THE BRONX — New Yorkers are most likely to see a derringer, a single-shot pocket pistol, on the screen, as a prop in a Hollywood Western. It's the kind of weapon that the outlaw keeps concealed in his vest pocket or sleeve, ready for a quick draw at a moment's notice.
But when police arrested Jamar Woodard, 29, for possession of a loaded short .22-caliber Colt Derringer last month, he was carrying it tucked in the crotch of his compression shorts because it wasn't big enough to stay securely in the waistband, the NYPD told DNAinfo.
Great arrest! by PO Collazo, Sgt Kolovic & Lt Felipe recovered this loaded firearm from #Monroe . #ONELESSGUN @NYCHA pic.twitter.com/8jmasT3BBI
— NYPD Housing PSA 8 (@NYPDPSA8) September 1, 2015Woodard and a small group of young men were drinking "purple drank," a concoction including prescription-strength cough syrup, near a community basketball game organized by the NYPD at the Monroe Houses in Soundview when three police officers spotted them.
Woodard looked nervous as Lt. Carlos Felipe, Sergeant Ivan Kolavic and Officer Jose Collazo approached him, Felipe said. Kolavic and Collazo arrested the suspect when he confessed to carrying a gun.
"He had it in his crotch, not on his waist," Felipe, who recovered the pistol, told DNAinfo New York. "It’s such a small gun that it would fall if you put in on your waist.” The snugness of the shorts Woodward was wearing kept the loaded weapon in place.
He told the officers that he had previously been stabbed and shot at, and that he carried the gun—which can hold only one bullet at a time—for protection. He said the gun belonged to his girlfriend's grandfather.
Woodard has been arrested multiple times for the sale of marijuana, said Felipe, whose team found marijuana on the suspect on Aug. 20.
The officers took Woodard to the 43rd Precinct, and then Police Service Area 8 for arrest processing. Woodard has since posted bail for $30,000, but it was unclear whether he was still in jail as of Wednesday afternoon.
Felipe said he has never encountered a Derringer on his beat before, but the palm-sized pistols seem to have made a comeback across the country over the last few years.
“There used to be almost none,” a former supervisory agent in the New York City Field Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), who retired in 2011, told Vocativ. In 2012, police recovered 97 Derringers in New York. That year, law enforcement recovered more than 2,000 Derringers nationwide, according to the AFT.
