The feds would like the public to file all their law enforcement efforts under “Your Tax Money Hard at Work.” But sometimes you gotta wonder. For example, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is today touting the work of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATFE) and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. Their combined efforts resulted in a five-year jail sentence for one William David Oxford for “drug trafficking, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and possession of a sawed-off shotgun and a poorly-assembled homemade device (improvised explosive device/ ‘IED‘).” Did you catch that last bit? Why would the DOJ want to tell taxpayers that Oxford’s bomb was “poorly made”?
Had this defendant successfully assembled the device that he sold to a confidential informant, it would have been capable of causing serious harm. He put together a device made of PVC pipe that contained gun powder, live .22 caliber ammunition, and hypodermic needles. The device, however, was inoperable because it was poorly assembled. Thanks to good law enforcement work, agents arrested this defendant before he perfected his bomb-making skills.
And if my grandma had wheels she’d be a trolley car. Anyway, so sayeth scalp-waving United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. And just in case you think the cops should have jerked Oxford’s chain before all this IED stuff (a weapon clearly beyond his capabilities), Special Agent in Charge Gregory Gant of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Atlanta Field Division was quick to make the case.
“As a drug-dealing felon, Oxford was a worthy law enforcement target.”
So maybe just the drugs and the gun, then, and skip the whole ATFE deal?
According to United States Attorney Yates, the charges and other information presented in court: In August 2009, OXFORD, a previously convicted felon, sold methamphetamine to a law enforcement informant on four different occasions, and on three of those dates OXFORD also sold guns to the informant, including a sawed-off shotgun, and the deficiently assembled bomb.
I smell entrapment. I mean, why didn’t they just nail him after the first meths deal? A meths dealer perfecting bomb-making skills? Sometimes, enough is enough.
