8A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2013
ATF makes some show arrests By GUILLERMO CONTRERAS AND DAN FREEDMAN HEARST NEWSPAPERS
SAN ANTONIO — ATF agents here knew Harmon Chester Strunk Jr. as a “gun-show groupie” who bought hundreds of guns at bargain prices from elderly people and sold them for a handsome profit. His favorite sales outlets were newspaper classified ads and ubiquitous gun shows, where private sellers displaying tables full of weaponry bump up against federally licensed dealers to feed the Lone Star state’s seemingly insatiable appetite for guns. Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tracked Strunk’s buying and selling and found out he wasn’t particular about his customers. Federal law prohibits sales to convicted criminals, but agents learned that youthful gang members — “gang-bangers” — actually sought Strunk out. Agents sent in a convicted felon to buy from Strunk as part of an undercover sting. They arrested Strunk soon thereafter on charges of selling a weapon to a felon and selling without a license. Appearing before U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in February where he received a 10-year-sentence, Strunk, 59, an Army veteran, insisted he did nothing illegal. In the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., massacre, the focus on gun shows mostly concerns the effort by gun-control advocates to close the “gun show loophole” — the fact that unlike sales by federally licensed dealers, private transactions at shows and elsewhere do not require background checks. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote approved a universal background check measure by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. But what stands out about the Strunk case is not the background-check issue, but rather that the ATF — the gun lobby’s perennial whipping boy — pursued it at all, given the political firestorm that erupted on Capitol Hill over previous gun-show investigations. ATF got its knuckles rapped by a Republican-dominated House Judiciary subcommittee in 2006 when a gun show promoter, two gun sellers and a private investigator hired by the National Rifle Association accused agents of unduly harassing patrons at gun shows in Richmond, Va. Lawmakers and witnesses said agents intimidated patrons, targeted women and minorities as “straw purchasers” — who illegally buy guns on behalf of others — and were overzealous in checking gun buyers’ addresses for possible ATF paperwork violations.
Suit tests blog rights By MARY CLARE JALONICK ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Rick Bowmer | AP
Ken Halterman, holds an AK-47 with a 75-round clip during a gun show on March 3, in Sandy, Utah. The focus on shows mostly concerns the effort by gun-control advocates to regulate private transactions, which do not require background checks. Michael Bouchard, then ATF assistant director in charge of field operations, acknowledged that some of the agents’ investigative techniques at eight gun shows in Richmond in 2004 and 2005 were not “consistent with ATF’s best practices.” But he insisted the investigations were justified by the fact that more than 400 guns sold at Richmond gun shows between 2002 and 2005 were connected to criminal activity. The gun-show operations “reduced violent crime and made the streets of Virginia and America safer,” Bouchard told lawmakers. A 2007 Justice Department Inspector General’s report exonerated ATF and concluded that the agency’s 202 gun-show-related operations nationwide over the previous three years were based on “intelligence from a variety of sources indicating that illegal activity was occurring or was about to occur at a specific gun show.” The 202 investigations represented 3.3 percent of the estimated 6,000 gun shows held during this period, the IG report concluded. The report found that 11 of the operations were conducted by ATF’s Houston division (which also has field offices in San Antonio, Beaumont and Laredo). Several of those were in the Rio Grande Valley, targeting gun-show purchases intended for Mexican drug cartels across the border. The operations netted ATF Houston division agents 17 convictions and 196 weapon seizures between 2004 and 2006, the report concluded. Six gun-show operations were conducted by the San Francisco
House group eyes immigrant legislation By ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of House members working in secret on a comprehensive immigration bill is nearing completion and has met with party leaders to brief them, aides said Friday. A spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner said that Boehner had a good talk Friday with Republicans in the group and that the lawmakers have made real progress. The group’s four Democrats met Thursday with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Pelosi’s spokesman said she’s optimistic about the prospects for reform. The group had hoped to release their bill around the time of the State of the Union last month, but now an aide says they will aim for early April, once Congress returns from a two-week recess. That’s the same timeline that a negotiating group in the Senate is on. The Senate group has gotten more attention because House GOP leaders are expected to wait to see what if anything the Senate passes on immigration before taking any action on the issue. A sweeping immigration bill is a tougher lift in the Republican-controlled House because of the conservatives who dominate the Republican conference, and members of the House immigration group have been struggling to write a bill that can have broad appeal. It remains unclear how they will handle a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.
division. The New York and Boston divisions, which cover all of New York and New England, did none. ATF issued a “reminder” to agents on gun-show etiquette early in 2006, but agents still had a green light to investigate suspects involved in gun shows. Even so, a subtle message ricocheted through ATF to avoid gunshow-related probes of non-specific illegal activity, according to two former agents. “It was never formalized, but any time one of your peers is dragged before Congress, and there’s an inspector general report, you get the feeling that it would just hurt your career,” said David Chipman, who retired last year after 25 years in ATF and now serves as a consultant for Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “The lesson is there’s no big reward if it goes well compared to the downside risk.” Although the vast majority of gun shows attract ordinary firearms enthusiasts who enjoy exchanges with those who share a common interest, they also are junctures for guns that end up in criminal hands. An ATF spokeswoman said the agency pursues all leads, even those that point to gun shows. “We always try to stay ahead of trafficking schemes while respecting the individual rights of citizens to bear arms,” said the spokeswoman, Ginger Colbrun. ATF now requires all its field offices to man booths at two or more gun shows a year, Colbrun said. The aim is to educate licensed firearms dealers, private sellers and patrons on federal gun stat-
utes and licensing requirements. Among other things, agents stress the legal distinction between licensed sellers, who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms for profit, and private sellers who engage in “occasional sales” from a “personal collection” or as a “hobby.” A private individual — someone like Strunk — who derives a substantial portion of his income through gun sales without a license is subject to prosecution. In San Antonio since 2008, only two show-related ATF investigations have resulted in prosecutions. In addition to Strunk, agents arrested Celerino ”Cele” Castillo III of Pharr, Texas, in 2008 for using a straw purchaser he met at a gun show in San Antonio to buy firearms that he resold. Castillo, 63, a decorated Vietnam veteran and former Edinburg police officer, worked for 12 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration. Of 32 guns he obtained and resold, 23 were FN Five-seveN pistols known in Mexico as ”matapolicias” or ”cop killers,” because they can fire armor-piercing ammo. Prosecutors alleged Castillo provided them to others who smuggled the weapons to cartels. In an interview, Castillo disputed most of the accusations. “I made a major mistake, and I have great remorse for this,” Castillo said. “I did it to supplement my income, and ... I am paying the price for it.” He said he simply followed the practice of other sellers at gun shows he attended. He served 37 months in prison.
State’s prisons install cell-blocking gear By MICHAEL GRACZYK ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEAUMONT — The nation’s largest state prison system is turning to electronic weaponry to combat the persistent headache of illegal cellphones smuggled to inmates. Final testing starts next week at the first of two Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons where equipment has been installed to block calls to and from unauthorized phones. The equipment, known as a managed access system, also diverts text messages, emails and Internet log-in attempts from contraband phones. It should be in full operation at the Stiles Unit outside Beaumont and the McConnell Unit near Beeville next month. The two prisons together hold some 5,000 inmates and historically have been the worst of the more than 100 Texas prisons when it comes to cellphone smuggling. The goal is to make cellphones useless, or at least not worth the risk of extended prison time or reduced privileges, said Michael Roesler, senior warden at the Stiles Unit. “If the cellphone becomes the proverbial paperweight, the reward of taking a chance of losing their good time, their status, their class, their parole possibility, is too great a risk for them to hang on to,” he said. Contraband phones have been a problem in prisons around the country. Prison administrators consider them security threats, used by inmates to plan and coordinate escapes, run illicit businesses and threaten and harass crime victims or authorities. In South Carolina, a correc-
ROESLER
tions officer in charge of keeping contraband out of the prison where he worked was shot at his home in 2010 in a plan devised by inmates using smug-
gled phones. Five years ago in Texas, a death row inmate made threatening calls to a state senator, prompting an unprecedented governor-ordered lockdown of the entire 150,000-inmate prison system to sweep for contraband. Late last month, several gang members at the McConnell Unit were arrested after trying to sell stolen vehicles to Mexican drug cartel members in a scheme coordinated with illegal phones. The investigation also netted 17 former corrections officers accused of selling phones and drugs to prisoners. Overall, Texas corrections authorities seized 630 cellphones from inmates in 2011 and 738 last year, including 110 from Stiles. “It’s something we take very seriously,” said Tommy Prasifka, deputy director of the agency’s institutional division. “We’ve worked very hard to come up with ideas, constantly looking at better ways, whether it’s technology or utilizing searches and shakedowns.” In California, where nearly 120,000 inmates make it the second-largest state prison population behind Texas, a managed access system went into use in November at the Avenal State Prison. Nearly 4,800 unique devices and 1.13 million communication attempts were detected in the first month, said Dana Si-
mas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “We’ve had so many incidents related to inmates with cellphones, from organizing criminal gang activities, harassing victims,” Simas said. “Those kinds of serious incidents can occur when someone has a cellphone that can’t be monitored by us.” Charles Manson, arguably the state’s most notorious inmate, has been caught at least twice with phones. Texas officials say they have had less of a problem than California in part because California, blaming cost considerations, does not subject employees entering prisons to metal detector searches. It’s not clear why Stiles and McConnell have more contraband cellphones than others, Texas officials said, although they noted the prisons also have more disciplinary problems among inmates. “I think a lot of it depends on location of the facility, plus the type of offender,” Prasifka said. The managed access systems that are being installed won’t interfere with 911 calls. The “brain” of the new system, locked in a closet a few steps from the warden’s office, consists of two electronic boxes a bit bigger than two large microwave ovens, filled with blinking lights and wires and a couple of rows of boxes that resemble CD cases. The apparatus connects with a similar single box of electronics in the individual prison buildings. Those boxes receive signals from unobtrusive, plastic squares mounted in the buildings.
WASHINGTON — A colleague of the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart is asking a federal court of appeals to throw out a defamation case brought against him by former government employee Shirley Sherrod, saying the lawsuit violates the blogger’s right to freeBREITBART dom of speech. Sherrod was ousted from her job as an Agriculture Department rural development official in 2010 after Breitbart posted an edited video of Sherrod, who is black, supposedly making racist remarks. She sued Breitbart, his employee Larry O’Connor and an unnamed defendant for defamation and emotional distress after USDA officials asked her to resign and the video ignited a racial firestorm. Sherrod’s lawyers say the unnamed defendant is the person whom they believe passed the video on to Breitbart. Breitbart died unexpectedly a year ago, and his status in the case is unclear as his family does not appear to have notified the court of an estate that can be sued. The case argued before the court of appeals Friday is one of the first high-profile federal lawsuits to test the freedom of speech rights of bloggers. Backed by large news organizations including the New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. and Dow Jones & Company, Inc., who have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, O’Connor’s lawyers argued to have the case dismissed under a District of Columbia statute that aims to prevent the silencing of critics through lawsuits. A federal district court judge rejected their motion to dismiss, citing jurisdictional issues, prompting the appeal. The lawyers told the court of appeals that O’Connor and Breitbart, before he died, stood by the content, saying the blog post was opinion. “What happened here is what happens in journalism every day,” said Bruce Brown, a lawyer for O’Connor. Sherrod’s lawyers disagree and say dismissal under the District of Columbia statute would violate their right to a trial. The video on Breitbart’s website turned out to be edited, and when Sherrod’s full speech to an NAACP group earlier that year came to light, it became clear that her remarks about an initial reluctance to help a white farmer decades ago were not racist but an attempt at telling a story of racial reconciliation. Once that was obvious, Sherrod received public apologies from the administration — even from President Barack Obama himself — and an offer to return to the Agriculture Department, which she declined. Sherrod’s 2011 lawsuit says the incident affected her sleep and caused her back pain. It contends that she was damaged by having her “integrity, impartiality and motivations questioned, making it difficult (if not impossible) for her to continue her life’s work assisting poor farmers in rural areas” even though she was invited to return to the department. The video was posted amid friction between the NAACP and the tea party movement, each of which were accusing the other of having racist elements among their ranks. Breitbart said at the time the video showed the NAACP condoning racist comments from a government official.