by Patrick H. Moore
The authorities have known for some time that the criminal element in New York City must procure firearms from out-of-town, often from the South where guns can be purchased for about one-third of their going price in NYC, in order to satisfy its voracious gun habit. Two enterprising young men — Walter Walker from North Carolina and Earl Campbell from South Carolina — have been working hard to satisfy that need by buying up guns, including assault rifles, in their home states and transporting them to NYC for resale on Chinatown-based discount bus lines that don’t ask passengers for identification and pay little attention to the travelers’ luggage.
On Monday, the New York Police Department and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor announced that Walker and Campbell, along with 17 other individuals, have been arrested for firearms smuggling in a case that netted 254 weapons in 45 transactions since last year – the largest total from a gun case in recent memory. One of those arrested was the operator of a Brooklyn music recording studio where, according to the authorities, some of the deals took place.
Tom Hays at the Huffington Post, New York writes:
The case – built largely on the work of an undercover NYPD investigator and cellphone wiretaps – was a spinoff of a drug investigation in Brooklyn. Authorities said they discovered that Walker, 29, of Sanford, N.C. and Campbell, 24, of Rock Hill, S.C., were trafficking guns separately but using the same middleman in New York City.
According to the authorities, Walker and Campbell tapped a variety of suppliers in their hometowns. They obtained some of the guns on the black market, while others were purchased from gun dealers using straw buyers to get around one-gun-a-month restrictions.
In fact, Campbell complained on one of the wiretap conversations:
“The problem is that the gun laws passed now, so it’s like now I can only buy a gun from a gun store every 30 days. So I had to, like, pay different people to keep buying different guns.”
One of the guns was an assault rifle that was disassembled and transported in a girlfriend’s zebra-striped bag.
Although the arrests were announced on Monday,Walker and Campbell were actually arrested earlier this month in their home states.
Before heading to New York, Campbell would obtain photos of the guns his suppliers were offering and send the images to the undercover officer. Both defendants would travel to the city carrying a dozen or more handguns, rifles and shotguns at a time in bags that were stowed in luggage compartments of Chinatown-based discount carriers which are also favored by drug couriers.
One of the discount bus companies charges a mere $60 for a one-way trip from Raleigh, N.C., to New York, about half of what Greyhound would charge.
According to the indictment, Walker met two times last year with the middleman and the undercover officer at the Brooklyn recording studio to sell the black market firearms. He also allegedly sold weapons to the undercover officer in April in Manhattan.
Although Campbell was no doubt an experienced hand when it came to firearms, his girlfriend was less so. When the undercover met with Campbell and her in January, the girlfriend, who was carrying assault rifle parts in her zebra-striped suitcase, tried to assemble the weapon using an instructional video she called up on her smartphone. When this failed, the undercover officer bought the pieces anyway for $1,100.