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By David Rogers
December 6, 2004
The New Editor
The Austin American-Statesman thought it managed a pretty big scoop Saturday, when it
announced the arrest and month-long detention in a private detention facility of an Austin
Community College (ACC) policeman for sneaking guns onto a flight to Nigeria.
Only one problem -- the story wasn’t true. The policeman was not arrested November 17
and was never detained at a private facility in Taylor without bail.
The Statesman reporter, misreading an affidavit supporting an arrest warrant for the
policeman, wrote that the policeman had been arrested more than a week before the affidavit
had been written, and that the policeman was in private detention while he was actually on
duty at ACC.
Astonishingly, ten minutes using an amazing new publication called a “phone book” and an
equally amazing invention called a “telephone” enabled this writer to do what the Statesman,
part of the multi-billion dollar Gannett media empire*, could not do -- check the facts.
After ascertaining that the policeman in question was not incarcerated in Taylor, Texas, The
New Editor arranged an in-person interview (an esoteric technique apparently forgotten by
the Statesman) 35 minutes later at a distant, obscure location known as “Denny’s” at a
difficult to reach location called “18th street and Interstate 35.”
The Statesman did get the most basic thing right -- the officer’s name is indeed Maisule Aji
Kurugu. (Not surprisingly, his is the only Kurugu family listed in the Austin phone book.)
Kurugu, called “Jack” for the last eighteen years by his American friends, was indeed flying
from Austin to Kano, Nigeria with six small caliber handguns (five .22s, one .32) as gifts for
personal and family friends, mostly Nigerian government officials. Jack, an American citizen
since 1993, is the son of a Nigerian Congressman from the northern Yobe region around
Gashua (his hometown of around 100,000 people).
The gifts were for his friends because Nigeria is a dangerous place, where random killings
and shootings accompanying thefts are a commonplace occurrence beyond the dreams of
South Central Los Angeles. AK-47s are commonly smuggled across the nearby borders with
Niger and Chad, but Jack’s friends wanted smaller, less obtrusive and less dangerous
firearms.
Jack was also carrying his personal bulletproof vest because, as a result of a Voice of
America interview broadcast in Nigeria, he felt unsafe returning to his homeland. Jack and
his cousin, as immigrants eligible to vote in the American election, had been interviewed for a
point-counterpoint segment on the Voice of America, and Jack’s enthusiastic support for the
president was tremendously unpopular in the mostly-Muslim Yobe region.
Jack, a graduate of Houston-Tillotson (B.B.A. 1986) and St. Edwards University (B.S. –
Criminal Justice 1998), has been employed by ACC since 1988. Since 1994, Jack has been
an accredited Texas peace officer. Jack is married to his high school sweetheart and has five
children. Jack’s mother has lived with them since she came to the United States in 1988 for
medical treatment for failing kidneys. She requires dialysis treatments regularly to stay alive.
Jack was detained but not arrested in route to Nigeria twice, once at Austin’s airport and
once in the Nashville airport.
In Austin, Jack was told by TSA officials that he could not carry with him his personal .38
caliber handgun in his luggage. This appears to be a misunderstanding of federal law, since,
as a duly commissioned peace officer who carries a gun in the ordinary course of his duties,
Jack is allowed under the federal Transportation Code to carry a loaded gun on his person
onto an airplane.
In Nashville, Jack was told by TSA officials that he would be allowed to continue, but his
firearms and associated gear would be confiscated (including gun cleaning kits, ammunition,
pepper spray, bullet-proof vest, and his personal laptop computer.) There appears to be no
legal justification for this either, since the Transportation Code allows a passenger who owns
or lawfully controls firearms and is accompanying those firearms to travel with those
firearms without notifying the airline -- as long as those firearms are not loaded. Written
notification is required only for persons who are shipping firearms, not for people carrying
their own firearms. In fact, airlines are prohibited by the Firearms section of the federal
Criminal Code from even labeling any suitcases carrying firearms while they are in the
airlines’ control.
Bottom line -- this immigrant success story -- this American dream come true -- a licensed
police officer -- was detained illegally, a warrant was issued for his arrest for a crime which,
even if every fact alleged by the police is true, he is not guilty of.
To make matters worse, because of these legally unfounded charges, Jack was suspended
without pay last Tuesday -- two days after he came back home and went back to work.
After all this, Jack says “I love America. America saved my mother’s life. America has done
more for me than my home country ever did.”
Editor's note: Jack was arrested on the weapons charges after he returned to Austin and was
held in the Travis County jail for one night.
*Correction: The Austin Statesman is owned by Cox Enterprises, Inc., not Gannett Co., Inc.
David Rogers is a contributing editor for The New Editor.
Paul Geary
David Rogers