A Hennepin County corrections officer, now fired, and a Minneapolis schools cook have been indicted on federal charges that they conspired to buy guns on behalf of gang members involved in robberies and drug deals.
Three alleged gang members also were indicted Wednesday, including a man charged in the shooting that wounded an 8-year-old Minneapolis girl.
At least seven weapons, large amounts of ammunition and firearms magazines were purchased over several months, with orders often placed in coded conversations over jail telephone lines, according to an investigation by a task force led by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The weapons turned up in local crimes, and agents said they are not discounting the possibility that more guns will be traced back to the straw purchasers or another cell of buyers associated with the group.
Federal authorities said Wednesday this is the first large-scale conspiracy case involving the straw purchase of firearms to be prosecuted in Minnesota. They described it as unique because of the specific and repeated purchase requests that gang members passed along to the school employee and the corrections officer, who is now a fugitive.
"This was a partnership between straw purchasers who showed a pattern of buying particular weapons and ammunition that was very quickly turning up in criminal acts," said Scott Sweetow, the ATF special agent in charge of the bureau's St. Paul region.
People who buy firearms on behalf of those with criminal histories — who are prohibited from making the purchases themselves — are considered to be straw purchasers, a federal crime.
U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said his office is committed to getting illegal weapons "off the streets and out of the hands of violent criminals. Straw buyer prosecutions are one way to accomplish this."
Agents move in at four homes
Early Wednesday, about 50 ATF agents and task force officers searched four homes across the Twin Cities, arresting two of the three gang members, recovering two additional guns, firearms magazines and suspected crack cocaine. An ATF special response team, one of five such units across the country, was called in to execute a warrant at a home in Brooklyn Park because a gang member living there was considered extremely dangerous, Sweetow said.