| Gun Tracing Program Helps Crack Case
Yonkers police traced a gun stolen from a fallen officer.
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Interagency linkages and gun tracing have helped lead to the identification, arrest, and extradition of a man believed to have killed a police officer in Virginia. And the gun tracing practices used grew, in part, from a Weed and Seed site's planning process.
On November 26, 2005, members of the Yonkers Police Department's (YPD's) Task Force, Safe Streets Initiative, saw a drug transaction in the Nodine Hill area. After a struggle with police, two men were taken into custody and 420 bags of marijuana were seized from a vacant apartment nearby. One man was charged with selling and possessing drugs and resisting arrest while the other was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, resisting arrest, and obstructing governmental administration.
The case did not end there, however. While searching the apartment, police found a Glock 17 9mm handgun that was reported stolen in Virginia in October 2005. YPD traced the weapon and learned that it had belonged to police officer Stanley Reaves of the Norfolk (Virginia) Police Department. Reaves was killed in the line of duty on October 28, 2005, and his gun was stolen at the time of the shooting.
YPD detectives identified the current owner of the gun, Thomas A. Porter, who was later arrested in White Plains, NY. He has since been extradited to Virginia to stand trial for the murder of Officer Reaves, and the Norfolk Police Department has recovered Reaves' handgun and a box of ammunition, thanks, in part, to the City of Yonkers' Weed and Seed site.
When Yonkers established its Weed and Seed site in 2004, the Weed and Seed planning process highlighted gun trafficking as a major local problem, which led YPD to expand its gun tracing efforts. The Weed and Seed planning process also led YPD to formally join the Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force that was convened by the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York, which further focused local efforts on reducing gun-related violence.
YPD's participation in these federally supported collaborations also led to an award of additional law enforcement funding from New York Operation Impact, a state-funded multiagency law enforcement initiative patterned after Project Safe Neighborhoods, which later provided additional funding for gun tracing. The strategies, linkages, and focus spurred by Weed and Seed worked in Yonkers to help bring a police officer's killer to justice.
For more information, contact:
Officer Roberta West
Yonkers Police Department
914-377-7352
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