The New York Times-20080126-Judge Rules For the City In Gun Sting Of Dealers
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Judge Rules For the City In Gun Sting Of Dealers
A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Friday that the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not break the law in conducting sting operations meant to catch out-of-state gun dealers making illegal sales.
The ruling, by Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak of Federal District Court, followed lawsuits brought by the city against the dealers in the mayor's campaign against illegal gun trafficking.
In 2006, the city sent teams of private investigators to five states, where they posed as gun buyers. They focused on stores whose guns had been linked to more than 500 crimes in New York City from 1994 to 2001.
Administration officials charged that the investigators caught 27 dealerships allowing so-called straw purchases, in which one person submits to the required federal background check for a gun that is clearly to be used by someone else. The administration sued those dealerships, seeking monetary damages and the power to oversee future transactions. Fifteen of them agreed to the city's terms, while suits against the remaining 12 are going forward in the Brooklyn court.
In the discovery process, one set of defendants charged that the city had participated in fraud by directing investigators to buy firearms under false pretenses, but Judge Pollak disagreed, finding that no crime or fraud had taken place because the investigators had not bought the guns for other people.
Though the firearms were purchased as part of an investigation conducted by the city, the investigators retained possession of those firearms after the purchases, and no 'straw' sale took place because ownership was never transferred, she wrote.
