Judge: ATF stings may be targeting minorities

[The Straight Story]

Controversial federal sting operations that lure in suspects with the promise of a huge payoff for robbing a fake drug stash house may be unfairly targeting racial minorities, the chief federal judge in Chicago said this week.

U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo said in an order filed late Wednesday that there is "a strong showing of potential bias" in the robbery stings, which are run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He noted that, since 2011, federal agents have used such stings to lock up at least 26 people in the Chicago area and that all of them were either black or Hispanic.

The order comes a month after a USA TODAY investigation found that the ATF has quietly made fictional stash-house robberies a central feature of its effort to target violent crime, more than quadrupling the number of stings it conducted over the past decade. Although the stings are meant to target some of the nation's most dangerous criminals, they have routinely ensnared small-time crooks who jumped at the chance to score hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of drugs.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/01/atf-stash-house-robbery-discrimination/2608657/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=206567