Squeezing Out The Bad Guys

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The studies produced on a national level the same scale of revelation that Boston had experienced. ATF and city police gun units immediately launched investigations of gun purchasers and dealers whose names appeared repeatedly in ATF's fast-growing tracing database. Every new trace ordered by police enriched the database and enhanced the power of the bureau's Project Lead, a computer-aided system for analyzing traces to generate investigative targets. Most dealers were law-abiding businessmen, but invariably ATF agents using Project Lead uncovered licensed dealers peddling high volumes of guns to gangs and other potential crooks. "One dirty federal firearms licensee can put volumes of guns on the street," Kennedy says. "It's just a fire hose."

The Yogi program quickly produced leads. Agents discovered, for example, that dozens of crime guns recovered from kids and gang members in Chicago, St. Louis and Washington had all come through a Cape Girardeau, Mo., man who until February 1996 was a licensed dealer. Investigators soon discovered that he had sold about 1,100 firearms to two buyers, who resold them "off paper" at gun shows. These two fingered a man from Nashville, Tenn., who regularly bought their guns and sold them on the streets of Washington. The Nashville man later admitted selling 110 guns. Thirty were recovered by Washington police investigating a wide array of crimes.

Other cases followed, but the Yogi studies had a broader, more subtle effect. Suddenly police throughout the country began asking how guns reached their towns. Five or 10 years ago, agents say, even a massacre like that at Columbine High last April might not have prompted a trace request, since the suspects and their guns were found at the scene. But ATF and local police made tracing the Columbine guns a top priority. Today even guns recovered during routine investigations are likely to be traced. By the time Benjamin Smith was identified last month as the likely gunman in a series of hate shootings in Illinois and Indiana, ATF had launched an investigation of the allegedly illegal dealer who sold Smith his guns. In fact, agents searched the suspect dealer's apartment the night before Smith allegedly began his spree.

The case provided an example of a subtle change within ATF. Until recently, direct communication between the bureau's inspectors and its law-enforcement agents was rare. Magaw, as part of his reform effort, placed both functions under the command of the law-enforcement agent who ran each field office. He went so far as to direct that in some offices the walls dividing cops and inspectors be removed, and that both groups share the same kitchen. He also refocused the inspection mission. Until the past year or so, inspectors dutifully worked their way down the lists of licensed dealers, examining each in turn. Now their first priority is to inspect dealers who draw the most traces. Interestingly, an ATF pilot study found that even when no further investigation occurred, these targeted audits resulted in a 50% reduction of crime-gun traces to those dealers in the year following the inspection.

Last June an inspector auditing the books of a licensed dealer in Pekin, Ill., noticed that the dealer had sold 65 cheap handguns to a single customer named Donald Fiessinger. The inspector passed the tip to a special agent, who then ran the serial number of each gun through ATF's database. He found that one of the guns sold to Fiessinger had been recovered by Illinois state police from a different possessor during a traffic stop in May 1998. In requesting the formal police report on the incident, the agent talked to a state investigator, who mentioned that he had noticed a recurring newspaper advertisement announcing guns for sale and listing a telephone number. The agent checked with the phone company and found the number belonged to Fiessinger.

ATF launched a formal undercover investigation and on Thursday, July 1, executed a search warrant at Fiessinger's apartment, where agents found 27 guns and rudimentary sales records. Among the names of customers was Benjamin Smith. At the time, the name meant nothing.

The next day, Friday, shortly after 8 p.m., this customer allegedly drove into an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Chicago and began shooting. He wounded six men. Shortly afterward, he allegedly drove to Northbrook, Ill., and shot and killed Ricky Byrdsong, former head basketball coach at Northwestern University, as he walked with two of his children. By the time police cornered Smith, he had allegedly killed two men and wounded eight.

Later Fiessinger told police that Smith had talked about using one of the guns, a .22-cal. pistol, for hunting.