Leftist paper attacks gun law -- Final End

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Date Posted: 00:13:20 08/09/02 Fri
Author: Drummond
Subject: Leftist paper attacks gun law

From www.sfbg.com

Gun law gone bad
Michael Frattini allegedly pistol-whipped a man outside a Tenderloin restaurant; he spent one night in jail. His friend Willie Beasley took the gun away and threw it in the street; he's going to prison for almost four years. The Operation Triggerlock story.

By Gabrielle Banks
JUST BEFORE LUNCHTIME on May 20, 2001, the manager of Original Joe's in the Tenderloin called 911 to report that a fight had broken out on the street outside his restaurant. His customers were panicking because they had seen one of the guys pull out a gun and start waving it in the air.

On the other side of the plate-glass window, Willie Beasley spotted this gun at close range. Beasley and several of his friends from Bayview-Hunters Point had come to the T.L. to track down the man who had robbed their friend earlier that day. They confronted him, tempers rose, and a one-on-one fistfight escalated into a brawl, which Beasley joined. Nonetheless, Beasley later testified that he was genuinely surprised when his buddy, Michael Frattini, drew a gun and began to pistol-whip the alleged robber, Eugene Walls. Frattini later told the booking officer, "I don't know what the hell Beaz was thinking, but he took [the gun] from me."

Unfortunately for Beasley � who had prior felony convictions � it was then that a patrol unit rolled up. Beasley bolted off, with a police officer at his heels. He tried to ditch the weapon under a parked car, but the telltale metal-to-asphalt clanking caught the officer's attention.

Although Frattini's gun was not loaded, Beasley was arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted of illegal possession of a firearm � a federal offense.

Five years ago the San Francisco district attorney would probably have let Beasley off on probation. Now, under a national program called Operation Triggerlock (which was introduced a decade ago and made more stringent in recent years), the San Francisco Police Department often bypasses the District Attorney's Office altogether and delivers defendants like Beasley � who meet certain criteria � straight to the feds. "We're seeing a marked increase in the number of state cases going federal," public defender-elect Jeff Adachi says. "In the past it was fairly infrequent; it was an extraordinary thing to see. I'd venture to say the number of cases has gone up 200 to 300 percent over the last two or three years."

The reason? For police officers it's simply a better return on their investment. Officer Shaughn Ryan of the Crime Suppression Unit puts it plainly: "San Francisco, regardless of [District Attorney Terence] Hallinan, is an inherently hard place to prosecute crime." Hallinan has become a hallowed figure in pot-legalization circles because of his maverick refusal to criminalize certain drug offenses. San Francisco juries are notoriously lenient, and judges have a great deal of flexibility in crafting sentences. So rather than gamble on lighter rulings in the state courts, the SFPD invests its efforts in the U.S. District Court, where judges are bound by strict federal sentencing guidelines. Essentially, a plan crafted by both liberals and conservatives to get guns off the street has become a heavy-handed tool to dole out sentences for small crimes, creating an ironic situation: a person with no malicious intentions found holding a gun is likely to spend more time behind bars than a violent felon caught without one.

"For the exact same crime, felon in possession, you could be sentenced to 18 months in state court or 15 years federally," assistant federal public defender John Paul Reichmuth says. "It's fascinating. There are two justice systems in the same town, and they provide wildly different results."

Sergeant Inspector Steve Murphy, who has filed charges for years on behalf of the SFPD, concurs. "In the last two years, we averaged about 70 Triggerlock cases a year. Our conviction rate is pretty high, and the sentences are a lot longer. We just gave a guy 20 years the other day for a gun and a little bit of dope."

"In your run-of-the-mill felon-in-possession case, there's almost never an allegation that the person did something terrible with the gun," says Shawn Halbert, the assistant federal public defender representing Beasley.

Triggerlock programs around the nation (with names like Project Achilles and Project Exile) enjoy the support of both the gun lobby and gun-control groups because they are designed to "identify and incapacitate" the most dangerous violent criminals in a community. Though that wording, from the U.S. Attorney General's Office, is a bit detached, few would oppose those objectives. Lefties loathe guns; conservatives hate criminals. No one is likely to mobilize a lobby group for the Willie Beasleys of the world.

In San Francisco, a progressive city whose district attorney pledges treatment in lieu of punishment, felons may end up doing more hard time than those in cities where D.A.s and judges clamp down tight on crime.

From a crime-fighting perspective, the partnership between the SFPD and the U.S. Attorney's Office appears to have had mixed results. In 2000, for every federal weapons conviction in the southern California district (including Los Angeles), there were two convictions in the northern Illinois district (including Chicago) and more than six convictions in the northern California one. Since last year the homicide rate in the Tenderloin has tripled.

Because of San Francisco's diverse populace and quirky politics, the city's program offers an interesting look at urban gun-law enforcement. Has Triggerlock strayed from its stated goals? Does the program eliminate neighborhood kingpins, or is it incarcerating the bit players on technicalities? Are there fewer guns? Is the city safer? And perhaps the most challenging question for the peacemongers among us: What is the real fallout of strict gun-law enforcement?

Guns, outlaws, and gun laws
The earliest federal laws regulating the possession of firearms were so stringent they would get laughed off the floor of the Senate today. Propelled by the surge of gangland violence during Prohibition, these laws established strict regulation of interstate and foreign commerce, mandatory background checks, and waiting periods of up to six months for gun purchases.

Present gun laws were crafted in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations, as crime rates began to soar and handguns became increasingly commonplace nationally. Lee Harvey Oswald mail-ordered the gun he used to shoot President John F. Kennedy, and the resulting landslide of public opinion ensured the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which prohibited the interstate sale of handguns, rifles, and shotguns except through federally licensed dealers. Recreational and "self-defense" gun proponents banded together in the National Rifle Association to brace themselves against further restrictions, and a generation of legislative wrangling between pro-gun and anti-gun camps began.

President George Bush introduced Operation Triggerlock in 1991, partly in response to the liberal argument that restricting gun sales would stop crime. The idea was to nab the crooks and leave the god-fearing, law-abiding gun aficionados alone. Triggerlock, and its bigger and badder progeny, Triggerlock II, gave neighborhood police officers a mandate to join forces with district attorneys, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the U.S. Attorney's Office to go after repeat offenders. Plain old gun possession cases still fell under the jurisdiction of district attorneys. But if a "prohibited person" (specifically, anyone with a prior felony conviction for drug possession or violence) "knowingly possessed" a firearm � and one that at sometime in its existence had crossed state lines � the case qualified for federal prosecution.

"A gun could be manufactured in 1930 and have been in California for 70 years, and it's still considered a federal crime," Halbert, Beasley's attorney, says. In reality, few Triggerlock defendants are trafficking weapons, but this doesn't prevent federal prosecutors from cashing in on the interstate commerce loophole.

"These guys have no clue the gun law even exists," explains Theresa Coleman, a housing advocate and longtime Hunters Point resident. As luck would have it, on that morning in front of Original Joe's, Michael Frattini whipped out a Nazi-era pistol manufactured in Czechoslovakia. Beasley's case qualified for Triggerlock prosecution.

Both the gun lobby and gun-control powerhouse the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence back Triggerlock programs in theory, but each has its points of contention with their application. The Brady constituency, spokesperson Amy Stillwell says, "is for strong enforcement of crime, but we don't think [Triggerlock] goes far enough to prevent gun violence." Chuck Michel of the California Pistol and Rifle Association is more concerned with the consequences of overzealous enforcement. It is inevitable with these rigid parameters that some prosecutors will chase after fairly routine violations from time to time. "This program occasionally nets some dogs with the wolves," Michel says.

The consequences of fairness
The guidelines that determine the fate of Triggerlock defendants are the brainchild of an unlikely fellowship between Senate heavyweights Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). The senators joined forces in 1984 to establish a permanent commission, under the judicial branch, to increase uniformity and fairness in federal sentencing. Kennedy believed white judges in the South were meting out sentences that were far too severe for black defendants. Thurmond thought East and West Coast judges were far too lax.

Under the old law, if two identical offenders were convicted of a crime carrying a sentence of "not more than 20 years," one might spend 2 years in custody and the other 17. The commission's guidelines, which went into effect in 1987, were designed to ensure that defendants with similar histories who committed similar offenses received comparable sentences. Judges would now calculate sentences according to a pre-established grid. Plea-bargaining and parole would be altogether abolished: time sentenced would be time served.

Within the prison industry, the new guidelines were a self-fulfilling prophecy. The federal prison population increased 70 percent in a decade. And more than 70 percent of the prisoners who had been convicted of possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons in 1994 were rearrested upon their release.

Triggerlock programs also took a healthy bite out of the federal budget. In Richmond, Va., where Triggerlock, known there as Project Exile, was celebrated as an overwhelming success, the cost of federal prosecution and incarceration was seven to eight times greater than the cost of prosecution in state court. Recently, President George W. Bush allocated a half billion dollars for Project Safe Neighborhood, which Andres Soto, policy director at the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, calls "the latest euphemism for Project Exile." A good chunk of this money will fund new federal prosecutions. After extensive policy research on the effects of Project Exile, Soto believes it is "the height of irresponsibility for this administration to continue down that path."

Tough laws meet would-be criminals
Whether fair or not, the sentencing commission guidelines inarguably guarantee equal treatment for federal prisoners from state to state. Drastic sentencing disparities surface, in the case of San Francisco, when you compare state and federal defendants convicted of the same offense. Clients are often astounded when they learn the crime they committed around the corner from their house will be prosecuted federally, Halbert says. "We always get the question, 'I don't understand why this is a federal case. Why am I being pulled up to the feds?' And you just say, 'They just decided that you're one of the ones that they want to do this with.' "

"Appealing to the rationality of criminals is wasted breath," says Eric Gorovitz, a policy director at the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. "Gun crimes tend not to be well-thought-out or carefully planned schemes. If someone needs a fix, they don't stop to think, 'Should I use a gun or a lead pipe?' "

However, SFPD sergeant inspector Murphy, who's seen the prosecutions firsthand, believes the Triggerlock program is a deterrent to would-be criminals. "We've seen over the last six or seven months where guys are getting arrested with guns, and the first thing out of their mouths is, 'Hey, don't Triggerlock me. I don't wanna go to the feds. I'll do whatever I can.' "

Meanwhile, in Pacific Heights ...
In 2000 a war between rival Hunters Point gangs Big Block and West Mob took four lives. Twenty people sustained gunshot wounds within a two-week period. Many locals never heard about the tragedies in the southeast quadrant of the city. "If some of the things that happen out here on a daily basis were happening in Pacific Heights, it'd be a little different," says Officer Josh Olson of the Bayview Crime Suppression Unit. "People would be getting some time [from the D.A.]. But if it's Hunters Point, nobody seems to care." Deputy D.A. Paul Cummings, who helps determine which cases the District Attorney's Office will prosecute and which it will turn over to the feds, remembers reviewing several cases related to "one or two black gangs" and passing them on to the U.S. Attorney's Office. "The feds Triggerlocked a lot of them," he says. Still, the majority of Triggerlock cases, according to Halbert, are not associated with gang conflicts.

"It's primarily black males under 25 doing the killing and primarily black males under 25 getting killed," Donald Lacy says. In 1997, Lacy established the LoveLife Foundation to curb escalating violence in Oakland after his 16-year-old daughter was murdered across the street from her high school.

"This process isn't about guns. It's about incapacitation of black kids," assistant federal public defender Reichmuth says. "They want to put these kids away any way they can. The way to do it is to catch a kid with a gun and go federal. Triggerlock is just a shuttle bus between the projects and the prisons."

In fact, like Willie Beasley, the vast majority of Triggerlock defendants are African American males from low-income neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point, the Western Addition, Potrero Hill, and the Tenderloin. For gun offenders, the prospect of long-term exile from these communities is a deterrent, says Michel of the California Pistol and Rifle Association. "If a guy knows he's going to be sent away from his family and friends � this is not an academic debate anymore; in places where it was implemented, it works phenomenally."

Studies show that prisoners who receive regular family visits have significantly lower rates of rearrest and prosecution. Family visits actually deter future crimes. Federal prisons traditionally "exile" offenders, hence the name Project Exile, to prisons hundreds of miles from their home. Families often can't afford the time off, the cost of traveling to visit, or even the added cost of accepting long-distance collect calls. Once prisoners lose contact with their loved ones, the consequences are regrettably predictable.

Murphy says the police have no ulterior motives. "On paper it looks like we're racist, but we're not. The majority of people [we bring in] are young black males. Those are the people that are carrying guns that meet the criteria. In my opinion, I don't care if they're red, black, or green. I don't look at their race; I look at their conviction status. I want to make the people of San Francisco safe no matter what color they are."

A jury of whose peers?
A pivotal factor in jury trials is the jurors' capacity to understand and assess the defendant's circumstances. It helps, at least, if they know where he's from. One of the most glaring differences between state and federal gun trials in San Francisco is the composition of their respective juries. The state court summons its jury pool from the city and county of San Francisco. A federal jury candidate in San Francisco may be summoned from as far away as Humboldt County. The boundaries for the San Francisco District Court stretch from the Oregon border all the way down through San Mateo County � encompassing 11 counties. As a result, Murphy believes, in federal court "you get a better jury pool. It's a bigger jury pool. San Francisco's a very liberal city � and there's nothing wrong with that; I love living here � but it is a liberal city."

The jurors who heard Beasley's case included two African Americans, one East Indian, and nine whites from Concord, Danville, Atherton, Pleasant Hill, Fremont, Menlo Park, Vallejo, Hayward, Kentfield, Pleasanton, Livermore, and San Francisco. Beasley thinks the federal prosecutors used all of their strikes during jury selection to eliminate "anybody that had any association with blacks or anybody associated with urban areas." Still, he says, "I felt like it was a pretty fair chance."

Since the Simi Valley acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King, the question of demographics and fairness has been a concern in a number of trials. Several states have brought allegations of racial bias in federal gun prosecutions. In Richmond, Va., attorneys challenged Project Exile in federal court because official data showed that while 90 percent of the defendants prosecuted under the program were African American and 75 percent of the local jury pool were African American, only 10 percent of the federal jury pool in courtrooms where Project Exile defendants found themselves were African American. "With that kind of combination, the likelihood of a fair trial is slim to none," says Dan Daniels of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Beasley's attorney argues that taking a decision away from the community where the alleged crime occurred is a legitimate point of contention in federal cases. "There's the whole question of how localized 'jury of your peers' means," Halbert says. "I have a lot more faith in the local community to reach decisions like that. You have to think about if someone who lives in San Francisco or Oakland is more likely to accept the fact that a police officer might not be being completely truthful as compared to someone from up in Lake County."

On patrol with Ryan's Marauders
An unmarked white sedan slows as it approaches an intersection on the quieter side of the Hunters Point hill. "There it is," the driver says. On the sidewalk are the remains of a street shrine: wilting bouquets, streamers, teddy bears, and a mess of forties drained dry. The plainclothes officers of the Crime Suppression Unit have seen this memorial on their patrol several times each day for the past few days. There's nothing particularly novel about it, except that they've squandered the past few hours � on the radio and on cell phones � trying to track down a young woman who was here with a man named Lorenzo Richards when he was killed.

"There are actually serial killers who live here but have never been prosecuted due to lack of witnesses who will capitulate," one officer explains. "A lot of witnesses have been killed in the past." Earlier in the evening they discovered that the murder witness in the Richards case is in custody in Redwood City. It's unlikely she'll post bail. They can save the trip until tomorrow, Officer Olson says, because "in San Francisco bail is as much change as you have in your pocket, but in San Mateo [County], the D.A. doesn't let you out that easy," Olson says.

Olson plays the part of the even-keeled adult in the group. Officer Ryan, an unusually cheery import from Camden, Maine, peppers his speech with a lot of meaningless conjugations of "to fuck." "Lorenzo got capped. He got smoked," he offers, testing out his ghetto accent. Officer Tim Fowlie remains quiet most of the time. His nails are chewed down to stumps.

As the twilight fades to smoky blue, the members of the Crime Suppression Unit make their way through the labyrinth of the Bayview-Hunters Point projects, through the Potrero Hill projects, and back to Hunters Point again. Clearly, the route is familiar. The sedan crosses paths with the same few patrol cars � full of colleagues from the Bayview station � several times a night.

Before duty, the Crime Suppression Unit had plenty of time to bone up on the particulars of the current generation of troublemakers whose mug shots, grouped by gang affiliation, cover bulletin boards in the briefing room back at the Bayview station.

For those who've never lived in public housing or ventured over to the grittier side of the city, this is a parallel universe. It's hard to imagine how you might react to life under surveillance. You might see cops as much-needed security or as a constant infringement on your rights. An occupying army with no plans to withdraw. If you or someone on your property is on probation or parole, the police have the right to search you anytime � day or night � with or without probable cause. And if they are not feeling congenial, they can handcuff you while they dig through your pockets. So the likelihood of getting caught with a gun or anything else illegal in this environment is many times greater than it is elsewhere in the city.

The Crime Suppression team spends most of the shift cruising though each project � Big Block, West Block, Potrero Hill, and Double Rock � several times a night. They pass the time recounting police successes and failures on this very terrain. At periodic stops the officers regularly pat down pockets and handcuff men, women, and children who willingly admit to being on probation or parole. They frequently catch people with drugs or suspicious wads of cash. It's not every day that you catch someone with a gun, the officers say, but it's not uncommon.

"Ryan's Marauders," as the officers jokingly dub themselves, pull into a parking space in the West Block development near a building painted with the moniker of local rap label Sould Out Productions. The Housing Authority Police are patrolling a few feet away, and a female Animal Care and Control cop, dressed like a park ranger, is also doing her rounds, perhaps in search of an errant pit bull. Meanwhile, the Crime Suppression team searches a group of African American teenagers outside the building. At least one is on probation for gun possession. The kid has $2,300 in cash on him, but after a lengthy chat and a fruitless search of windowsills and drainpipes, the cops don't turn up any drugs.

The officers begin riffing on the futility of trying to curb violence. It's a conversation that seems to have been going on for years.

"Here's one for you," one of the officers pipes in. "We arrest this guy for shootin' up somebody one day, shooting at a bunch of people the next day, and hitting a few of them. They catch him � gun in hand. It's a very political issue. The D.A. doesn't want to draw too much heat from the community. So they let him go."

"And what did he do?" Olson asks, though he's clearly familiar with the story.

"He did it again."

"The [local] people responsible for prosecution of these people are not getting the convictions," Olson says. "So they're back out there. The reality is, if you want to get the killers off the street � the people responsible for the deaths � and you want to stop people from getting killed, then we need the assistance of everybody else in the criminal justice system."

Before pulling into the next project, Ryan finishes the thread of the conversation. "When it doesn't happen that way, it sends a message to every would-be gunman out there that 'Hey, I can do this, and I can get away with it.' "

Of all the parallel universes in the Bayview-Hunters Point circuit, the Double Rock projects are the closest approximation to humans living in captivity. You must get past the guards to get in, and once you're in, there's only one way back out. Everyone, including your neighbors, seems to be eyeing you. Ryan drops off two officers so they can swoop in on their prey: a middle-aged African American woman in a sweatshirt, who, they say, looks suspicious. After an embarrassingly easy chase and I.D. check, they find a pair of scissors on her. She's the mother of three, here from Chicago. They try to poke holes in her story. And then, as suddenly and impulsively as it started, the exchange is over. She's the wrong person. They let her go.

The car pulls off, and Ryan picks up the conversation again. "The prosecution part is the war," he says. "Everything else we do is little battles. I think we're content to win battles and steadily move towards winning the war."

Report card for Triggerlock
Beasley's "flight" impulse on the morning of his arrest could be interpreted any number of ways in a post-Amadou Diallo world. When the cops pulled up, Beasley says, he saw few alternatives. Under cross-examination at his trial in February, he told the jury, "I didn't want [the police] to see me with the gun and be shot. I don't know what their state of mind would have been to see a black guy with a gun." He tossed the gun aside for the same reason. After what happened to Diallo, it would be naive to say Beasley was overreacting.

Still, as a general rule, Triggerlock defendants are not the most sympathetic of characters. "Willie Beasley is not a hero that you're going to read about in your local newspaper," Halbert's closing statement began. Overlooking the larger consequences of federal gun prosecution and rigorous policing is a luxury belonging to people in police-free neighborhoods.

In February the jury found Beasley guilty of knowingly possessing a firearm. At his sentencing in federal court last week, he got 41 months without the possibility of parole. As fate would have it, Beasley's friend Michael Frattini was released after one night in county jail.

As for reducing the number of guns in San Francisco, Deputy D.A. Cummings has a realistic outlook on Triggerlock's potential: "There will continue to be people who use guns illegally. Guns have been popular since the Civil War. We're not going to end the problem with Triggerlock." Rising local crime rates suggest Triggerlock is doing little to curb the culture of violence. "I find it depressing," Halbert says, "because these prosecutions certainly don't seem to be fixing the problem."

"Obviously it's not working. We're at 67 homicides and counting in Oakland," the LoveLife Foundation's Lacy says. "Even if you get all the guns off the street, it still doesn't solve the problem. Let's look at why people are violent."

After extensive research into Triggerlock programs, Soto of the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention believes these campaigns funnel massive amounts of money into targeting the wrong offenders. "If the goal is to reduce crime, they have been a monumental failure." Most guns used in violent crimes are purchased legally, in bulk, from white distributors in the suburbs. If law enforcement instead paid closer attention to regulating those sources, poor urban neighborhoods might not have so many street altars to gun victims.

After his conviction, Willie Beasley says, one question kept running through his head. "I wanted to ask the court, 'How would you have felt if I had walked away and my friend had killed Eugene Walls?' "

Gabrielle Banks is a San Francisco-based freelance writer who has published articles in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Dissent, and other national publications.

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Re: Leftist paper attacks gun law -- Sue da babe, 16:58:35 08/11/02 Sun