must first apply for a license that the police has the discretion to issue after 6 months or more waiting? Where once you receive your license you are not allowed to buy or sell a gun without first applying for permission? Where you are not permitted to transport a gun from the city except under very narrow criteria?
DeleteSo please tell us. What would you change in NYC gun laws so a police officer wouldn't break those laws?
There is probably not very many better examples of gun control epic FAIL than this story.
NYC has approximately 30,000 uniformed/plainclothes police officers. Of that number a few have been indicted for "gun running". Apparently the law works fairly well.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. has approximately 80,000,000 gun owners. Of that number a few have been indicted for "gun running". Apparently the law works fairly well.
ReplyDeleteThere, fixed it for you.
The stats are estimates and guesses, not facts.
DeleteOf that number, we have no firm data on how many are LAWFUL owners and how many are law breaking owners. For example we have the gamut from totally illegal, like those who are completely outside legal ownership, like those who are current felons; and then we have the chronic unlawful individual who are still somehow able to own guns, like Ted Nugent a chronic serial law breaker.
Just because we are deficient in successfully prosecuting gun runners, does not by any stretch suggest our laws are woring well. It suggests strongly the opposite.
Your thinking is deficient and badly flawed, FWM. I guess you're not one of those over-achieving astronaut types?
DG - why is your arguement only addressed to FWM when he basically made the exact same arguement that Democommie made?
DeleteI made the same argument to both FWM and was in agreement with democommie; there is no inconsistency.
DeleteFWM made the argument more recently, so I responded to him more here because of his timing.
Do you have an actual disputation of anything I wrote?
I don't think you do, so what is your point?
Not really, FWM uses a false analogy to refute Demo. The false analogy is analogical inference which involves noting the shared properties of two or more things, and from this basis inferring that they also share some further property. The structure or form may be generalized like so:
DeleteP and Q are similar in respect to properties a, b, and c.
Object P has been observed to have further property x.
Therefore, Q probably has property x also.
Several factors affect the strength of the argument from analogy:
The relevance of the known similarities to the similarity inferred in the conclusion.
The amount and variety of the examples in the analogy.
The number of characteristics that the things being compared share.'
An argument from analogy is weakened if it is inadequate in any of the above respects. The term "false analogy" comes from the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was one of the first individuals to engage in a detailed examination of analogical reasoning. One of Mill's examples involved an inference that some person is lazy from the observation that his or her sibling is lazy. According to Mill, sharing parents is not all that relevant to the property of laziness.[
In this case, FWM is saying that gun owners are similar to police officers.
We can also take it further that there is no accurate census of gun owner in the US due to people like FWM precluding such an accurate assessment of gun ownership, legal or illegal, in the US.
Unless there is some form of registration, or other mechanism for tracking gun ownership, any comment about the amount and characteristic of gun owners is purely speculative.
Additionally, we know that gun running and other illegal sale occur, unless you want to say that black market guns appear magickly.
Illegal firearms in the US usually start out as legal commodities, yet somehow mysteriously appear in the hands of criminals.
The progun side fails to address the reason for this mysterious metamorphoses while the "gun control" side offers reasons and method by which this metamorphoses occurs and can be addressed.
the progun side just acts dumb about it all.
"The U.S. has approximately 80,000,000 gun owners. Of that number a few have been indicted for "gun running". Apparently the law works fairly well."
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I was not under the impression that teh gunzloonz selling gunz as "private individuals" or "collectors" had been declared illegal. Boy, that would be nice; so, you're advocating for illegalizing straw purchases of teh gunz by folks who then will resell them to criminulz? Waykool, dude, thanks for your support.
"DG - why is your arguement only addressed to FWM when he basically made the exact same arguement that Democommie made?"
Do you know the difference between a mosquito and a gunzloon? The whining of mosquitoes ceases after the first frost.
All of this about analogies and false analogies and what-not serves only as a distraction from the real fact that this is a story of gun control epic fail.
ReplyDeleteFWM, you only say that because you fail to understand the difference between a valid analogy and a false analogy.
DeleteThat is your fail.
The other epic, massive fail is the gun culture, not gun control.
So, other than a handful of cities, the United States has never actually implemented any significant form of "gun control". Not having a uniform system of gun control defeated any attempt to implement gun control.
DeleteIt won;t work if one place has strict laws while the next jurisdicti0n has no laws preventing the transport into the stricter region.
You may as well have just handed out firearms to criminals under the US system.
Oh, you do.
In this case, every gun owner was registered like MikeB wants. Every gun involved was not only registered, but was, in fact, owned by the government. All guns were required to be locked up.
DeleteIn the surrounding jurisdiction, all potential gun owners must first become registered with the state and obtain the state's permission to be registered. The police have total discretion in issuing the required permit. After police permission, exorbitant fees and 6 or more months wait, then the permit is issued. Only then can you touch a gun and begin looking for one to buy. Once you have selected one, you must beg the city's permission to buy it and pay more fees. Should you decide to sell it, you again must seek the city's blessing. All of this is just so that you may keep one in the home. An actual carry license requires political connection and demonstrating wealth and need.
Yet still this happens. And why? Because there was a criminal and criminals cannot be counted on to obey the law, because they are criminals and that is what criminals do by definition--not obey the law.
Now under MikeB's one shot your out and shared responsibility laws, all cops that had their guns stolen should lose their gun rights along with their jobs.
GUN CONTROL FAIL.
Well, if the problem is that criminals don't respect laws and this regime didn't work this time--that the entire system should be scrapped?
DeleteThat's Bullshit.
This investigation took four months to complete, which is far less time than a federal one does.
But, the investigators had a source where they could trace the guns to and were able to actually arrest the perps and stop the flow.
Unlike sales by private citizens to criminals which are nigh impossible to prosecute.
Lack of gun control is even more of a fail due to the haemorrage of guns onto the black market by sources other than cops.
Actually, FWM, there is a place where gun control works in the US--NFA firearms--how many legal machineguns have ended up in the hands of criminals?
DeleteYou going to tell me that system doesn't work?
Kinda like medicaid needs to be open to everybody, the NFA regime should be on ALL firearms. I betcha that would cut down fireamrs getting into the hands of criminals quite significantly.
If we had fewer guns, we would have fewer gun crimes, less gun violence, and a lot less costs, both in money and in human life and misery.
ReplyDeleteWe wouldn't need so many cops armed at all time either - as is the case in countries with more rigorous limitations on firearms.
It is the gun culture that has the massive, horrific, and very very bloody FAIL, not gun control.
More guns, more problems; fewer guns, fewer problems. That has been consistently the pattern wherever there are fewer firearms generally.
People are flawed, and people - contrary to how they would like to be - act emotionally far more often than they act rationally.
From what we have seen here, too few of our pro-gunners are either sufficiently educated to be good clear critical thinkers or even remotely analytical. If a reliance on rational thought to determine action is one's premise then clearly the gun culture is a failure, not a success.
Why doesn't it occur to the pro-gunners that if they are correct in their assertions, the NRA should NOT be doing everything humanly possible to prevent accurate central record keeping of gun information?
ReplyDeleteThat is true for a wide range of kinds of record keeping, from the CDC and state and federal public health records about deaths and injuries to microstamping.
That fear and resistance to record keeping is entirely driven by a fear of what accurate stats would show about our gun culture failure.
I mean look at places with similar gun ownerhship levels to the US, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan...
ReplyDeleteThey are all such safe places to live.
That fear and resistance to record keeping is entirely driven by a fear of what accurate stats would show about our gun culture failure.
The problem is that failure to have accurate statistics about firearms in the US has totally skewed the debate regarding gun control. No one really has a grasp of how many firearms are in the hands of legal or illegal owners.
FWM gives the usual, well criminals will do it anyway, so why should we bother taking any steps to prevent it? Seriously, why have locks on your door? Why take the key from your car?
That's a really sad comment, FWM, the criminals are winning--so, let's toss in the towel!