The CCW Expose Project

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Acrobat is used extensively due to it's "clean printing" - these files do far more good ON PAPER and in use by the mainstream media, legislators, activists, lawyers, etc.  Preaching to the choir only goes so far!

* CONTACTING THE WEBMASTER and filing reports (EMail or Fax, anonymous OK).

* California "Statewide Material"
    = STATEWIDE RACIAL DEMOGRAPHICS DATA
    = Issues originating with the state Attorney General and Cal-DOJ. (NEW ITEM added 7/18/02 - LAWSUIT FILED!)

* Reports On Local Agencies written by Jim March:
    = Marin County: Government Employees Win 3 to 1
    = City of Oakland: Zen And The Art Of CCW Abuse
    = Contra Costa County Gun Permit Corruption (or: The Rupf Follies)
    = Sacramento County materials (the "open letter' should be read first)
    = Alameda County and STATE SENATOR DON PERATA!
    = San Francisco Sheriff's Office CCW Stupidity
    = Sean Penn's permit through a small Marin town

* How the California data is being gathered (Public Records Act, our version of the FOIA)

* Abuses In Other States (with the same discriminatory rules)
    = Florida's pre-reform (1987) abuses
    = New York, NEW YORK (barf alert)9/30/02, just added a new expose by Newsday that's a must-see!

* Et tu, FEDS?  An apparant case of a "crony honorary US Marshall" packin' in DC with Federal "CCW"

* Media Reports On California CCW Abuse
   = Sheriff says 'gun nut' concealing the truth - Being in the Posse doesn't guarantee weapons permit - Tri-Valley Herald (Southern Contra Costa County) 3/17/02
    = Sheriff denies politics with permits - Fresno Bee, Fresno County, 1/15/95
    = San Joaquin County - whole series of articles in the Record, FBI involved, one arrest so far.
    = Los Angeles Sheriff's Office - series of 3 reports from 1999 - WILD
        scandal included the sale of permits to campaign contributors, plus
        full-tilt law enforcement authority (versus the more common "under
        the table" sort of de-facto law enforcement "trappings" for cronies.)

* Historical and legal info on CCW - including how to fight it in court based on current equal protection law.

STATEWIDE RACIAL DEMOGRAPHICS DATA: your odds of having a permit depend in large part on whether or not your county of residence has a high black population.  By a FIVE TO ONE MARGIN!
More of this coming, I want more recent numbers off of DOJ plus the lawsuit will allow detailed Hispanic analysis.

NEW ITEM 7/18/02 - I've filed a full-tilt LAWSUIT over the problems at the state AG/DOJ - that has it's own page, click here for a description & the full filing!  If you're just starting, this and the pleading covers most of the same info as the three reports below.

NEW 5/22/02: CCW Abuse: The Cover-up At The California State AG/DOJ’s Offices
This is NOT A DRILL, folks.  Senior officials within the state DOJ, and AG Lockyer personally, took illegal steps to cover up equal protection violations, in a criminal conspiracy with top law enforcement officials.  They trampled a California Supreme Court decision in order to pull this off.  This is serious smokin' gun time, folks, and deserves the harshest possible response.6/20/02: we now know for sure this didn't involve the current DOJ Firearms Division director or staff - the entire division was created after the 1999 cover-up.  Whether or not mistakes on the part of this process were deliberate on the part of any DOJ staff is an open question; I still think that some of the PD Chiefs and Sheriffs involved acted in bad faith which is why I'm still calling it a cover-up.

NEW 6/20/02: AG/DOJ Aftermath: Repercussions From The First Report - The report above "got their attention" in spades; on 6/19/02 a meeting took place, this report describes that and discusses the fallout and future steps.

NEW 7/13/02: AG/DOJ Follies: Reply to my DOJ PRAR Denial Letter - Part 3, in which I get denied CCW data that Cal-DOJ is sitting on and won't cough up on the flimsiest of pretenses.  Their scanned denial letter is included, as is my response.  I wasn't a happy camper :).  They won't be either, when they see this.

Marin County: Government Employees Win 3 to 1 - 11/26/01.  Documents a long slew of illegal procedures in issuance, and some fairly obvious bias.  No overt racism or corruption.  This was the first of the series, and contains a good overview of how CCW law in Calif under current statutes and case law is supposed to work.  Not as "fun" as some of the others, but important for any serious student of CCW abuse. Available only as an Adobe Acrobat (ver. 3.0 or greater) .PDF file, so download the free reader (ver. 5) at the link above.

City of Oakland: Zen And The Art Of CCW Abuse - 12/11/01.  This is the shortest and by far funniest expose to date.  I won't spoil it for you - this one is a must-read HOOT :).  Link is HTML, easy-printing Acrobat .PDF is linked from there.

Contra Costa County Gun Permit Corruption (or: The Rupf Follies) - 2/18/02.  This is the biggest report, and does the most damage.  Documents a fairly obvious pattern of corruption.  It's also the only report to have gathered mainstream media attention, and a specific denial by the head of the targeted agency that fell hilariously flat - see also "Sheriff says 'gun nut' concealing the truth" article described under "Media Reports" below. The Rupf report is only available as an Acrobat .PDF, same as the Marin report. (Supplement: "The Contra Costa Cronies Roster" - A funny, sarcastic, angry look at Sheriff Rupf's real-world issuance policies, using Public Records Act data. This is basically scanned documents of Rupf's "good cause statements", pretty funny stuff.  Also a .PDF file (needs Acrobat).

An Open Letter To The Sacramento Sheriff's Office - 4/12/2002, by Jim March. This is sort of a "mini-report" on problems there, with a full report coming later.  This county is among the very worst with regards CCW.  Other Sacramento material: The Colafrancesco Papers, 1994 (Acrobat file, see top of this page for free reader). This was the first real look into the problems inherent in the CCW system.  It's mind-blowing - an officially documented confession to bribery of top law enforcement officers in exchange for a CCW permit.  James Colafrancesco was drunk, and had threatened somebody during a verbal argument by making his concealed pistol visible in a hostile manner.

Don Perata's CCW Application Letter (current).  This hilarious document got picked up on Drudge at one point - Perata is one of the state's top grabbers.  I obtained this from the Alameda County Sheriff's office via the Public Records Act.

NEW 5/22/02: San Francisco Sheriff's Office CCW Stupidity.  The only ONE PAGE expose!  When I filed a Public Records Act Request against this agency, I asked for the CCW issuance data, and the "local policy manual" on how they're handling this stuff - which is required of the agency by state law.  We also have case law in Salute vs Pitchess that says that they have to consider people, and per the CCW statutes Sheriffs MUST be involved with the process.  So pull up this one page, and try and spot just how many different laws these fools admit to breaking :).

NEW 5/5/03: SEAN PENN'S CCW!  Penn is known as a lunatic with numerous violent episodes.  Dude has more "issues" than the National Geographic, mainly involving anybody holding a camera.  Whether or not he could legally obtain CCW isn't yet established either way, but just the fact that this nut scored is a joke.  I'll show you two links to web discussion forums that show the whole thing here, here (2nd page of that thread) and here, plus this link to his actual application material at www.thesmokinggun.com.

More coming!  The info for the reports are being gathered using the California Public Records Act (our version of the Fed FOIA) - see also http://www.ninehundred.com/~equalccw/superprar.html for the boilerplate form in use.

The Strange Case Of Howard Pearl: Discretionary Abuse In Florida Before 1987.  One question has always been "is this sort of abuse a pure California phenomenon?".  Seems not.  The "elitism" shown here would fit right in to the California scene, and shows why the Florida legislature was correct in reforming the process in 1987 to "shall issue" (objective standards with background check and training).

New 11/25/02: Et Tu, AEROSMITH?  More evidence of sales of CCW permits...sigh, I like this band, too!

New 9/30/02: Newsday does a MAJOR spread on CCW abuse in NYC, using new data.  "Cleared to Carry in City - Permit totals drop, but not for notables" is one of the best major-media exposes to date.  Plus a companion editorial.  HOT.

MORE NY/NYC material:

("New York City gun laws are so strict that applicants must show a 'need or special danger'," reports Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation in his 1996 book "Politically Correct Guns." When the Wall Street Journal won a court suit in 1981 requiring New York Police to release the names of the chosen few who had been granted pistol permits, the city revealed more than 9,000 non-police city employees had been granted this privilege which is withheld from the average New Yorker. It was subsequently revealed permits had also been issued to such "celebrities" as Laurance Rockefeller, Uri Geller, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, Howard Stern, Joan Rivers, and anti-gun New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger.) - Columnist Vin Suprynowicz, 1999, linked here.

Attorney Suzanne Novak published an entire law review article on the city's system in 1998, explaining how it doesn't even begin to meet the legal standards the state judiciary has placed on similar "discretionary" functions, and containing juicy details on misconduct officially recorded to that date, including a $10,000 fine to one member of the brass who abused the system on a "crony basis".  It's available in html (click here) or as an Acrobat Reader file here.

The Boston Globe article "ELITE IN NYC ARE PACKING HEAT" (1/8/1993) is a neat overview of the obvious cronyism going on. I know who CD Tavares is, so this is probably accurate but of course not official.  I'm trying to get an official copy.

I'm tracking a rumor that Donald Trump managed to score a permit in one day flat :).

Sheriff says 'gun nut' concealing the truth - Being in the Posse doesn't guarantee weapons permit - Tri-Valley Herald (Southern Contra Costa County) 3/17/02.  Despite the annoying title, this article on the fallout from the "Rupf Follies" report above shows that my allegations were if anything understated.  The Herald dropped the original report from the web, the link is to a web-forum where the full text was re-printed and various people added comments.  A must-see.

Sheriff denies politics with permits - Fresno Bee, Fresno County, 1/15/95.  Shows yet another way to establish racial imbalance in CCW issuance: look for a county with a high Latino population, and do demographics analysis based on the last names of approved and denied permit applicants.  Lots of other problems too, of course.

10/13/02:BREAKING NEWS!
A wild political corruption scandal has broken in San Joaquin County - the FBI has made one arrest of a minor county official, who is also a crony of Sheriff Baxter Dunn, also under investigation.  Charges so far include witness intimidation by the armed CCW holder currently in Federal Custody!
I can't take credit for the investigation/arrests, but I now know why Dunn blew off my CCW Public Records Act Request six weeks ago - which the FBI now knows about :).  This is the FBI's first involvement with any CCW abuse scandal.
CLICK HERE FOR THE SERIES OF REPORTS BY THE STOCKTON RECORD

Los Angeles Sheriff's Office - three 1999 LA Times articles on a crazy scandal involving the sale of full-tilt reserve law enforcement status for cronies, and how the "executive reserve unit" collapsed as 10% of the "unit" (2 out of 20) was arrested for felonies.  Adobe Acrobat PDF file.

More coming!

NEW CASE 5/28/02:Et tu, FEDS?  An apparant case of a "crony honorary US Marshall" packin' in DC.  For years, we've heard rumors of a "Federal CCW Permit", sometimes connected with the phrase "Honorary US Marshall".  We know that Dianne Feinstein had a California CCW as Mayor (and prior, issued 1977 by San Francisco PD) and gave it up when she went to DC - despite still having a legal California residence.  Why give up the California CCW?  Rumors say it's because she scored national carry privileges in DC.  Can I prove it?  No, but now I can prove something similar is going on, via the strange case of Herb Bryant (summary on a police abuse expose website).  I also have the official court transcript on the matter - as you can see, the Judge seemed to realize that once this guy's "crony carry privilege" proved embarassing to Federal law enforcement, they hung this dude out to dry.

5/29: After doing that initial broadcast, somebody pointed out a DOJ memo from Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger advising that Honorary US Deputy Marshall status for purposes of gun carry was probably illegal (separation of powers problem) dated May 1994.  The memo's existence strongly suggests that it did happen, at least back then. View the memo at it's original source here (http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/depmar.htm) or I've also reproduced it in a thread with relevent discussion on TFL (highly recommended supplemental read).

First, just because a DOJ lawyer condemned the practice doesn't mean they stopped.  They may also have "grandmothered in" existing legislator permitholders; DiFi went to DC prior to May 1994 and her name crops up more than any others in rumors on this subject.  Would you want to be the bureaucrat that told DiFi she couldn't pack?!

Second, even if they followed Mr. Dellinger's advice, this wouldn't stop other instances of "crony issuance" exactly like what the Bryant case suggests.

Third, even without permits, the extreme "kid glove handling" of Gary Condit during the Shaundra Levy investigation by DC Police raises questions about what they'd do if they found a Congresscritter or other high official packin?  Instances of "looking the other way" even inside Federal facilities is another "rumor mill legend" but as you can see already, the "Federal carry privilege rumor" turned out to have a pretty solid core of truth to it.

More digging here is in progress :).