Chicago Gang Member Sentenced to Nearly 5 Years in Federal Prison for Illegally Possessing Machine Gun and Shooting at Rival Gang Members

CHICAGO — A member of a Chicago street gang has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison for illegally possessing a machine gun and participating in a shootout with rival gang members on a city sidewalk.

WILLIE GLENN, 25, of Chicago, illegally possessed the firearm on June 21, 2021, while sitting in the driver’s seat of a stolen Infiniti sedan in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.  The .40-caliber handgun was equipped with a conversion device known as a “Glock switch” or “auto sear,” making it capable of automatically firing more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger.  Glenn had previously been convicted in state court of a felony firearm offense and was prohibited by federal law from possessing the gun.

U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey on Dec. 20, 2022, sentenced Glenn to 57 months in federal prison.  In addition to the illegal firearm possession, Judge Blakey found that Glenn fired a shot during a shootout with rival gang members on Dec. 22, 2018.  A man in the defendant’s group was wounded in the shootout, which occurred on a sidewalk in the East Beverly neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

The sentence was announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Robert W. “Wes” Wheeler, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI, and David Brown, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.  The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles W. Mulaney.

Holding illegal firearm possessors accountable through federal prosecution is a centerpiece of Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction strategy.  In the Northern District of Illinois, U.S. Attorney Lausch and law enforcement partners have deployed the PSN program to attack a broad range of violent crime issues facing the district, particularly firearm offenses.