staten island top thug Joseph Anarumo Jr. named to head ATF's New York office

Photo courtesy of ATFANARUMO: Has spent the last two decades working for the ATF.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  -- For Joseph Anarumo Jr., day two as the ATF's top agent in New York meant more than getting settled into a new office -- he was up at 3 a.m., getting ready for a series of raids that took down 50 alleged members of a violent Bronx street gang.
"I'm not the guy swinging the ram, or wielding the rifle anymore," said Anarumo, 45, a Staten Island native. "But it's important to lead from the front."
The raids, which capped off a two-year investigation into the violent Trinitarios gang by several federal agencies and the NYPD, were a way for Anarumo to "get my feet wet" in the new position, a job he's dreamed of taking since he started at the bureau.
Anarumo was officially named the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Division on Dec. 6. Before that, he served as assistant special agent in charge of the Miami Field Division.
The son of a retired NYPD detective sergeant, Anarumo grew up in Westerleigh, and graduated from Susan Wagner High School before enrolling in St. John's University, where he earned his bachelor's in communications.
Right out of college, he joined the city's Department of Investigation in 1988, then the U.S. Department of Labor in 1990, where he investigated racketeering's influence in labor unions.
In 1991, he started as an agent for the ATF, as part of a joint NYPD/ATF firearms ATF,
task force, where he worked on gun and drug trafficking cases, sometimes undercover. He's since worked as the supervisory agent in charge of the D.C sniper investigation, and has overseen the bureau's operations at two Super Bowls in Miami.
"It's a lot different when you watch it from home from an easy chair," Anarumo said.
In New York, he said, his focus will be to "keep firearms out of the hands of criminals."
To that, end, he said, the ATF tracks patterns and trends, keeps an eye out for straw purchasers, and uses technology to try and keep ahead of an ever-evolving criminal effort to divert a "legal commodity through illegal means."
That means using tools like the data compiled through the bureau's Crime Gun Center in Brooklyn, the repository for all recovered and traced firearms in the state, and sharing that data with other law enforcement agencies.
"Violent crime is a problem that everyone faces," Anarumo said. "There's strength in numbers. I think that information sharing cannot be overstated."