(courtesy gtalogo.com)

“Three New York Police Department commanders, including a deputy chief, were arrested early Monday, along with a Brooklyn businessman, on federal corruption charges stemming from one of several continuing investigations into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign fund-raising,” nytimes.com reports. While the investigation highlights the core corruption of Big Apple “leaders” — who use armed police for protection while blocking citizens from exercising their right to bear arms — let’s get straight to the ballistic heart of the matter:

The court papers in the case detail lavish gifts the two senior police officials are accused of receiving in exchange for taking official action: a trip to on a private jet to Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend in 2013, accompanied by a prostitute, expensive meals and free overseas and domestic trips, and the referral of business to a security company associated with one of the officials. The sergeant was charged in a separate but related scheme that involved aiding applicants for firearms licenses, the papers said.

Oh do tell! (We’ve been following this story since May.) How much does it cost to bribe your way to a concealed carry license in The City The Never Sleeps? At the risk of being “that guy,” what did Donald Trump pay to get his carry permit? Meanwhile, you didn’t really expect The New York Times to go into detail about the bribes-for-permits scandal did you? Especially as their publisher and his son have one of those golden tickets. So here’s newsday.com:

Former Sgt. David Villanueva of the NYPD Licensing Division was charged separately in a scheme that involved aiding applicants for firearms licenses, the court papers said.

Alex Lichtenstein, “an expediter” who charged fees to obtain gun licenses for clients, was accused of paying thousands of dollars in cash bribes and other benefits to Villanueva, those court papers said.

Police Officer Richard Ochetal, who also worked in the pistol licensing section, was charged in a third set of court papers with accepting thousands of dollars in bribes to expedite approvals, those court papers said.

The court papers made no connection between Ochetal and Villanueva.

“We will refrain from commenting until an official announcement has been made,” the NYPD said in an email statement.

And after that too, I imagine. So let me be clear about this: only those with money and connections have the ability to exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms in New York City. Everyone else is disarmed in the face of criminal, crazy or terroristic threats to life and limb.

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33 COMMENTS

  1. The wealthy in NYC use lawyers in the permit process. This gives them plausible deniability and atty client priviledge.

    • That will not keep the lawyers out of jail. And client privilege goes right out the window with criminal conspiracy

  2. To PROTECT [our bosses, our scams, our ability to rule over the unarmed, but ignore or just harrass the public] and SERVE [up violence and crime that the plebes cannot stop].

    Ah, the virtuous boys in blue…

  4. This is what happens with May issue permit processes. Ripe for corruption. Of course they accepted bribes. Why wouldn’t they. I bet that every person that works in the pistol licensing division accepts bribes. They probably paid a bribe ro be assigned to the pistol licensing division so that they could accept bribes. Police beurocrats. Double corrupt. We should expect no less.

    • Considering the article showing that it’s already happening, that would be proof that the licensing office was rife with corruption as well.

  5. It is the way “the system” has always worked. This is also one of my main frustrations with people that think communism and socialism is great for everyone. There will always be the haves and the have nots. There will always be those that cheat and get ahead. There will always be those that have an angle on any game and an advantage in any conflict. It is just the law of nature I think, especially with human nature. As long as there are humans there will cheating, deception, lying, and forgery.

    • You cannot expect the elite ;liberal-progressives to actually rub elbows with the riffraff.
      It would soil their fine expensive $12,000 jackets and dirty their hands.

      • Now that that bust has gone down, I wonder what the ‘Street Price’ on a carry permit has risen to now?

        • Need an Uber for firearms. I’d bet duber is reducing the price of a taxi medallion in NYC. Similar (or even more) corrupt system.

  7. I don’the see how anyone in either political party can see stories like this and not comprehend that we are only as free as the government decides to let us be. Wealthy above working class because they can afford bribes. We have to get away from this childish D vs R insanity and get back to “We the People”.

  10. The Feds need to investigate the Alameda county CA sheriffs dept. Betcha they find New York levels of corruption in the pistol permitting department.

    • It’s all “Chicago Level” corruption. Not even Vegas can compete, although Vegas and NJ try real hard, don’tchu you little pockets of POS.

      There’s a couple of places that get my vote for subjugation, I gotta see if my representatives can cut off heating oil and natural gas to these places, water to Vegas. People gotta be safe in their homes, heating oil and natural gas and water kill more people every day. I know these things are needed, but people should have to go through a background check to see if they support jacking with the states that provide them these resources that allow them all to live piled up on each other like a ball of snakes. They need waiting periods, permits, they need to be denied if they’ve ever been under an investigation, or if they’ve answered positively to certain liberal_progressive_communist (D) surveys.

      These people need to be compelled to give up their first amendment rights until we can determine if they’re not out to destroy America.

  11. Everyone who lives in NYC knows that it’s a totally corrupt place. They live there because they either benefit from the corruption, or hope to work their way up to partake in it. It is the dump of America; time to build a wall around, and include DC.

  12. NY is a piss ant small state, NYC although an amazingly large pile of poo, is an even smaller place.

    They don’t trust some of their population. We don’t trust any of them.

    We sure as hell don’t need them to try to ‘fix’ us with their broken sh_t.

  13. Why do the gun control folks so desperately want to disarm only poor peopl? That seems like discrimination – double-plus discrimination when black, latino, and other ethnic groups are dispropprtionately poor. Don’t we go by “disparate impact” to determime discrimination these days?

    Wait, this is how it worked in the “may issue” / “don’t you dare let ‘those people’ have guns” Jim Crow south. It”s just the same people continuing their same old game. My mistake.

  14. Saw this on Stossel. He was whining about being denied a permit(unlike Trump,Hannity or Howard Stern). “Cause he didn’t bribe anyone. Oh well boys…

  15. Headline correction: It might be a “Scheme”, but it isn’t a “Scam”, People paid their money and in return got what they paid for.

    it was the only way the politically unconnected could obtain Constitutional Rights in NY, by buying them on the black market.

    • Are we sure that everyone who paid actually got what they paid for? If you illegally bribe a city official or police officer and they do not deliver, who do you complain to?

  17. bet all the cops involved will “retire” immediately with pension and hence collect a healthy paycheck/healthcare until they die to support them and their families, all at the taxpayers expense for a job “well done”. Unions are the scourge of a functioning capitalist system, and the reason these civil servants are able to get away with this crap for so long.

  18. ” Meanwhile, you didn’t really expect The New York Times to go into detail about the bribes-for-permits scandal did you? Especially as their publisher and his son have one of those golden tickets.”

    Source please? TIA!

  19. Hardly surprising that you need to wealthy, connected and willing to give bribes to get a pistol permit in NYC. I have to assume to same “business” goes on in all may issue states.

    Of course I have to wonder what is going on in the “shall issue” state of Colorado, 71 days and counting in El Paso county for my CCW. I think it is a case of bureaucrat-itis, we have 90 days to process so F*** you we are taking 90 days. How long could it take to run a background check and mail a plastic card? When I had an Arizona CCW it took 8 days and that was processed from DPS not the local Sheriff. The comentor above is correct, we are only as free as the local bureaucrats allow us to be…..

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