PUTTING CHICAGO UNDER THE GUN
As far as federal authorities know, Willie Biles never shot anyone with the handguns he purchased legally from Indiana gun shops.
But it could be years before all the damage is tallied from criminal acts resulting from his reckless resale of the weapons that wound up in the hands of Chicago hoodlums.
U. S. District Judge Sara Ellis reminded Biles of that before sentencing him Thursday to two years in prison.
“You had absolutely no idea where those guns were going, how they would be used or where they would end up,” the judge said, calling Biles “exceedingly irresponsible.”
Ellis said she would have sentenced Biles without hesitation to the five- year maximum prison term sought by federal prosecutors if not for the fact he suffers from end- stage renal disease that might require a kidney transplant.
It was more compassion than Biles deserved.
Yet it’s the frightening simplicity of Biles’ crime that compels me to write about him, not any imbalance in the scales of justice.
As the death toll from Chicago street violence mounts, we search for answers in the abundance of handguns, many of us imagining sophisticated arms dealers distributing large caches of weapons.
The truth looks more like Biles, a mope with no prior criminal record of note who turns 45 this coming week.
By his own admission, when Biles needed money, the Indianapolis resident would visit a licensed gun dealer in that state and buy some cheap handguns.
By law, he could buy as many as he wanted as long as he filled out the paperwork that said he was purchasing them for his own use.
Then, Biles would throw the guns in a bag and take the Megabus to Chicago, where prosecutors say he resold them at markups of more than 200 percent from the front porch of his brother’s home near Chicago and Central Park avenues.
The guns were bought by people happy to pay the exorbitant price to evade laws intended to keep firearms out of the wrong hands, said Assistant U. S. Attorney Christopher Parente, who noted that buying from Biles meant “no background checks, no waiting periods, no paper trail.”
Of 29 guns Biles is known to have purchased, prosecutors said 12 have been recovered from crime scenes — including one used in the attempted murder of a police officer.
The officer was running after a carjacking suspect when the man turned, pointed a loaded gun at his chest and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the gun jammed.
In another case Parente described, police responding to a tip arrested a man with a gun in his pocket who told them he was waiting to kill someone who had beaten up his brother.
Other Biles guns were recovered from gang members, convicted felons and drug stash houses.
That still leaves 17 unaccounted for, any of which could be used in a crime, the judge said.
In a rambling, dissembling presentation at his sentencing, Biles said he “was never trying to hurt anybody.”
He said he resold some of the guns in Indiana, not Chicago, as if that would keep them from turning up here.
David Coulson, spokesman for the Chicago office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told me Biles is typical of the straw purchasers involved with most of the guns recovered from Illinois crimes, though he accounted for higher volume than most.
“We see this often where obviously there’s a market in Chicago for guns,” Coulson said. “Maybe they start with one or two, and then they see they can make money.”
Outside the courthouse, I asked Biles how all those guns came to be in bad guys’ possession. He pulled his Superman hoodie over his head and escaped into traffic.
The judge told Biles she didn’t want to impose a prison term that could turn into a death sentence by denying him proper medical treatment.
It would be a miracle if Biles hasn’t already played a role in passing that very sentence on some Chicagoans.
OF 29 GUNS BILES IS KNOWN TO HAVE PURCHASED, PROSECUTORS SAID 12 HAVE BEEN RECOVERED FROM CRIME SCENES.