Government watchdog Judicial Watch has sued the City of Phoenix Police Department over documents surrounding a 2013 gang-style assault on an apartment complex. Long-guns, a handgun, empty casings and buildings riddled with bullets were reported at the scene and two people were wounded in the incident. When the incident occurred and during investigation afterward, police worked with federal law enforcement agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency in the case, raising suspicions the assault wasn't simply a typical, local gang shootout and prompted questions about the details of the people involved in the shooting in addition to where the weapons that were used came from. Suspects were arrested in the weeks following the incident.
Judicial Watch is seeking all records and communications between Phoenix police and the federal agencies involved. It is suspected the weapons used in the incident are connected to Operation Fast and Furious.
A. Complete copy (including supplements) of Phoenix Police Department report 201-3-01-344558 (621 N. 3Oth Pl., Phx. AZ on or around July 29, 2013). Including but, not limited to copies of crime scene photographs, impound property invoices, audio interviews, case status reports, booking slips, charging documents, and Maricopa County Attorney court /trial/case disposition records.
B. Copies of related Phoenix Police Department, ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and/or Homeland Security reports as documented in DR 2013-01344558. Including but not limited to copies of related Phoenix Police, ATF, DEA, FBI and/or Homeland Security search and arrest warrants, affidavits, photographs, audio interviews, booking s1ips, charging documents and property invoices created and/or served on or around August 22, 2Ol-3 at locations on Quail Track Dr. and Monterosa St. related to DR 2013-01-344558.
“We have little doubt that Fast and Furious guns are behind the crazed gun assault last summer in Phoenix,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “Eric Holder admitted that his agency’s Fast and Furious guns would continue to be used for crimes for years to come. That is his real legacy as Attorney General, and we are confident that our lawsuit in Phoenix will expose yet another cover-up of Fast and Furious tragedies by the Obama administration.”
Thousands of guns trafficked into Mexico through Operation Fast and Furious are in the wrong hands and have the potential to make their way back into the United States as drug traffickers and cartel members regularly travel back and forth. Because ATF purposely lost track of the guns they allowed to be trafficked across an international border, the only way to find them is when they are left at bloody crime scenes in Mexico or in the U.S., just as they were left at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010 and Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez in 2012. Hundreds of Mexican citizens have been killed as a result of the lethal program.
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