By Jon Schuppe and Joe Valiquette
DNAinfo Reporters/Producers
MANHATTAN — Since Ronald B. Turk arrived a year ago as the special agent in charge of the New York field division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, his office has investigated a Washington Heights drug gang called the Trinitarios, a .380 Beretta used in an Upper West Side shooting rampage, and a stolen MAC-10 used by a street vendor in a Times Square gunfight with police.
All in a day's work for a "small town country boy from Texas."
In two decades at the ATF, Turk has seen gun smugglers change their buying patterns to avoid detection, while the agency's approach to catching them has remained the same. Agents trace guns back to their original points of sale, watch for bulk purchases and match guns to bullets and shell casings found at crime scenes.
Most of the work is done at the New York Crime Gun Center, an anonymous-looking warehouse that's one of the country's most sophisticated gun-tracing laboratories.
It's staffed with ATF agents, NYPD detectives and State Police investigators who scrutinize every illegal gun recovered in the city. Guns that took less than two years to end up in a crime are flagged for a deeper look.
“We will do a follow-up investigation, anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world, to find out how that firearm came to New York City,” Turk said.
Turk joined the ATF in 1989 after serving in the U.S. Air Force. He began as a street agent in Trenton, N.J., then went South for postings in Washington D.C., Kentucky and Tennessee.
He arrived in New York in January 2009, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in the middle of an aggressive campaign against illegal guns and sought to make it easier for local police to obtain federal gun data. The mayor has sent private investigators to southern gun shops to show how easy it is to buy weapons for use here.
Turk won’t comment on those moves. He said he’d rather work with the NYPD to catch criminals.
“We do everything we can to stay out of the political realm and stick with the law enforcement realm,” he said.
Turk said his main target remains the city’s street gangs, like the Trinitarios, which arm themselves for battles over drug turf. That has the ATF working closely with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and other state and local agencies.
“There’s a lot of gangs in New York City, and most of them are carrying guns, and most of them are committing violence,” Turk said. “That’s a particular concern to ATF nationally, and that’s my concern here in New York.”
