Saturday, January 24, 2004

People Like This Don't Care About the Brady Background Check


Or One-gun-a-month, or licensing and registration, or "safe-storage" or any of the "sensible gun laws" that are supposed to make us "safer."
Raid leads to suspected drug dealer's arrest - again

A big-time local drug dealer is behind bars again after narcotics investigators raided his Villa Avenue home and found crack cocaine worth thousands of dollars, police said.

Vineland police said they will ask the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to prosecute the suspect, Richard Ellis, on the federal level where penalties are more severe and defendants must serve 85 percent of their prison sentences. Ellis, 41, was being held on $250,000 bail at Cumberland County
(New Jersey) Jail following his arrest Tuesday night by the police department's Narcotics Unit.

"We want this individual put away for a long time," Detective Stephen Cervini said. "He is a career criminal and a major drug dealer in the city. A search warrant was obtained because we developed information that the suspect was dealing drugs again from his home."

Detectives said they seized more than 8 ounces of crack cocaine valued at $8,000 to $10,000 along with a small quantity of marijuana. Assisted by a Millville police K-9 team, police said, they found 4 ounces of crack stashed in the gasoline cap of a car registered to Ellis' girlfriend in the back yard and another 4 ounces hidden under a nearby pile of leaves. More drugs were found in Ellis' bedroom, police said.

The girlfriend, Janelle Johnson, 25, was released on a $5,000 bail bond on charges of possession of drugs with intent to distribute.

The raid occurred while Ellis was out on a $5,000 bail bond following his arrest last March, for which he is awaiting trial on charges of possession of a handgun, a 9 mm assault weapon, two pounds of marijuana and 10 ounces of cocaine. At that time, detectives seized $7,000 and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from the Villa Avenue house.

Ellis has a long history with the criminal justice system.

In March 1998, he was sentenced to five years in state prison for possession and distribution of drugs in Cumberland County and received a concurrent three-year term for a similar offense in Atlantic County. He was released from prison in May 2001.

In April 2002, he was charged with violating parole and served another six months behind bars, according to N.J. Department of Corrections records.
Multiple repeat offender, repeatedly let out of jail, still gets his hands on all the drugs and guns that he wants. (Which goes to show the War on (some) Drugs™ works just as well as gun control does.)

Gun control will not disarm people like him, it merely disarms people like us, who are victims of the people this guy has as clients. I'm sure that (before he was arrested - again) he'd have made you a really good deal on a rock of crack and a gun.

No background check, no waiting period.

And no sales tax.