Parks Vows Crackdown on Gun Sales to Juveniles

Seeking to crack down on gun dealers who illegally sell weapons to kids, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks said the department will trace every weapon recovered from juveniles in Los Angeles beginning this fall.

To that end, Parks has said he will assign three additional detectives to the department’s gun unit to investigate illegal traffickers. A similar program began informally about six months ago, but LAPD officials say more officers are needed to make it work.

In October, LAPD officers are expected to join a national database sponsored by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that tracks weapons recovered in crimes. The computer system matches weapon information against other databases to trace guns to their original owners.

The ATF’s National Tracing Center in West Virginia last year tracked the history of about 100,000 guns, ATF officials said. The computer program can, for example, link a gun recovered from Inglewood, one of the cities participating in the program, to a crime committed with that firearm in New Jersey.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will also participate in the tracing effort, which is part of President Clinton’s program to battle youth crime. Last month, Clinton announced that Los Angeles and nine other cities were joining the national computer network.

While Parks doubts that the city can completely eradicate juvenile crime, particularly gang violence, he said he hopes to at least suppress it.

“It will be helpful to see where these guns are coming from,” said the new chief, who talked about the program during a community meeting in Studio City hours after being sworn in this week.

Los Angeles police seized 9,975 weapons in 1995 and 11,033 in 1996. So far this year, officers have recovered nearly 6,000, according to the latest LAPD statistics. Of those, officials estimate that about one-third were taken from juveniles.

LAPD officials say the new gun-tracing effort may not prompt large numbers of cases against traffickers. There remain enormous difficulties tracing guns that were purchased illegally and passed through several owners, officials said.

But Det. Mark Warschaw of the LAPD gun unit said: “If you can prevent one kid from buying a gun, that could save a lot of grief for a lot of people.”

Officials say illegal guns typically pass through many hands, making it difficult to trace its path from the time it is initially sold to its use in a crime, a period authorities call the “time to crime.”

In addition, authorities say many so-called straw purchasers are involved. Those are people who buy guns legally, then sell them illegally for profit. Finding those buyers often yields important clues, police say.

Federal officials believe that joining with the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department to track guns will yield results.

“The new initiative will help ATF identify, investigate and prosecute these firearms traffickers,” said John A. Torres, assistant special agent in charge of the ATF’s Los Angeles field division. “We will pursue them vigorously.”

While LAPD officials also are optimistic about the program, they say they want to be sure federal, state and city prosecutors will aggressively pursue charges against traffickers.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer met this week with members of the LAPD gun unit and ATF agents in support of the program.

“I consider gun violence one of the most fundamental issues we deal with here in Los Angeles,” said Feuer. “Gun tracing is fundamental to clamping down on gun trafficking.”

A recent ATF analysis showed that four in 10 guns used in crimes and seized by police were in the possession of juveniles. The most commonly used gun by offenders under age 24 was a semiautomatic pistol, according to the analysis.

“The trafficking of firearms to our nation’s young people is a despicable crime,” said Torres of the ATF. “Protecting America’s youth from firearms-related violence is one of ATF’s top priorities.”

LAPD officials said the gang problem in Los Angeles has exacerbated the use of weapons by juveniles. But Parks expressed some hope that gang crackdowns, in concert with the gun-tracing program and court injunctions, will reduce violence.

“I don’t think in our lifetime we’ll ever make gangs go away,” Parks said. “But I think maybe we can keep this kind of violent activity on our streets suppressed.”