Sheila Dixon "gets in on" illegal guns

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/lo...may03,0,5436271.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
From the Baltimore Sun

City targets guns

Mayor outlines initiative to cut back violence by reducing illegal firearms



By Annie Linskey
Sun reporter

May 3, 2007

Contending that Baltimore's struggle against violence needs to refocus on illegal guns, Mayor Sheila Dixon laid out yesterday a series of initiatives aimed at reducing the number of weapons on the city's streets.

"We're going to have to curb the violence in this city by going after these illegal guns," Dixon said. "I don't know how more plain and simple I can make it."

Surrounded by almost 300 sawed-off shotguns, revolvers and semiautomatic handguns seized in April, Dixon proposed re-forming a city police gun unit to trace illegal weapons back to the sellers; requiring city residents convicted of gun offenses to report their addresses to the police - much like the state's sex offender registry; and tracking data on gun arrests, convictions and sentences with a new program dubbed GunStat.

"We all know that the most serious criminals in Baltimore rely on illegal guns to intimidate and harm others," Dixon said.

Referring to the new gun offender registry - which would require approval from the City Council - Dixon said: "This is going to mean some extra work for our police. But we are all in this together."

Dixon insisted that her proposal would not target legal gun owners. "We're not saying that you can't own one," she said.

Ninety-three people have been killed in Baltimore this year - all but 13 from gunshot wounds. Nonfatal shootings have increased, from 176 in 2006 to 233 as of yesterday afternoon.

Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm pledged that the new plan will "help us stem this wave of violence that is in the city."

"We started off by going after people. We are going after these instruments that they use to commit violence in this city," he said.

As Hamm and Dixon spoke, hundreds of guns - some customized, some well-maintained and others rusty - were displayed on tables in the lobby of the downtown police headquarters. Crime lab technicians had propped rifles and shotguns against the walls. The collection included tiny pistols that could be concealed in a fist and a machine gun with a silencer.

The proposals drew immediate questions from the head of the city's police union, who has criticized understaffing of the department and wondered how much more work would now be handed to officers. "Where did they find the extra police sitting around?" Paul Blair asked. "Where are we going to find these people to do [the tracking]?"

Blair said the city police unit tasked with tracking down sex offenders is already short of officers.

About the new GunStat proposal, he said: "We have budget stat. Crime stat. City stat. How many stats do we need?"

"Somebody has to spend some time putting all of these 'stats' together," he said.

A spokeswoman for the National Rife Association did not return calls for comment on Dixon's plan.

City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell, who is running for mayor, declined to comment on the proposal but said he intends to unveil his own crime strategy soon.

Elements of the mayor's proposal will require changes to city and state laws. City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, who stood next to Dixon during yesterday's announcement, said that passing the gun registry legislation would be a "significant priority" for the council this year - though it was unclear yesterday what penalties might be imposed for violations.

Dixon said she will also lobby the state General Assembly to stiffen sentences for those who allow guns to enter the black market. At present, the offense is a misdemeanor that carries a five-year maximum prison sentence.

The city police identified six officers to staff the new gun squad, and Hamm said that he has a verbal commitment from the state police to move five troopers to city police headquarters to investigate cases against gun traffickers. The city's squad will be led by Sgt. Richard A. Willard, a 15-year veteran.

Building cases against gun stores or individuals who sell weapons to criminals is tricky and labor-intensive: Police typically have to witness illegal or improper sales.

"Do I have the manpower to do it? I do not," Hamm said. "When I bring a little bit to the table, and [other agencies bring] a little bit to the table, then I have much better control over that."

Frederick H. Bealefeld III, the deputy police commissioner, insisted that it's worthwhile to target the secondary gun market, despite the significant amount of police work that's required and the low penalties currently in place for convictions.

"Doggone right it is worth it," he said. "A huge number of guns are coming to Baltimore through the illegal secondary transfer."

He raised his voice: "There are people with legitimate jobs carrying on their lives, and they seem unaffected by fueling this violence in Baltimore."

Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the city state's attorney's office, said that her office has not received a secondary gun purchase case since the Police Department disbanded its gun unit about five years ago.

Police declined yesterday to estimate how many of the illegal guns seized in the city came from Maryland sources.

But Daniel Webster, who consulted on the mayor's plan and is a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said that 70 percent of the guns used in city crimes were sold by Maryland gun dealers in 2003, the last time that gun trace data were available.

Webster studied efforts to suppress black market gun sales in several Midwestern cities, including Chicago and Detroit. "After these enforcement initiatives were launched, the flow of new guns into the market declined substantially," he said.

The exception, he said, was Gary, Ind. "They didn't really target the dealers," he said. "They didn't do any prosecutions and get the message out. You have to do this with publicity."

Dixon also wants to create a new data-gathering tool called GunStat. "This will allow for better supervision of violent criminals. Illegal guns and the criminals who have them are a serious threat," she said.

Hamm said that the data likely will not be made public because it might compromise broader investigations against people and stores that have questionable sales practices.

Dixon said she does not expect that any of her proposals will require substantial additional city funding: "We're just going to be doing it a little smarter, a little better."

annie.linskey@baltsun.com

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Dixon insisted that her proposal would not target legal gun owners. "We're not saying that you can't own one," she said.

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Building cases against gun stores or individuals who sell weapons to criminals is tricky and labor-intensive: Police typically have to witness illegal or improper sales.

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Frederick H. Bealefeld III, the deputy police commissioner, insisted that it's worthwhile to target the secondary gun market, despite the significant amount of police work that's required and the low penalties currently in place for convictions.

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"Doggone right it is worth it," he said. "A huge number of guns are coming to Baltimore through the illegal secondary transfer."

He raised his voice: "There are people with legitimate jobs carrying on their lives, and they seem unaffected by fueling this violence in Baltimore."

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-ed.tiarht04may04,0,1471811.story
From the Baltimore Sun

Smoking gun




May 4, 2007

As Baltimore focuses greater resources on ridding the streets of illegal guns, it may find its effort stymied by a federal law that restricts release of gun tracing data. The provision makes it difficult for cities to identify trends and gun dealers who serve criminals, and it should be revised.
Named for its sponsor, Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt, the provision precludes the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from releasing sensitive data that trace the origin of a gun except as they apply to a particular crime in an ongoing investigation. Mayor Sheila Dixon has joined New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and 225 other mayors in opposing the law because they say it unfairly denies law enforcement officials critical data they could use to stem the flow of guns on city streets.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and Rep. C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who sit on appropriations committees in Congress that are reviewing the Tiahrt amendment, should take the lead in making the information more easily available so law enforcement can better track trends and gun dealers who are the source of criminals' guns.

Baltimore police, for example, can get information on a gun's origins from the ATF when they request it for a specific weapon that may have been used in a crime. But if investigators want to compare patterns of gun sales with surrounding states or even counties, ATF won't release the corresponding information. City police would have to request it from each jurisdiction, which can be needlessly time-consuming.

Amendment supporters say greater release of the data would compromise criminal investigations, and they argue that police get what they need when investigating specific crimes. But mayors or senators or researchers - policymakers, in other words - don't have access to the same, often critical, information. The true beneficiaries are gun dealers whose guns have been used in crimes, because that information can't be used in state attempts to revoke their licenses under this law.

In defending the agency's policy on trace data, the ATF's acting director, Michael J. Sullivan, wrote that "nothing prohibits ATF from releasing our own reports that analyze trace-data trends that could be used by law enforcement." But such reports aren't made public.

Too much information can be a dangerous thing, but not when it comes to guns used in crimes.



Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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Norton said:

So, how do we combat this ammendment? What is it that we can put into a letter to Mikulski and Ruppersberger that can justify our opposition?

We can't just hold our breath then scream, "because I don't like it". We know that it's bad whenever they get data, because they twist it, then get some talking head from Ceasefire or Johns Hopkins to give weight to it.

Trouble is that I don't know how we put to words our opposition to it.

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garber38 said:

From the Sun post from above:

But mayors or senators or researchers - policymakers, in other words - don't have access to the same, often critical, information. The true beneficiaries are gun dealers whose guns have been used in crimes, because that information can't be used in state attempts to revoke their licenses under this law.

Says it all right there that they are looking to take away gun dealer licenses in any way they can. Once the door is open to take away a bad dealer's license, then it's open season. Another dumb attempt instead of locking up known felons/criminals.

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