State task force has made 4 major busts in year since its creation
By MATT BIRKBECK
Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2006 The Morning Call, Inc.
In May 2005, two men walked into A&A Sporting Goods in Tannersville, Monroe County, severely beat the owner and stole 62 guns and rifles while an accomplice acted as a lookout.
The weapons were sold to buyers in Philadelphia and New York.
Unbeknownst to the thieves, their crime drew the attention of the Firearms Trafficking Task Force, a special unit of agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and troopers from the Pennsylvania State police.
In March, the three alleged robbers, all from East Stroudsburg, were captured and now face conspiracy and armed robbery charges that could land them in prison for 35 years.
The arrests capped a year in which the task force solved four major gun robberies throughout the state, including the September arrests of five men who allegedly stole 188 guns from a Tioga County gun shop, one of Pennsylvania’s largest-ever gun thefts.
The success of the task force, say law enforcement officials, is directly attributable to the new-found cooperation between the ATF and state police, who joined the task force 15 months ago spurred, in part, by a federal mandate to reduce gun violence under President Bush’s Project Safe Neighborhoods program.
The partnership mixes the expertise of a federal agency with vast resources and the street smarts of state troopers better connected to the eyes and ears of local law enforcement.
“Looking across the state, gun violence is on the increase and we saw this as an opportunity to share resources with two premier law enforcement agencies. We are extremely pleased with the success of this so far,” said Lt. Joseph Reed, commander of the operations section in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Special Investigations Division, Harrisburg.
Five task force offices in Philadelphia, Reading, Lancaster, Pittsburgh and Erie were established, each manned by ATF agents and 24 state troopers.
In addition, there are liaison troopers in barracks throughout the state assigned to handle all gun matters.
“We’ve picked appropriate people to take part and have been rolling this out slowly over the past twelve months,” Reed said.
“They [state police] have a lot of resources that they bring to the table, including a solid intelligence component in Harrisburg,” said Tony Robbins, assistant special agent in charge at ATF’s Philadelphia field division, which covers the entire state and southern New Jersey.
Along with their early successes, the close working relationship has also broken barriers between two law enforcement agencies that otherwise wouldn’t work together so effectively, Robbins said.
“By blending in, we get their culture and they get us,” Robbins said. “And the intelligence they are getting from other troopers on the street is a great advantage.”
While the arrests in the four gun shop burglaries were a good start, Robbins and Reed said the ultimate goal of the task force is to limit the flow of illegal guns throughout the state, particularly Philadelphia, where most of the guns end up.
“This task force is designed for in-depth investigations rather than quick hits and we have a number of investigations going very well,” Reed said. “It was a good idea that we teamed up.”