The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran stings in at least two cities that often relied on teenagers dealing stolen guns, according to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General.
The discovery was included in a review of the ATF’s use of undercover storefront operations–establishments masked as retail stores or tattoo parlors, staffed with federal agents looking to gather criminal intelligence and lure illegal activity.
At one ATF operation disguised as a clothing store in Wichita, Kan., the DOJ watchdog found that agents relied on a juvenile to facilitate 15 percent of all the illegal firearms purchased by the covert team.
The sting, code-named Operation Bandit Training, ran from November 2010 to September 2011.
A second hand store set up by the ATF in Pensacola, Fla. also relied on under-age gun dealers to facilitate criminal investigations.
One agent interviewed by the IG claimed that youth weren’t “encouraged” to sell more firearms after they came into the establishment. The probe found, however, that one teenager “in fact did sell 10 additional firearms to undercover personnel during the course of the storefront.”
The agent justified the tactic to the IG by noting: “because the juvenile claimed he had access to numerous firearms, the team decided ‘we’d rather get them in our possession than have him out there with’ the guns.”
The report shows that other storefront operations run by the ATF had different policies to respond to under-age patrons. In some cases, juveniles were discouraged from visiting the establishment or asked to leave.
“We found that ATF’s approach to juveniles at the storefronts was inconsistent,” the IG stated, noting that there were “few, if any” discussions from bureau headquarters on how the various storefronts should deal with minors.
The poor planning was one of a number of deficiencies highlighted by the IG in its probe of the ATF’s storefront operations, which was released on Thursday. The watchdog pointed to “inexperience, lack of specialized training…and lack of oversight” among other issues plaguing the sting operations.
Some storefronts were placed in locations that could have compromised the safety of nearby vulnerable populations. At the Pensacola operation, for example, agents were unaware of a nearby Salvation Army facility that housed a daycare center. In St. Louis, the ATF set up an undercover shop 600 feet from a Boys and Girls Club.
Beyond that, the watchdog criticized the bureau for not reviewing the efficacy of the storefront operations.
“We did not find evidence that ATF examined the impact of the operations to determine if they had achieved measurable success on the specific crime problems that they were designed to address,” the report adds.
Although the IG did not recommend shutting down the ATF’s storefront operations, it did question whether they were worth it. The report acknowledged that the stings resulted in numerous federal weapons and narcotics convictions, but those gains came “at considerable investment of manpower and financial resources.”
They also did not lead to the infiltration of criminal enterprises, nor did they yield useful criminal intelligence, the IG stated.
The probe was requested in 2013 following critical news reports of an ATF storefront operation in Milwaukee. An investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel uncovered the theft of firearms at the location, sloppy handling of sensitive information, and alleged targeting of individuals’ with disabilities.
