Posted: 4/28/2003 8:38:00 AM EDT
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Task force disarming violators RAIDS: The Inland team uses a database to find people who are prohibited from possessing weapons. 04/28/2003 By RICHARD BROOKS THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE SAN BERNARDINO - The revolver looked like it belonged on the hip of the security guard standing outside a Muscoy liquor store. But this guard had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and of being a felon in possession of a firearm, court records showed. Records also showed that a .44-caliber revolver was registered in his name and at his home address. Investigators obtained a search warrant for the man's home, where they confiscated 19 revolvers, pistols, rifles and shotguns. Fifty-year-old Bruce Vonfaulstich of Muscoy became one of the first people jailed this month by a new state and local task force that is cracking down on gun-possession violators in the Inland area. "We are specifically focusing on people who have violent crime issues as their prohibiting offenses (or have) mental health prohibitions," said Rich Twiss, acting commander of the Inland Empire Armed and Prohibited Task Force. "We feel, by focusing on those two areas, we can have a positive impact on public safety." The Armed and Prohibited Program stems from legislation authored by Sen. Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga. The law went into effect in July. Checking gun owners The heart of the project is a computer database that automatically checks the names of registered gun owners against the names of persons prohibited from possessing guns because of court convictions, domestic-violence restraining orders and mental health records declaring them to have been a danger to themselves or others. Roughly 170,000 California residents are forbidden to possess guns, and 10 percent of them live in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said Twiss. Police also have used the law to help crack down on gangs. On April 8, 150 officers -- about half borrowed from the Department of Justice -- served 17 armed-and-prohibited search warrants that directly stemmed from an investigation into a series of 10 gang-retaliation shootings during the past year in San Bernardino. Officers arrested 11 people and seized 15 guns, $8,000 in cash and drugs worth up to $4,000. Until then, evidence of any felony, which would allow them to pick up the suspects, had been hard to come by, officials said. And victims and witnesses didn't give investigators much information about the shootings because many had gang connections themselves, said Sgt. Brian Boom. However, the gun-possession laws enabled police to arrest some suspected gang leaders, Boom said. And that, he said, may eventually produce some spinoff effects. By taking some of the gang hierarchy off the street, Boom said, police hope to build trust among area residents, a trust that eventually will prompt them to share with police more eyewitness information about street crimes. Eight-member Inland team Administered by the California Department of Justice, the statewide program spawned its first regional task force March 1 in San Bernardino. The eight members include Twiss and another Department of Justice agent, two San Bernardino police officers, three San Bernardino County probation officers and a Riverside County probation officer. When investigators serve search warrants to recover guns registered to persons prohibited from owning guns, officers find an average of four times the number of guns that the person was known to possess, said Twiss. In the security guard case, firearm registration records showed that Vonfaulstich legitimately bought and registered a .44-caliber Smith and Wesson Model 629 in August 1981, a year before the first of his two felony convictions, San Bernardino police Officer Scott Roebuck wrote in the search warrant application. That particular gun wasn't seized when officers served the search warrant, court records show. But officers did confiscate four other revolvers, five semi-automatic pistols, six rifles and four shotguns when they searched Vonfaulstich's home in a former motel along the 3400 block of North Cajon Boulevard in San Bernardino, court recovers show. |