It was at 2:30 a.m. on Valentine’s Day last year when a detective watching live surveillance footage from a major thoroughfare in Queens spotted a man in a minivan who appeared to be holding a gun.

Police said they quickly arrested the man, Robert Homer, and found a loaded Glock pistol in his pocket. When they checked his criminal record, they saw that he had been convicted of sex trafficking. As a result, he was ineligible for a gun permit under federal law. He was indicted and pleaded not guilty to the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The case is now in jeopardy after a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on February 5 that police did not have probable cause to stop Mr. Homer. In the ruling, the judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis, cited a 2022 Supreme Court decision that found that U.S. citizens have a broad right to carry concealed firearms, overturning longstanding New York regulations. The case involving Mr. Homer is the latest test of gun laws in the state, where officials continue to grapple with how to bring a legacy of strong gun control into line with the 2022 ruling.

Just nine days after Judge Garaufis’ decision in Mr. Homer’s case, a lawyer in another gun case cited the Manhattan state court ruling, saying he understood that having a gun was not probable cause for a stop was. The judge in the state case, Abraham Clott, said he disagreed with the federal judge’s conclusion.

The Supreme Court’s ruling – in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen – “really turned American law on its head,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at UCLA Law. That it has emerged in connection with Fourth Amendment questions about probable cause in the Homer case “just shows the profound impact Bruen is having,” he added.

Mr. Homer’s attorney cited Bruen’s decision in July when she decided to suppress evidence in the case. The attorney, Marissa Sherman of the Federal Defenders of New York, argued that police had no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed when they searched Mr. Homer and found the gun.

If carrying a gun is not presumed to be illegal—as it might have been in New York before the Bruen decision, given the state’s strict rules—then the mere sight of a gun would not be a reasonable cause to stop someone, she argued.

Judge Garaufis agreed. The question after Bruen, he wrote, was whether a police officer who sees an unidentified person with a gun “has an objectively reasonable basis to believe that that person is guilty of a crime.”

In Mr. Homer’s case, the judge concluded, the answer was no.

On the night of Mr. Homer’s arrest, Detective Nicholas Conte of the 113th Precinct watched a video feed from the Argus surveillance system, which police use in high-crime areas. Detective Conte testified at a hearing last year before Judge Garaufis that after a murder, he was assigned to a lengthy investigation into a criminal gang whose members hung out on the stretch of Guy R. Brewer Boulevard where he saw Mr. Homer.

Raffaela S. Belizaire, a prosecutor, wrote in a lawsuit that Detective Conte saw Mr. Homer put a firearm in his pants pocket while Mr. Homer sat in the driver’s seat of a parked van with two passengers inside. The detective stated that he recognized the van as one used by the gang members, but could not see the license plate number.

Ms. Belizaire wrote in the filing that officers arrived at the van within minutes of Detective Conte spotting the gun and pulled Mr. Homer out, and that the event was captured on the officers’ body-worn cameras.

Judge Garaufis, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton, said in his ruling that although the detective determined that Homer lacked “firearm discipline” based on the way he put the gun in his pocket, he did not observed other things. suspicious behaviour. Mr. Homer “could plausibly have obtained a permit to carry the firearm,” the judge wrote.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment. Lawyers for Mr. Homer did not respond to requests for comment.

The history of strong gun control in New York City includes the issuance of few so-called concealed carry permits: only 7,384, a number equivalent to just 0.1 percent of the city’s adult residents, were operating on the day the case Bruen was ruled, according to an affidavit filed by Sgt. David Blaize of the Police Department’s Licensing Division, along with a recent motion by prosecutors. Previously, applicants had to demonstrate that they were in “extraordinary personal danger” to obtain such a permit, Judge Garaufis noted in his ruling.

After the Bruen decision, New York lawmakers passed new laws directing officials to issue permits to applicants who had completed safety training, passed a firearms test and provided referrals to confirm their “good moral character.” Still, the judge wrote, the state’s revised post-Bruen law was “broad enough that even alleged gang membership would not necessarily prevent the licensing officer from granting a firearms permit.”

Felons still cannot own guns in New York, and state law bans guns in sensitive areas, including on the subway, in Times Square and around schools. On the day Homer was arrested, eight months after the Bruen decision, the number of concealed carry permits had increased by only 237, according to the affidavit.

Judge Garaufis said in his ruling that police could have stopped Mr Homer, searched him and conducted a license check to see if there was probable cause to arrest him, but instead they arrested him immediately.

Further, the judge wrote, a “reasonably prudent police officer” would not assume that an “unidentified alleged gang member was a criminal.” He also found that the link between the van and the gang was “tenuous at best.”

Michael Alcazar, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and The retired New York City police detective said the decision conflicted with the real-time assessments officers are required to make.

If an officer “believes that this person is affiliated with a gang and that he has a gun, most police officers and most detectives will not stop – their main goal is to protect the public and protect themselves from a potentially deadly situation” , professor said Alcazar.

In a March 1 motion asking Judge Garaufis for reconsideration, prosecutors argued that his decision was “unworkable,” would pose practical difficulties for police and endanger them and the public.

The judge, they argued, had created “a new legal standard of probable cause” for gun arrests in New York that would require officers to release people if they could not immediately determine whether they had a gun permit. That would be especially problematic in crowded places or among people who do not identify themselves, prosecutors wrote.

The number of applications for weapons permits has soared in recent years: last year there were 13,369 applications for pistols, rifles and shotguns, compared to 3,766 in 2019, according to police data. The department, which issues licenses in New York City, would not say how many licenses it approved last year. A lawsuit has accused the department of taking so long to process applications that it violates the Second Amendment.

Eric Ruben, a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law in Dallas and a fellow at NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, warned that it would take a long time to resolve the swirling legal questions surrounding gun ownership in light of the Bruen decision.

Lawsuits across the country had focused on whether the presence of a weapon allows people to be stopped and questioned at all, he said. And while Judge Garaufis’ ruling appeared to be a loss for the police, Professor Ruben said it contained an important clause in their favor: searching Mr Homer, as the judge suggested, would require a lower threshold of reasonable suspicion of a crime required.

“In light of what I have seen around the country on this issue,” Professor Ruben said, “this can actually be seen as a victory for the NYPD.”

A few days after a violent confrontation in which police struck and used a stun gun on a Venezuelan migrant at a city-run shelter in Queens, that man’s family and three other families staying at the shelter received unexpected news with little explanation: they had to move.

Two of the families said in interviews that they were told to pack their belongings and then placed in taxis and Ubers that dropped them off at other shelters. The abrupt moves and lack of clarity – shelter staff only told them they were being moved for “safety reasons” – left the families searching for answers in their new environment.

“We didn’t even get a warning,” said Alexander Monsalve, 40, who was put into a car with his wife and two daughters around 9 p.m. Tuesday and dropped them off at a Staten Island hotel about 30 miles away. had been converted into a reception center for migrants. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

The families’ move appeared to be the latest fallout from last week’s altercation at the Queens shelter, where police officers responding to calls about a dispute tried to restrain a migrant holding his 1-year-old son. Officers used a stun gun on the man, separated him from his child and struck him repeatedly as they tried to subdue him.

City officials are investigating the matter. Mayor Eric Adams has supported the officers’ behavior, saying the migrant, Yanny Cordero, was drunk and acting violently. Mr. Cordero, who was arrested and later released, has vehemently denied the allegations.

Most of the removals took place after The New York Times published video of the police altercation. Those moved included Mr. Cordero’s and that of the man who shot the video.

The city has offered vague and varying explanations, leading to a swirl of speculation among the migrants being moved and disruption for some of those who had recently found jobs and enrolled their children in Queens schools.

The changes have provided a glimpse into the inconveniences that relocation can cause for the 65,000 migrants the city houses in a hodgepodge of shelters, hotels and tent dormitories.

Many migrants are allowed to stay at a particular city shelter for a certain amount of time before having to move, a rule intended to push them out of the shelter system but allows them to reapply and be transferred to another shelter. Single adults are allowed 30 days, while families are allowed a maximum of 60 days.

In response to questions from The Times, city officials first suggested that the moves from the Queens shelter were routine.

“With the city’s shelter population nearly tripling in less than two years, we occasionally need to move families to ensure appropriate placements,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, which runs the Queens shelter , in a statement on Wednesday.

But on Thursday, city officials said in a follow-up statement that three of the four families were moved after credible concerns were raised with shelter staff. Officials said the move was taken in response to a report from another shelter resident that raised concerns for that resident’s safety. The officials did not provide additional details, citing privacy concerns, and said the transfers were in accordance with state regulations.

“These transfers occurred due to serious concerns about potential health and safety issues for other residents of the shelter,” the spokeswoman said.

The fourth family — Mr. Cordero, his wife and their three children — were taken to a shelter in Brooklyn because of the traumatic nature of the event, officials said.

In interviews, the families said they were as surprised by their move as they were by the claim that they were the cause of safety problems at the shelter, a former Marriott Hotel on Archer Avenue in the Jamaican borough of Queens that now houses 250 migrants. families.

“We don’t understand why we were taken — without motive or explanation,” said Nadia Prieto, 20, from Venezuela, who was taken with her husband and two children to a hotel-turned-shelter in the Bronx. “No one has ever complained to us. We have not had any problems with the staff at any time.”

As they left the Queens shelter, Ms. Prieto and her husband, Andry Barreto, said they were told by a shelter supervisor that they were being transferred for “safety reasons.” They packed their bags and strollers into an Uber ordered by the shelter, not quite sure where it was going.

The lack of a clear explanation led the couple – the godparents of Mr Cordero’s children – to speculate without evidence that they had been moved in retaliation. They wondered whether it was because they had spoken to the news media, or because it was Mr. Barreto who recorded the video of police beating Mr. Cordero as they arrested him.

City Hall has responded strongly to any insinuations of retaliation.

“Shelter residents talk to the press all the time,” said Kayla Mamelak, spokeswoman for the mayor. “Speaking to the press is not a crime. It is certainly not a security issue and it is certainly not a reason why anyone would be asked to leave the system, let alone moved.”

Mr. Monsalve, who was transferred to Staten Island, said he was at work Tuesday afternoon when guards suddenly came to his room and told his wife that the family had to leave the Queens shelter, where they had been staying for three months. .

Within a few hours they had packed their things. When Mr Monsalve asked why they were being moved, a shelter worker told him the order had come “from above” and they were being moved for “safety reasons,” he said.

He also wondered without evidence whether they were being moved because a shelter worker had seen his wife talking to a Telemundo reporter about the police altercation earlier in the week.

Or maybe, he thought, it was a run-in he had with a security guard at the Queens Shelter, who he said yelled at one of his daughters after she stopped the elevator one day.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Monsalve, who had found work as a construction worker selling balloons in Queens, said he felt especially upset about his daughters, ages 9 and 13, who had settled in and made friends at their school in Queens.

On Thursday, their parents were already busy registering them at a new school on Staten Island – a place they had never heard of.

“Now we start again,” he said in Spanish. “As they say, ‘All change is for the greater good.’”

Dana Rubinstein And Liset Cruz reporting contributed.

Three men have been charged with firearms trafficking and other crimes as part of the investigation into the shooting that marred a Super Bowl victory celebration in Kansas City, Missouri, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

One person was killed and more than 20 were injured in the Feb. 14 shooting after an argument turned violent and at least six people opened fire just as the gathering dispersed near Union Station, authorities said.

Days later, two teenagers were charged with resisting arrest and “weapon-related” crimes. In late February, two Missouri men, Lyndell Mays, 23, and Dominic Miller, 18, were charged with murder.

Three men from Kansas City, Missouri, now face multiple federal charges after investigators determined that at least two of the guns found at the shooting scene were illegally purchased or traded.

Fedo Antonia Manning, 21, was charged with conspiracy to traffic firearms, engaging in the sale of firearms without a license and lying on a federal form. Ronnel Dewayne Williams Jr., 21, and Chaelyn Hendrick Groves, 19, were jointly charged with making false statements in the acquisition of firearms. Mr. Williams and Mr. Groves were each separately charged with lying to a federal agent.

It was not clear whether any of the men had retained lawyers.

There is no evidence the men were among those who opened fire during the parade, prosecutors said. But investigators say they were involved in the purchase of straw from some of the recovered firearms, meaning they were purchasing a firearm for someone who was not legally eligible to purchase one.

“These cases underscore the importance of enforcing federal firearms laws,” said Teresa Moore, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. said in a statement. “Stopping straw buyers and preventing illegal firearms trafficking is our first line of defense against gun violence.”

According to prosecutors, Mr. Manning bought dozens of firearms, including some that ended up in the hands of people who were not allowed to own guns. Among those weapons was a handgun recovered during the shooting. The weapon’s magazine, which can hold up to 30 bullets, contained only 26 when investigators found it, indicating some bullets may have been fired.

In a separate complaint, prosecutors said that at a gun show in November, Mr. Williams bought a gun for Mr. Groves, who was too young to legally buy a firearm. That weapon was also found at the shooting site.

The Feb. 14 shooting sent thousands of parade goers running for cover, turning a joyful day for the region into one of tragedy.

Ballistics tests showed that a bullet from Mr. Miller’s gun killed 43-year-old Elizabeth Galvan, a DJ and radio host known as Lisa, who was at the party with her family. Nine children were among those who suffered gunshot wounds. Mr. Miller and Mr. Mays were also both shot during the gunfire.

Michigan will no longer allow guns intended for destruction to be sold as parts online — a change prompted by public anger over revelations that firearms turned in through buyback programs were not destroyed as promised.

Michigan State Police, responsible for collecting unwanted firearms from local law enforcement, said Tuesday that the weapons would now be crushed “in their entirety” and melted down at a scrap metal site. The agency said it removed 11,582 weapons last year.

The policy change came after The New York Times reported in December that communities across the country that claimed to be taking guns off the streets through buyback programs and eliminating confiscated or surplus guns were allowing them back on the market. Cities handed the guns over to companies that had a single regulated part containing the serial number; the companies then sold the rest of the parts online, often as nearly complete weapon sets.

Some law enforcement officials and gun control advocates worried that the kits were being used to build so-called ghost guns — untraceable homemade firearms.

The largest of the cleanup companies, Gunbusters of Missouri, said it had seized more than 200,000 guns from about 950 law enforcement agencies over the past decade; The Michigan State Police was the largest customer. After the Times investigation, community leaders and government officials in Michigan raised objections to the arrangement, and state police said in January that they would rate it againleading to the announcement on Tuesday.

“This new method will improve public safety by ensuring that all parts of a firearm are destroyed and never used again,” said Col. James F. Grady II, director of the state police.

Outside of Michigan, members of Congress have also raised concerns about the inability to ensure that guns collected through buyback events are not completely destroyed, contrary to what the public has been led to believe. In a typical buyback, people are encouraged to turn in firearms to police in exchange for a gift card or other incentive.

Citing the Times article, Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, both Democrats, said wrote a letter to ask the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to take steps to stop the resale of gun parts. The agency’s position was that, under the law, discarding just that one regulated part — called the receiver or frame — is enough to consider the gun inoperable and destroyed.

“We are concerned that current ATF guidance on the destruction of firearms does not address this regulatory gap,” the congressmen’s letter said.

Although the remaining gun parts are not subject to regulation, the ATF issued a statement in December saying the “recommended best practice” is for law enforcement agencies to “destroy the entire firearm, including any unregulated parts.”

“This is particularly the case given the increasing criminal use of untraceable, privately made firearms (‘ghost guns’), which are often assembled from used firearm parts,” the statement said.

New York City officials are investigating a confrontation at a city-run shelter in Queens where police officers struck and used a stun gun on a Venezuelan migrant as he held his 1-year-old son.

Video footage obtained by The New York Times shows two police officers, who were called to the shelter Friday evening due to a dispute, trying to restrain the man, Yanny Cordero, 47, as he stands with his back against a closed elevator door in the shelter . , holding his child tightly in his arms.

One of the officers pulls out a yellow stun gun and appears to stun Mr. Cordero before punching him in the head, the video shows.

The officers continue to restrain Mr. Cordero after separating him from his son, pressing his head against a desk as they try to wrestle him to the ground. A third officer becomes involved and punches Mr. Cordero twice in the face before the officers subdue and arrest him.

“This is abuse, brother!” a man who recorded the video on his phone is heard shouting in Spanish. ‘Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him, brother! That’s abuse! Where are the human rights?”

Police responded to a call about an argument involving an intoxicated man threatening staff members. They said officers at the scene gave Mr. Cordero multiple warnings and commands to hand the child over to someone else.

Mr. Cordero said he did not drink that night because he had to work the next day. He said the dispute began when he returned to the shelter, in the Jamaican borough of Queens, with dinner for his family. A shelter worker punched him in the face near the elevators as he struggled to communicate in English, he said.

Mr. Cordero was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and violent conduct, obstruction of governmental administration and acting in a manner harmful to a child under 17 years of age. Police also arrested his wife, Andrea Parra, 23, who appears in the video. threw her body between her husband and the police officers.

The couple said that when they were arrested, their 1-year-old son, Yusneide, and their two other boys, ages 3 and 5, were taken by the city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services.

Mr Cordero and Ms Parra were released on Saturday evening, almost 24 hours after the altercation, and were reunited with their children on Monday evening. The family was taken to a shelter in Brooklyn.

“We are aware of an incident involving a family in our care at an emergency shelter in Jamaica, Queens, Friday evening,” a City Hall spokeswoman said in a statement. “The health and safety of all immigrants and long-time New Yorkers in our care – especially young children – is always the highest priority, and this matter is currently under investigation.”

Police said Yusneide was unharmed, but Mr Cordero said he believed the altercation had affected him.

“He was shaking and pooping and peeing on himself,” Mr. Cordero said in an interview.

Police did not respond to questions about whether they believed officers handled the situation appropriately and did not provide footage from their body-worn cameras.

It is not clear from the two-and-a-half-minute video what happened immediately before the clash at the shelter, one of dozens of city-run shelters housing the nearly 65,000 migrants in the city’s care.

As the number of migrants housed by the city has skyrocketed, city officials have begun imposing more restrictions on the hotels, shelters and tent dormitories where they are staying.

The city has imposed curfews at a handful of shelters following neighborhood complaints and several high-profile crimes involving migrants. Last month the police arrested a migrant for disorderly conduct at a giant tent shelter on Randall’s Island after a confrontation with police.

Mr. Cordero, an electrician in his home country who has worked construction jobs since arriving in New York, said he left the shelter Friday evening around 10 p.m. to buy food because his family did not like what was being served at the shelter. served. .

He said his wife was left with the three children in their room at the shelter, where they had been staying since December.

Mr. Cordero, who does not speak English, said that when he returned to the lobby with the food, a shelter employee near the elevators appeared to tell him in English that he could not take the food to the room, an unwritten shelter policy . to reduce contamination, city officials said. (Some migrants at the shelter said in interviews that staff members routinely threw away food and drinks found in rooms.)

Mr. Cordero said he used a translation app on his phone to tell the employee that he was going to the cafeteria to eat the meat and rice he bought and that his family would come to him.

Mr. Cordero said the employee called a colleague, who he said seemed to become hostile as Mr. Cordero had difficulty communicating with the phone app. The second shelter worker, Mr. Cordero said, suddenly punched him in the face.

Mr. Cordero said he did not hit back, but instead put his hands behind his back and began taunting the employee in Spanish to hit him again while he was defenseless, challenging him to a fight outside.

Andry Barreto, the Venezuelan migrant who shot the video, corroborated Mr. Cordero’s story, saying in an interview that he looked outside through a window into the shelter’s lobby and saw the worker hit Mr. Cordero.

City officials did not immediately respond to questions about the shelter workers’ behavior.

Mr Barreto, who is also the children’s godfather, said he went inside and started recording on his phone when the situation began to escalate.

The employees called the police, Mr. Cordero and Mr. Barreto said. Mr. Cordero’s wife, Ms. Parra, showed up with the three children around the time the police arrived, and she gave Yusneide to Mr. Cordero to hold.

At one point, Mr Cordero is heard screaming in the video as he clings to Yusneide, and as other migrants shout: “The baby! The baby!” in Spanish.

Mr. Cordero said police sedated him several times, but he said he didn’t feel much of it.

“I never raised my hand,” Mr. Cordero said. “I never told the police anything other than not to touch my child.”

Mr. Cordero and Ms. Parra said that after they were released from custody, they were only allowed to speak to their children via video call. The couple visited several city offices on Sunday to pick them up.

On Tuesday, Mr Cordero said he was happy his children were back, but was upset that they had been put in danger.

“I feel very sad because my children experienced something they should never have experienced,” Mr. Cordero said. “We are poor, but we have raised them well to avoid these kinds of spectacles.”

An 8-year-old boy in Brooklyn carried a gun to school on Thursday, according to authorities, who said police officers found it after searching his backpack.

The child attends Public School 158 in the East New York borough and police said he had made threats another student with the gun earlier this week. When police arrived at the school Thursday and searched the boy’s belongings, officers discovered what appeared to be an unloaded Taurus handgun in his bag.

The 8-year-old was not identified by police and several details about his case were not immediately clear. Authorities said no students were injured and the school is expected to send letters to families with information about what happened.

New York City schools have seen a persistent increase in discipline issues. Serious crimes in schools remain at pre-pandemic levels. But a series of violent incidents involving children and teenagers have sparked fears among some parents this year.

Several high school students have been suspended in high-profile cases in recent months. This fall, three students from a Manhattan High School were taken into custody after police said they brought two firearms and an imitation rifle to school.

Some other school districts have struggled with similar problems, and the incidents have sometimes been serious: A six-year-old boy in Virginia brought a gun from his home to school last year and shot his first-grade teacher in their classroom.

In New York City, Department of Education spokeswoman Jenna Lyle said in a statement that “it is extremely concerning for a child so young to have access to such a dangerous weapon.”

“Guns have absolutely no place in the hands of our young people,” Ms Lyle said, adding that all students and staff were safe. “This incident is a deeply worrying example of the consequences of the proliferation of weapons in our society and in our city.”