And a complicit weak-ass prosecutor and an absent ATF?
The five young men, identified by authorities as 19-year olds Byron Burke, Jalen Green, Tre’von Williams, and 18-year olds Dishon Kinney and Kenyon Peters are now facing charges of breach of trust, with Kinney and Peters facing criminal conspiracy charges as well.
UPS’s security team notified the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department that guns were being stolen from incoming trucks. LCSD says Kinney and Peters devised the plan and that all five men sold the guns or gave them away while on company time.
If I’m reading South Carolina law correctly buying, selling, or giving away a stolen handgun is a felony offense in South Carolina, punishable by up to five years in prison. However, at the moment the five suspects have been charged with “breach of trust,” which is only a misdemeanor offense if the property in question is valued at less than $1,000. Presumably prosecutors can add up the value of all of the stolen firearms, which should make their charges a felony, but it looks like this case offers plenty of opportunities for a plea bargain to reduced charges. Despite the seriousness of the offense, there’s a good possibility that most of men arrested will suffer few consequences for their actions.
. Five UPS Workers Busted In Gun Theft Ring
Damn! And after all these years, I was convinced it was the NRA driving to the bad parts of town and tossing guns from the back of a truck to small children and drug dealers.
Have I mentioned, I dislike the concept of plea deals?
Perhaps, but the criminal justice system as currently operated CANNOT work without it. 90%+ of cases are disposed of with pleas; if you “eliminated” plea agreements (as Alaska has) that won’t eliminate plea agreements, it will just move the timing of the agreement to pre-charging. There is NO WAY WHATSOEVER to charge all fully and expect them to simply accept the charges so you can presumably throw the book at them – what Defendant would ever take such a plea? Why should he? He has nothing whatsoever to lose by going to trial. And if all cases go to trial, you and I will be on jury duty every third month.
Seeking to eliminate plea bargaining is like campaigning sunlight or rain. Not going to go away.
There needs to be limits. A plea deal from multiple felonies (one charge for each stolen gun) to one misdemeanor is too much. Maybe from multiple felonies to one felony or consecutive sentences to concurrent, but you can’t let people plea down to do little they might as well not have been caught.
Remember this happened to me with my 1912 that was smithed by Wilson Combat.
It was eventually recovered but I was told UPS loses guns all the time. Contacts I have at Remington in Huntsville told me that shipments from the factory or customer returns happen all the time.
A pallet of pistols will be broken into in transit and several boxes stolen and it won’t be discovered until the distributor does inventory on incoming product.
They tell the ATF but this happens so frequently they can’t do anything about it.
Ruger had pallets of guns disappear out of rail cars in Chicago.
This is a huge problem that non enough resources are put into, and like you pointed out, when a gun theft ring is discovered, its hardly ever prosecuted to the fullest extent.
It happens so often that UPS requires guns to be shipped overnight at significant added cost, unless the sender and recipient are both FFL holders.
I don’t do so. The law requires a person to notify the carrier of the contents of a shipment whenever a shipment contains a firearm. It doesn’t say that I specifically have to use the word firearm. So I simply put something like “S&W sku# 180021” That way I just accurately described the pistol and complied with the law. It’s not my fault they don’t know what it is because it isn’t my job to train their thieving employees.
And then they whine about ‘guns flooding our streets’. And insist the only way to fix it is to shut down lawful gun commerce.
One is led to the conclusion that all this is intentional. Don’t prosecute criminals, but use the crime as an excuse to persecute non-criminals.
Putting aside the theft, I need to note the plea bargain would likely never have been offered to individuals with names like Tom, Bob, Karl, or Simon.
If you ever find out the name of the DA or whoever is responsible for this super low charging, please let us know. let ME know, as I am moving to South Carolina in September and need to know who to work against.
They demand stricter gun laws and never enforce the ones we have.
But, then, the pols are also beholden to the gangs, so we can’t expect them to ever prosecute them.