[LawEnforcementToday] According to an AGG report, William Stewart Boyd traded his father’s old .38 caliber Smith & Wesson snub nose for less than $100 in a gun buyback in 2004. It was supposed to be destroyed, but somehow the same handgun with serial number J515268 was found next to a dead body involved in a police shooting eight years later.Boyd, a judge in Cook County, had taken the handgun to a South Side church in Chicago, Illinois where he handed it over to a pair of plainclothes officers with badges on their belts.
“I’m doing the right thing,” he said in an interview with Chicago’s Sun Times, “and, in the process, someone didn’t do what they were supposed to do. That calls into question the process. What’s happening after you turn these weapons in?”
Great question – somehow, this Smith & Wesson .38 ended up in the hands of 22-year-old felon and gang member Cesar Munive – a man previously convicted of sexual abuse of a minor, unlawful use of a weapon, and battery.
During an interaction with the police in July 2012, Munive was shot and killed by Cicero (Illinois) Officer Donald Garrity.
Judge Boyd, rightfully, wants to know how the gun got into the hands of Munive.
There’s some grey area in that story. Officer Garrity has a long history of disciplinary problems and is currently collecting a disability pension for PTSD. Garrity was disciplined for using a “high powered rifle” during a traffic stop, threatening another officer, and was stopped once for going 90 mph in a 30-mph zone.
He was previously with the Berwyn Police Department and was hired by Cicero in 2012.
Munive’s family has accused Garrity of planting the handgun at the scene of the crime to justify his use of force. The family attorney said there were “plenty of warnings readily available to any reasonable police department that it was not safe to put a gun in the hands of such an unstable individual.”
The city of Cicero is ready to pay Munive’s family $3.5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit out of court.