https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.46677b8b8723

These California agents are coming for your guns

By Scott Wilson February 24 at 6:12 PM

ZUSA, Calif. — By the time Senior Special Agent Sam Richardson’s team rolled up to the small house on Lark Ellen Avenue in a cool twilight, it had little to show for several hours of work.

The stops in San Dimas and Covina: no luck. At the gray house on a corner in Pomona, yes, Nohemi Page was home with her infant. But the four pistols registered in her name — guns that felony convictions in California now rendered illegal for her to possess — were long gone.

When Page went to drug rehab, her aunt placed her belongings in a storage unit, then stopped paying the monthly fee. The guns, as elusive as quicksilver in a country awash in weapons, now belonged to whoever bought the contents in a blind auction.

But the “knock and talk” at the house here, with Brenda Rivera, a 56-year-old grandmother with a felony theft conviction and a registered firearm, spun out differently. After a confused but calm hour and a half, the team had its first tangible success of the day. A pistol, the magazine missing. A hard-won trophy for a unit at the sharp, streetside edge of America’s debate over who should own guns and who should not.

“One more off the list,” Richardson said.

[Five states allow guns to be seized before someone can commit violence ]

A broad, bald Tennessean, Richardson runs a six-person team of California Justice Department agents who are coming for your guns, but only if you no longer have the legal authority to own one in this state that has tightened firearm laws in increments over the years.

His division is the only law enforcement agency in the country assigned specifically to track down and take guns from felons, the mentally ill and others whose Second Amendment rights have been curtailed in court because of public safety concerns. That is, the people who even the National Rifle Association says should not have guns, a statement echoing in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The program makes California’s gun-control policy perhaps the most aggressive in the nation.

A dozen years ago, the state set up a database that flags law enforcement officials when a registered gun owner is convicted of a felony, deemed mentally ill, has received a restraining order or committed one of about 37 qualifying misdemeanors.

The list is known as the Armed Prohibited Persons System, and while it has failed to prevent mass shootings in San Bernardino, Isla Vista and other cities in the state, it has taken tens of thousands of guns out of the hands of people prohibited from having them.

State officials say the kind of restraining order that a family or law enforcement official is allowed to seek here against someone of concern might have landed Nikolas Cruz, the alleged school shooter in Parkland, on the list if one existed in Florida. That will never be known.

The work of Richardson’s agents is overwhelming, with the number of guns and “prohibiteds” growing faster than the underresourced teams can take them off the street. So is the ingenuity of those selling guns, and those making guns, and those owning guns, legally or not.

There are 10,226 people on the list statewide. Of those, about 2,000 are in Los Angeles County, a vast urban desert covered by only Richardson’s team and one other.

Last year, state Justice Department agents seized 3,999 pistols and long guns, investigating more than 8,500 people in the process. The list has never dipped beneath 10,000 people since its earliest days.

“All of this takes time and real resources,” said Xavier Becerra (D), California’s attorney general, who said he is requesting more money for the program this year. “As quickly as we get these guns off the street, others are getting guns.”

[Fla. school shooting creates urgent push for gun control, bipartisan calls for change ]

There are many reasons for the slow progress — the lack of resources; day-round traffic that requires agents here to target people on the list in geographic clusters rather than urgency; and legal checks. Simply because a person is on the list does not give state agents a right to seize the gun, only to ask permission to do so. If denied, agents must wait for a warrant.

There also are big victories. Last week, Richardson’s team went to the Temple City home of Steven Ponder, a 57-year-old convicted more than a decade ago of counterfeiting — and owning a machine gun. He had four guns registered in his name.

After being invited inside, the team found and seized 28 firearms, including 11 homemade “ghost guns” that carry no serial number, and 65,000 rounds of ammunition. One of the “ghost guns” was fully automatic.

Those days are rare. Eight hours with Richardson’s team along suburban cul-de-sacs, in chaotic garages and cluttered bedroom closets here in the San Gabriel Valley reveal the slow, delicate work that often yields little but a forwarding address or the certainty that a gun on the list will never be found.

But in the sometimes immeasurable way gun violence ripples through this country, even small victories could translate into a life saved, a crime prevented.

“We certainly believe we’re making a difference on crime,” Richardson said. “But it’s a drop in the bucket on the overall number of guns in circulation.”

The team recently began competing to see who can lose the most weight. In the lunchroom at the office-park field offices, the usual fast-food menu was replaced by healthy leftovers from home. At least, for some members of the team, which regularly puts in 20 hours of overtime a week.

“I wish I had the Popeye’s fried chicken right now, but the Panda will do,” said Special Agent Coseglia, a native of Flint, Mich., while looking down at a plastic tray full of stir-fried noodles.

The team is from various parts of the country and from various backgrounds. But they share years of experience in the field, a key to success in a unit whose way of working with potentially dangerous, unstable people emphasizes diplomacy over force.

Not once has a target fired on them. As this fact was noted, they reached for wood to knock on.

But they are threatened — some extreme gun rights websites seek to identify them and expose them online — so all except Richardson, who has appeared publicly, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that only their last names be used .

“We don’t have black helicopters, but we drive black cars and wear black uniforms,” Richardson said. “It plays into the mind-set of some of these people.”

Into the field
Around 2 p.m., the team heads out in a trio of black cars, no license plates, and a minivan with a lockbox in back to hold evidence. On a breezy Wednesday afternoon, the Los Angeles sky is clear of haze. As the group heads east, the sun lights up the San Gabriel Mountains before them.

The distances are long, and the team hopes to get to eight addresses before calling it a night. The first one turns up nothing.

At the second address, the 10-year-old daughter of Marland Reed, convicted in Arizona of aggravated drunken driving, answers Special Agent Torrez’s knock. Her father, she says, isn’t there.

“At least we have a confirmed address,” says Torrez, who also predicts that the daughter will call her father, who will call the San Dimas office of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to find out if they visited his home and why.

Five minutes later, Richardson’s cellphone rings.

“Oh, we’ll look into,” he says. It is a sheriff’s deputy, as predicted. The state agents do not share their operations with local law enforcement officials. But they do coordinate with the regional “war room,” which serves all agencies, to avoid stepping on other cases.

The third stop, though, raises a strain of uneasiness that the team has about the list.

As Richardson heads for the Covina home of Benjamin Barreto, a 56-year-old with three registered guns, he points out that the “prohibited” man had not been convicted of a crime. He has several infractions, including driving without a license. Barreto is on the list because a judge said he could not possess a gun.

“The system captures a lot of people, and it’s probably better to capture all of them than none of them,” he says. “But it’s important for us to go after those who really matter.”

The house where Barreto is supposed to be living appears empty. But it is monitored by video technology, which has made the agents’ job harder, serving as an early warning for those inside or who are about to return home. The cameras can send a feed to an owner’s cellphone.

Agents fan out to talk to neighbors, who say they think that Barreto has moved to Riverside, a bordering county. The case will be sent to Richardson’s counterparts there.

His name and guns stay on the list.

Confusion, then a gun
A half-hour later, along Lark Ellen Avenue in Azusa, the team’s luck begins to turn.

The house where Brenda Rivera is believed to be living has a hammock strung between a pair of trees in the front yard. Several of the agents gather in the driveway, which leads back to a second house and a garage. Rush-hour traffic slows along the four-lane street as drivers try to get a glimpse of what’s going on.

A Nissan SUV pulls up to the sidewalk. The driver gets out and approaches the agents. A young girl in the passenger seat also steps down from the car carrying a backpack. She walks past the agents to the house in the back.

The man is P.J. Morella, Rivera’s son-in-law. The girl is his daughter Kristin — Rivera’s granddaughter — who has just returned home from winning the district basketball championship at Las Palmas Middle School.

“It’s never good having the cops here,” Morella says and laughs nervously. “But nothing surprises me anymore.”

Morella calls Rivera, who is effectively homeless and has been “couch surfing.” She tells him that the pistol registered in her name should be in the garage. Then Morella corrects her. “You sold me that gun years ago,” he says.

Surprised, two agents head off with Morella to get the gun from his nearby house. Richardson also has Morella’s name checked against the prohibited list. He comes up clean. With Rivera’s permission, they work to get into the garage to search it.

Torrez tries to pick the deadbolt lock. “It’s not as easy as the movies, that’s for sure,” said Special Agent Rodriguez. “It never just clicks open.”

About 20 minutes later, Rivera’s daughter and Morella’s estranged wife, Genevieve, arrive from her work as a billing agent for a life insurance company. She owns the house.

“This is so embarrassing,” she says repeatedly, as she opens the garage.

“My mother and I have never gotten along,” she says. “She lives her life, but I never agreed with it.”

A small dog barks behind a fence next door. From inside the house, several of Morella’s four children watch the agents, who pass out stickers displaying the state Justice Department emblem to them and to the neighbors’ kids. A TV set flickers with cartoons from a window.

The garage is packed to the rafters, and agents begin pulling out plastic house plants, a punching bag, an air mattress. A Dodgers banner hangs barely visible from high on the back wall. There’s nothing of interest.

P.J. Morella, though, has produced the gun the agents came for. The ammunition is gone. The gun comes off the list about 90 minutes after the agents had arrived. It will be taken back to the evidence locker, and if the owner does not make a legal claim for it, the gun will be destroyed.

“From our perspective, mission accomplished,” Richardson says. “But the process was a yawn.”

Ammo and an arrest
Five hours, one gun.

Before heading to a new address, the team circles back to the home of Marland Reed, whose daughter had answered the door a few hours earlier. The neighborhood is now illuminated by streetlights. Reed’s neighbor packs a bag full of baseball gear and her son into a BMW, pulls out for evening practice and asks whether everything is okay.

Reed is home. He tells agents the gun they’re seeking has been missing for years, but he has some ammunition in the garage that he took from the home of his recently deceased mother. Ammunition, even without a gun present, is illegal for him to have.

Coseglia explains to Reed that he is being arrested.

“I can barely breathe,” Reed says. “I’m shaking. . . . I have gotten beyond all of this, and I have sworn to my family they would never see me in handcuffs again.”

“I didn’t know this was a problem or I never would have told you to get it from the garage,” he tells Coseglia. “Now this is going to ruin my life.”

“It won’t ruin your life,” Coseglia says.

Reed is wearing sneakers and a sweatsuit. Coseglia asks if he has sandals and clothes that do not have drawstrings. To prevent suicide attempts, those items are prohibited in jail.

“We want to get him in and out as soon as possible,” Rodriguez tells Reed’s wife, who is pregnant. She will be able to post bail in the morning.

Minutes later, agents tuck Reed into the back of Torrez’s car. They had seized 350 rounds of ammunition from Reed, and it would be up to the local district attorney to decide whether to pursue charges.

The arrest highlights another concern state agents have about the list: While ignorance of the law is no excuse, people often don’t know they are on the list or what the restrictions are.

“The concept is a good idea, but we know that when the government goes to implement a good idea, it doesn’t always remain one,” says Craig DeLuz, a spokesman for the Firearms Policy Coalition, a gun-rights group in Sacramento, who thinks that people on the list should receive annual warning letters. “The biggest concern we have is how the list is administered.”

Discovery in a crowded closet
The next visit takes Richardson and Special Agent Powell into the bedroom closet of Tammy Luu, who arrived in the United States more than four decades ago by boat as a refugee from Vietnam.

Luu answers the door, and Coseglia asks if her son, Chris, is home. No, Luu says, he lives with his girlfriend. But she will call him.

Chris Luu had been convicted of theft in Arizona a few years ago, and entered a drug rehab program soon after. Agents had been tracking a pistol registered in his name.

She tells Coseglia she found it in his room after his arrest, and she hid it in the bottom of her closet. “It’s upstairs,” she says.

Photos of her husband, who had been brought to the United States during the Vietnam War to train with the Air Force as an F-5 pilot before fighting for South Vietnam, hang from her living room wall. He died 13 years ago, before Chris got into trouble.

Within minutes, Richardson is doubled over in Tammy Luu’s closet as piles of shoe boxes and dresses on hangers obstruct his search. “Are you sure he didn’t come back for it?” he asks.

Powell takes over the search, and when he pulls out a Tommy Hilfiger bag from the back, Luu signals that is the one. Inside is a gray plastic bag, and inside that a gray plastic box, and inside that a Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol.

There is no ammunition.

“I threw it away, right away,” she tells Richardson, who advises that, if there is a next time, to please save it and call the police to dispose of it. But the gun comes off the list, as does Chris Luu’s name.

When Coseglia hands Tammy Luu the receipt for the gun and tells her that she might have rights to it, she waves him off.

“I don’t want it,” she says.

Grinding away
The final stop is in Whittier, at an apartment complex where 24-year-old Ricardo Ramirez lives with a firearm. The team arrives, and Ramirez answers the door.

Something surprising happens. He has recently sold the gun, he tells agents, and on his iPhone he has pictures of the proper transfer papers.

Everything is in order. The gun comes off the list.

Eight hours, three guns off the list, 350 rounds of ammunition seized, one arrest.

“Three people out of the database in three different ways,” Richardson says. “A lot of this is just pounding the pavement, grinding away at the list.”

one side says this is the confluence of registration and jack-boots.

the other is this:


Man who killed Maryland officer was ordered to surrender guns 3 times in 5 years, records show

A community is mourning after an off-duty Maryland police officer was shot and killed while intervening in a domestic dispute at a neighbor's home Wednesday. Court records say the man who fatally shot a Maryland police officer earlier this week had been court-ordered to surrender his guns at least three times in the last five years.

The Washington Post reports three different judges ordered Glenn Tyndell to "immediately surrender all firearms" after they found his wife, ex-wife and child needed protection. Prince George's County Sheriff's Col. Darrin C. Palmer says Tyndell had told deputies he'd turn himself in Tuesday. He didn't show.

Prince George's County police say 37-year-old Tyndell shot Cpl. Mujahid Ramzziddin five times with a shotgun Wednesday when the off-duty officer attempted to intervene in a dispute between Tyndell and his wife. Tyndell then fled before being fatally shot by officers Luke Allen and Channing Reed, who have been place on paid leave.

Cpl. Ramzziddin will be laid to rest on Friday, according to the Prince George’s County Police Department. “Mujahid stood his ground to defend the life of the individual who had come to him for help,” Chief Henry Stawinski said. “He saved her life by giving his own. I’m extraordinarily proud of him.”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...-20180223-story.html

What a worthwhile use of taxpayer dollars and government employee time.

To me this is quite pathetic. A feel good liberal story. At this rate it will take 1,250,000 days to rid this country of those pesky guns...

There needs to be a wall separating Us from Them.

What happens in CA should stay in CA.

Feersum dreadnaught pretty much posted what I was thinking.

A two-sided coin. One side highlights the bad side of government agents "coming for our guns." Definitely not A Good Thing!

The other side sort of goes along with the argument that guns are not the problem, people are the problem. As in the recent Florida school shooting. Law Enforcement visited the shooter's house thirty-nine times. THIRTY-NINE! Additionally, there are documented public statements by the shooter, that he wanted to / intended to shoot up a school. Nothing was done to prevent this. Nothing. No intervention. This is pointed out as a Law Enforcement failure.

Yet, when guns are confiscated, we worry about violations of our Second Amendment rights.

What is the right answer? I have no idea, absolutely no clue.

In the Old Testament days, Solomon might have been able to answer the question. Unfortunately, he has been gone for thousands of years (although I did have an older cousin named Solomon who was a cop in Brooklyn, walking a beat, and solving neighborhood problems like his namesake did).

I'm pretty sure that every law enforcement agency is tasked with removing guns from prohibited persons and charging them accordingly. I have seized 8 stolen guns from prohibited persons in about 20 days. I'm voluntarily working more and more gun crime these days.

Guns most definitely are not the problem, it is the criminals. We keep saying that we want the bad guys not to have guns, and this is what that looks like.

The 39 visits to the kids house get's tossed around a lot. I'd like to know what where those 39 visits were about. I have not heard anything mentioned about that. Where they for the kid and his guns, domestics involving him, the neighbors or what. Just because the Police visited his house 39 times over a period of thime it doesn't mean it was for him or a gun. Could have been a sibling, mom and dad, a beef with the neighbor, loud parties, cars parked illegally, dog barking, a host of things other than something connected to guns.

Just off the top of my head, I think the confiscation of firearms possessed by those that are legally prohibited from having them, is a good thing. However, this is also a double edged sword, rife for exploitation.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:...
In the Old Testament days, Solomon might have been able to answer the question. Unfortunately, he has been gone for thousands of years ...

And he also said; "There is nothing new under the sun..."

The "problem" existed long before we had guns.

It existed with the first "recorded" family.

Cain murdered his brother.

It is a people problem, and the same "answers" that Solomon was able to discern, is available to us today.

The wisdom is here as well, one merely has to be honest about the issues, and then go from there drawing an honest line.

The end of those journeys will have you arriving at the correct conclusion.

Now, seeing the truth, and recognizing it, are a big part of that journey.

Sadly, trash pieces written about "awash in weapons", " gun violence ripples through this country" is far from truthful.


Those who want the guns gone want you, who choose to own guns, gone.

(I am not arguing the proper lawful procedure of taking guns from those whom are properly adjudicated to not peosses them.)

quote:

Originally posted by Bulldog7972:
The 39 visits to the kids house get's tossed around a lot. I'd like to know what where those 39 visits were about. I have not heard anything mentioned about that. Where they for the kid and his guns, domestics involving him, the neighbors or what. Just because the Police visited his house 39 times over a period of thime it doesn't mean it was for him or a gun. Could have been a sibling, mom and dad, a beef with the neighbor, loud parties, cars parked illegally, dog barking, a host of things other than something connected to guns.

I posted a long, drawn out reply in another thread that also touched on "it ain't illegal to be crazy unless you are a danger to yourself or others", and how mental health will take people who are obviously nuts and send them back home after being picked up for such hijinks because "that was then. Now, they are no longer a threat". EVERY town in America has a dude that the cops have been out to the house 39 times, and there is nothing by law that they can do. I know you have seen it many times and so have I. If the Parkland thing was mishandled, yeah that needs to be handled, but 39 calls and "the police failed to act" in most cases is actually "the police has nothing they can do by law". I deleted my post (twice) because I was for sure that someone would come along and try to claim I was making excuses for Mr. 39. I'm not and far from it.

The mental health laws in this country are broken, they are nonexistent and no one wants to fix it because it costs money. No one wants to keep anyone in jail because it costs money.

Not a fan of the propaganda, or the agenda, but the idea of collecting guns from those prohibited from owning them doesn't see bad on the face. From the way the article makes it sound like the team operates, this sounds like a responsible, thoughtful approach to the problem. Given that it is the PRK, I would worry much more about the names getting put on the list and what rationale is used. We saw some of that with plans to have the SSA putting folks on the list under the last white house occupant. Thank goodness we have a President now.

Wow - real genuine action heros.

I don't have a problem with what they're doing. We can hardly demand that government first enforce the laws on the books before adding additional burdens to law-abiding citizens, then complain when government does just that.

What I do have a problem with is this:

quote:

Reed is home. He tells agents the gun they’re seeking has been missing for years, but he has some ammunition in the garage that he took from the home of his recently deceased mother. Ammunition, even without a gun present, is illegal for him to have.

Coseglia explains to Reed that he is being arrested.

...

“I didn’t know this was a problem or I never would have told you to get it from the garage,” he tells Coseglia.

Good way to breed trust in law enforcement, officer

A more appropriate response would have been "Thank you for volunteering that. You realize you're not allowed to possess that, under law, right? We're going to let you slide, and simply confiscate it, but don't let it happen again."

All they've done is make themselves the enemy and encourage people to never volunteer anything to the cops.

Good going.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Feersum dreadnaught pretty much posted what I was thinking.

A two-sided coin. One side highlights the bad side of government agents "coming for our guns." Definitely not A Good Thing!

The other side sort of goes along with the argument that guns are not the problem, people are the problem. As in the recent Florida school shooting. Law Enforcement visited the shooter's house thirty-nine times. THIRTY-NINE! Additionally, there are documented public statements by the shooter, that he wanted to / intended to shoot up a school. Nothing was done to prevent this. Nothing. No intervention. This is pointed out as a Law Enforcement failure.

Yet, when guns are confiscated, we worry about violations of our Second Amendment rights.

What is the right answer? I have no idea, absolutely no clue.

In the Old Testament days, Solomon might have been able to answer the question. Unfortunately, he has been gone for thousands of years (although I did have an older cousin named Solomon who was a cop in Brooklyn, walking a beat, and solving neighborhood problems like his namesake did).

like you , I believe this is a 2 sided coin
and likely merits more discussion

(not sure I like the search and seizure part, have my doubts about that)


meanwhile, this comment bothers me a bit

quote:

The house where Barreto is supposed to be living appears empty. But it is monitored by video technology, which has made the agents’ job harder, serving as an early warning for those inside or who are about to return home. The cameras can send a feed to an owner’s cellphone.

video makes their job harder?

quote:

Originally posted by Warhorse:
Just off the top of my head, I think the confiscation of firearms possessed by those that are legally prohibited from having them, is a good thing...

I totally agree, but did any of the prohibited persons in the article strike you as major threats to public safety? Why not prioritize and go after MS-13 members or violent felons??

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:

quote:

Originally posted by Warhorse:
Just off the top of my head, I think the confiscation of firearms possessed by those that are legally prohibited from having them, is a good thing...

I totally agree, but did any of the prohibited persons in the article strike you as major threats to public safety? Why not prioritize and go after MS-13 members or violent felons??

This highlights the problem with forced gun control nicely; laws and regulations will have no effect on criminals, thugs, and ex-felons. The people that will be targeted first will be law abiding citizens, and low threat individuals, thereby leaving them defenseless while criminals have even less incentive not to target them. I also believe these “teams” are going to encounter the wrong type of individual possibly possessing vastly superior firepower, and the tactical advantage of knowing the layout of the property.

This wouldn't be a problem for me at all if I trusted gov't.

Would Gun Violence Restraining Orders be a solution. Family members get a path to stop potentially violent people.

The people being accused would have clear due process to restore their rights.

Seems like a win/win. At least as close as you can get in this situation. It the person, not the gun? Right?

A Gun-Control Measure Conservatives Should Consider

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:

quote:

Originally posted by Warhorse:
Just off the top of my head, I think the confiscation of firearms possessed by those that are legally prohibited from having them, is a good thing...

I totally agree, but did any of the prohibited persons in the article strike you as major threats to public safety? Why not prioritize and go after MS-13 members or violent felons??

Because it’s too hard. Not for the rank and file, but for the political leaders.