30 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: JULY 2017 “The old man’s still an artist with the Tommy Gun.” – from the Coen Brothers film Miller’s Crossing In St. Louis, like a lot of other places, local law en- forcement is struggling to make ends meet. So the de- partment is selling off some of the guns they have to gener- ate revenue. We’re not talking duty weapons here – this is about the Tommy Gun. Officials say the sale of 27 Thompson submachine guns, some dating to the 1920s, will help the agency buy new handguns for St Louis officers. Police will use the profits from the sale of the prohibi- tion-era gangster’s weapon of choice to buy some AR- 15s as well as about 1,525 new 9 mm Beretta hand- guns. According to an article from the St. Louis Post Dis- patch, the Tommy guns have been collecting dust in a basement bunker inside the police academy for 60 years. This is a big enough deal that they needed to bring in some professional brokers. Chesterfield-based “Police Trades” handled the $1.2 million deal. Raymond Reynolds, the president of Police Trades and a retired St. Louis police lieutenant, is described as a history and gun buff. Mr. Reynolds said he found original documents that showed that the agen- cy originally purchased the Tommy guns for $125 apiece. Tommy Gun sale to buy new firearms F our Texas men were recently indicted on hate crime charges by a federal grand jury after the cowardly quar- tet allegedly used the gay dating app Grindr to target victims they intended to rob. Cameron Ajiduah, 18, Chancler Encalade, 20, Ni- gel Garrett, 21, and Anthony Shelton, 19, all face charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, carjacking and possession of a firearm. The hate crime charges, which in many states now protect police officers as well as homosexuals, carry a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. According to the indict- ment, the organized crimi- nal operation had been up and running in several Texas cities prior to the arrests. The suspects allegedly committed several home in- vasions in the Dallas suburbs of Plano and Frisco, as well as Aubrey. The hustle was as simple as they come. The armed robbers would pretend to be gay men and make plans to meet up at the victims’ residences. The suspects would assault and humiliate their victims after tying them up and rob- bing them. The indictment was an- nounced by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Texas and the Dallas Divi- sion of the ATF. Plano Po- lice Department and Frisco Police Department worked together on the investiga- tion. Crooks love tech! I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in Russia, unlike in one third of the world’s countries, being gay is not a crime. – Vladimir Putin Predictably, the Missouri Supreme Court killed pro- visions of a law intended to protect minorities from unfair police actions and municipal revenue collec- tion in the form of fees and fines for things like cooking a hamburger on a grill on your own yard. The law, known as SB5, would have limited the amount of revenue cities and counties can seize by setting a cap of 12.5 percent, down from 30 percent, on collec- tions from traffic fines and court fees and set minimum standards for law enforce- ment in St. Louis County. In other words, the gov- ernment would have only been allowed to take 12 percent, not thirty percent in profit for every citation that brings a fine. Ironically this sets up a situation where the more infractions and crimes occur, the more local gov- ernments stand to benefit – the basic problem that critics of this system have pointed out repeatedly. Thomas Harvey is the executive director of Arch City Defenders, a civil rights law firm in St. Louis. “Legislation like this fails to deal with the real prob- lem, even if the caps were at 10 percent,” he told NBC News. “It treats the issue as an economic one and doesn’t get into an analysis of race.” He added that economic caps won’t solve justice problems. “There shouldn’t even be 20 percent coming in from illegal practices, it should be zero percent,” he said. Forfeiture reform fails yet again, for obvious reasons NATIONAL SHERIFFS’ ASSOCIATION GLOBAL CENTER FOR PUBLIC SAFETY WWW.SHERIFFS.ORG/GCPS The Global Center for Public Safety provides professional development, leadership training and resources to increase and strengthen the impact of individuals in middle and senior level management across all law enforcement disciplines. Court Security Jail Operations Homeland Security Leadership Community Policing