GUNS FOR SALE

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GUNS FOR SALE

How the Cuomo Administration

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made New York State

a major weapons supplier

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Report of

Assemblyman John J. Faso

Ranking Minority Member, Assembly Codes Committee

to

Assemblyman Clarence D. Rappleyea

Assembly Minority Leader

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GUNS FOR SALE

How the Cuomo Administration made New York State

a major weapons supplier

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Report of Assemblyman John Faso ~anking Minority Member

Assembly Codes Committee

Principal research: Herbert H. Detrick II Legislative Budget Analyst Assembly Minority Ways & Means

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u.s. Department of Justice

National Institute of Justice

149586

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Permission to reproduce this copyrighted material has been

grN~~byYork State Standing

committee Codes

to the National Crimir.al Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)" ,

Further reproduction outside of the NCJRS system requires permission of the copyright owner,

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SUMMARy....................................................... 1 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Dealing for dollars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. 2 Weapons oddities ........ ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3

I. BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Weapons Carried by State Law Enforcement Officials .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 4

II. WEAPONS MARKETING ........................................ 6 Contracting considerations ........................... :........... 7 What the law says . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The state's gun deals ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 9 Where the guns went ....................................... '. . . 11 How the deals were structured ................................... 12 The Executive's role .......................................... 14 The weapons inventory system ................................... 14 Gas grenade la.unchers and other items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

m. HANDGUN SALES AND PURCHASES BY AGENCY .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Division of State Police (DSP) ............ '................. '. . . . . . 16 Office of General Services - Capital Police. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Office of Parks, Recreation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? . . . . . . 18 Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) ..................... 18 Department of Taxation and Finance .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Department of Motor Vehicles ................................... 19 Division of Parole ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Department of Corrections ...................................... 21

IV. ASS~ULT GUNS AND MILITARY SURPLUS.. ?..? . .?. .?.? .??? . ... ?? 22 .;ale of surplus military weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Ml?sisn? g ,.....u.;.lu;tary suIpIus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Sale and attempted sales of machine guns ........................... 23 Sale of confiscated weapons " ................................... J 24

V. RECOMMENDATIONS ......................................... 25

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? SUMMARY

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"This one is inexplicable. This one you have to hope was done by total

mistake. This one you have to hope was sent over from a foreign state,

insinuated into the budget to embarrass us."

Governor Mario M. Cuomo, commenting in June 1991 on a subsequently repealed bill authorizing the State Police to auction weapons seized from criminals to licensed gun dealers

Over the last four years, as New York's Governor was demanding

tighter gun restrictions, state agencies under his direct control were pumping

thousands of fonner police weapons into the civilian gun market. In fact,

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New York State recently has been among the nation's leading public sector suppliers of used weapons. At least one fonner New York State Police gun may have been used in a crime in another state.

Findings

Since 1989, at least 6,807 used guns-mostly .38 and .357 caliber revolvers-have been sold or traded by New York State agencies to licensed private gun dealers, according to state agency records. These weapon transfers, occuning outside the purview of the state Legislature, were used to finance the state's acquisition of at least 6,351 new handguns, mostly semiautomatic pistols.

A review of the state's gun transactions in recent years, focusing on sixteen deals consummated between April 1989 and September 1993, reveals striking discrepancies between Governor Cuomo's words and his Administration's actions in a highly controversial area of public policy.

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Noteworthy findings, revealed here for the first time, include the

following: 1. Among the used weapons sold by New York State in the last four

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years were 900 semiautomatic pistols - the new handgun of

choice among violent criminals - and more than 300 rifles and

shotguns, including some that could be considered illegal assault

weapons under?a bill proposed by Governor Cuomo.

. 2. New York State Police sold at least 32 machine guns -. some of the most deadly. weapons in their arsenal - to a private gun dealer in Pennsylvania.

3. A former New York State Police handgun sold by the state during the past four years - a 9mm semiautomatic pistol - has turned up on a list of weapons traced by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms at the request of Detroit, Mich., police, indicating the gun may have been used in a crone there.

4. Some of New York's largest weapons transactions featured highly

unusual three-way deals involving state government agencies, gun

manufacturers and licensed gun- dealers.

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Dealing for dollars

New York State agencies chose to sell their used weapons - rather than destroy the guns or restrict re-sale to individual police officers - in response to an unwritten Executive policy they all understood. The Governor's Division of the Budget (DOB) would not authorize additional cash expenditures sufficient to pay the full cost of new guns. In. response, with nOB's knowledge and approval, the agencies resorted to sales and trade-ins of used weapons to finance the bulk of their new weapon purchases.

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The total saved by the state's gun sales and trade-ins amounted to just under $1.6 million over a five-year period. In other words, the Cuomo Administration could have avoided transferring thousands of former police weapons to the civilian market if it had been willing to absorb an added cost of about $400,000 a year in a budget exceeding $50 billion.

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Weapons oddities Various letters and memoranda gleaned from state file~, document

agency actions and transactions that would raise eyebrows e:ven if they had

involved cars, computers or some other more benign commodity.

Among other things, this report details:

E) Poor inventory controls Example: The Divhdon of Military and Naval Affairs (D11NA) dLcovered last year that 16 weapons - including five submachine guns - had been either lost or stolen. The guns apparently are still missing.

E) Inconsistent weapons selection policies

Example: In the mid-1980s, the Department of Taxation and

Finance acquired semiautomatic pistols for its investigators. In the

late 1980s, the Department switched back to revolvers and put the

pistols in storage. Recently, it sold its existing stock of both

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revolvers and semiautomatic pistols to buy new semiautomatic pistols. (In general, there was no comprehensive policy for upgrading weapons issued to the thousands of police and peace

officers working for the state.)

E9 Unauthorized transfer of surplus military weapons Example: After acquiring more than 400 surplus military weapons from DMNA, the Department of Correctional Services shipped most of the weapons to an Albany gun dealer without proper authorization - two months before a contract for a trade-in deal was finalized.

E) Inadequate record-keeping Example: Standard payment vouchers and attached invoices for"

.. weapons purchased using trade-in credits do not always include' listings of serial numbers for the guns to be traded in.

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I. BACKGROUND

There are currently more than a half-dozen New York State agencies

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that employ individuals designated as police officers pursuant to Section 1.20

of the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). Approximately 5,000 police officers

are employed by the Division of State'"Police, Office of Parks and Recreation,

Department of Environmental Conservation, Office of General Services,

Department of Law and Organized Crime Task Force. In addition, more than

a dozen other agencies employ thousands more individuals who are

designated as peace officers pursuant:to CPL ?2.10.

Weapons Carried by State Law Enforcement Officials

The designation of police officer automatically confers on an individual authority to possess a weapon in New York State. In the case of all large state agency police forces, and many of the smaller ones, the principal sidearm carried by an individual officer is a state-owned pistol or revolver.

Since the late 1980s, police agencies nationwide have begun to arm

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their sworn members with semiautomatic pistols, rather than the five- or six-

shot .38 and .357 caliber revolvers that had been the standard issue police

sidearm for many years. Although the variety of handguns available for law

enforcement use numbers into the hundreds, three characteristics of semi-

automatic pistols have brought them into greater favor among both police

and criminals.

First, pistols are more easily reloaded than revolvers. A pistol is usually equipped with a removable magazine, which when emptied can be exchanged with a full magazine in far less time than it takes to empty shell casings from a revolver and reload each individual chamber.

S"econd, pistols generally have a larger magazine capacity than revolvers. In the case of the new semi-automatics carried by many of New York State's police officers, this magazine capacity can be upwards of 15 rounds.

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Third, improved design and manufacturing tolerances for pistols have virtually eliminated the complaint that semi-automatic weapons tended to jam at inopportune moments.

Following extensive research into and consideration of the implications of moving from revolvers to semiautomatic pistols, a host of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have done just that - requiring officers to tum in their old sidearms for newer guns. As this report will show, however, the question of what New York State law enforcement agencies should best do with their unneeded but still serviceable used weapons remains unanswered.

There is, of course, considerable debate on the question of whether stringent gun control measures will do anything more than remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens. Governor Cuomo's stated position on -the issue has been clear.

Despite the Governor's outspoken gun control advocacy, a penny-wise,

pound-foolish budget management practice, promulgated by his Division of

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the Budget, has made New York State government a major weapons supplier.

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