A Minneapolis man has been sentenced to 111 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release for possessing a firearm as a felon and for carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger announced.
Tracrill Trayson Smith, 26, was arrested last year during a live broadcast of Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher’s “Live on Patrol” program.
Ramsey County Undersheriff Mike Martin was on patrol in the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2023, when he and his partner Sgt. Jim Chinn responded to the parking lot of a Maplewood town home community on the 1900 block of Mesabi Avenue on a report of a person with a gun in a vehicle.
The vehicle was described as a white Kia with Colorado plates. They pulled up and found a vehicle matching the description and ordered the suspect out of the vehicle as Maplewood officers also arrived at the scene.
During the course of the live broadcast, bags of apparent drugs were pulled from the suspect’s vehicle and placed on the hood of the police cruiser.
The suspect being cuffed and stuffed. pic.twitter.com/Af6RcRNuyh
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) February 14, 2023
At one point, Undersheriff Martin returned to the squad and informed the live audience watching that a gun with an extended magazine loaded with “hollow point” bullets had been recovered along with about 1,000 suspected fentanyl pills, a bag of suspected crack cocaine, and a scale.
The U.S. Attorney’s press release stated that 3,340 fentanyl pills and approximately 47.15 grams of fentanyl powder were discovered in the vehicle.
Smith has a prior felony conviction for armed robbery at the age of 16 which prohibits him under federal law from possessing firearms or ammunition at any time.
Smith pleaded guilty in October to one count of possession of a firearm as a felon and one count of carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, and was sentenced on Friday in U.S. District Court by Senior Judge Michael J. Davis.
Federal inmates are required to serve a minimum of 85% of their sentence incarcerated before being eligible for release, as opposed to state sentencing which only requires offenders to serve two-thirds or less incarcerated.
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