Kendall Danielle Jones, one of 19 people arrested in the largest gun bust in New York City history, has pleaded guilty to three felony charges and will be going to prison for four years.
Last summer, authorities announced the results of a year-long undercover investigation, which found that two loosely associated groups had smuggled hundreds of guns from North and South Carolina, often transporting them in intercity buses. More details from the Charlotte Observer:
Taylor Vogt, spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Corrections, said Jones pleaded guilty to avoid facing trial on more charges for which she faced as many as 20 years in prison. In one of the alleged gun sales, Jones consulted a video on her cellphone as she tried to assemble an assault rifle at 8:10 a.m. at the busy corner of Grand and Chrystie streets near Chinatown in New York City, as thousands of commuters walked by on their way to their jobs. It is unclear what role, if any, Jones will play in the prosecution of the seven other defendants from Rock Hill… Since the arrests last summer, York County has not seen major gun arrests or other ongoing plots, officials with the York County Multijurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit said. The pipeline of guns and ammunition from South Carolina, which has more lax gun laws than New York, seemed to end with the arrests in Rock Hill… Jones took several trips to New York aboard a bus to Chinatown with her boyfriend, Earl Campbell, 24, of Rock Hill. Campbell is the alleged mastermind of the plot… Campbell, who remains jailed in New York, faces more than 200 felony counts that could result in a life prison term upon conviction. He has rejected an offer from prosecutors to plead guilty in exchange for a 30-year prison sentence, court records show, and he is next scheduled to appear in court Sept. 5.
It’s a shame that despite community opposition and cautionary words which are now proving prophetic; we’re apparently going to wait for something more serious to happen before this activity is moved to a depot or some more sensible policy is adopted. Yup, we’re saying we told you so!
So true but I am steadily getting the impression that many in the community here don’t really care all that much that they are living in a garbage dump of curbside buses with important safety and quality of life issues.
Otherwise more people would speak out and finally mobilize to do something substantial.
Without activism on this issue this awful situation will continue……
I guess progress is often a slow process; that being said I believe efforts are already underway as activism often starts with conversations like this which lead putting up sites like Save our streets and then on to the next thing.
However ineffective they may seem at the start they eventually reach a critical mass and then boom! Either the DOT, the bus companies themselves or some other entity is going do something proactive to blunt the deterioration of this situation or they’ll wait until some catalyzing event or simple festering activates people.
We need some clear case study subjects who’ve been directly and negatively impacted in some material ways combined with broader numbers of the community who may be more peripherally affected to take notice and engage, which will provide the basis for mobilization.