Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
The utter uselessness of government was further revealed earlier this week when the Department of Justice Inspector General issued a report on a series of idiotic and disastrous “storefront sting” operations the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducted in several large cities around the USA. Agents, paid with money stolen from productive and useful people, people entirely unlike said agents, set up storefronts with the intent of luring people with illegal guns inside where the agents would convince them to sell them those illegal guns, which the agents would buy with more money stolen from useful people.
If this idea sounds utterly imbecilic and doomed to fail, congrats, you’re too smart to work for the government. Not only did this seem like a good idea to the BATF, but it must have sounded like an awesome idea because they set up 53 of these so-called “storefronts” between 2004 and 2013. So, what could go wrong? Roughly everything.
“The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an expose in 2013 detailing some of the problems with the storefront operation conducted in that city. It found that agents overpaid for guns with taxpayer money, that guns were stolen from an ATF vehicle and that the storefront was burglarized. What’s more, agents left behind an operational plan at the store when they shut it down. The document included undercover agents’ names, vehicle descriptions, cellphone numbers and secret signals,” reads a portion of Todd Richmond’s piece in the Associated Press.
Other highlights of this boondoggle include agents in Pensacola not having a team outside the store to deal with people who left with illegal guns. That same “store” was burglarized once and there was no alarm installed. In St. Louis, agents set up their storefront 600 feet from a Boys and Girls’ Club. The report makes it pretty clear that many of the individual storefront stings were ran without much regard for the operational guidelines the BATF itself set forth; one of which was an order to remove daily “…all material that could compromise operational security.”
The report is rather lengthy and delves into the details of several individual storefront operations in specific cities. At the end are a series of recommendations for future storefront operations. Most of those involve writing better and more thorough operations manuals, and then actually following them. Government, being government naturally missed the best recommendation possible: don’t ever do this again and, on second thought, let’s disband the BATF altogether.
And, government being government, the report also includes a rationalization for his existence by BATF Deputy Director Thomas Brandon. Brandon pointed out that the BATF boondoggles in the five cities mentioned in the report prevented “more than 780” guns from entering the black market and resulted in “charging recommendations” against 120 people. Given the thorough, professional job the BATF did during those stings, I’m sure charges will stick against all 120 people. Totally. Brandon went on to rationalize the continuance of these idiotic storefront operations.
“While ATF agrees that enterprise-level cases and the development of investigative leads against organization leaders should be a goal of our enforcement efforts, we concurrently believe that community-impact operations such as storefronts are an appropriate and necessary option in the catalog of federal law enforcement techniques. Operations that directly benefit public safety, either predicated or broadly-targeted, should not be considered a ‘crude tool’, of law enforcement.” Brandon wrote.
In other words, catching the kingpins is hard, because they’re all smarter than government agents. So, setting up fake storefronts in hopes of luring in felons with guns they shouldn’t have and then arresting them, or recommending they be charged anyway, is way easier. Despite operating for nine years, the storefront operations failed to result in even one significant arrest. Yet, Brandon insists “organization leaders” are the target of these stings. So, is he suggesting that given, what, another nine years he might have been able to build a case against an “organization leader?” Does this sound woefully inefficient to anyone else?
I was unable to find any breakdown as to how much these idiotic sting operations cost us taxpayers, but it bears mentioning that the BATF’s total budget for FY 2012 was $1.15 billion, or about $10 per taxpayer. At that rate, we didn’t get our money’s worth.
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