Nakia Smith says he walked into a Far South Side police station to get a gun off the streets.
Instead, he wound up behind bars.
Prosecutors say Smith, a convicted felon, was carrying a concealed firearm he was legally barred from possessing.
On Monday, Smith, 51, pleaded guilty to felony gun charges in a deal that spared him the possibility of serving at least six years in an Illinois prison. He was sentenced to time served for the time he spent locked up after his March 2023 arrest.
Smith spent seven months in the Cook County Jail before he was released in January 2024 on home confinement and electronic monitoring as the case moved through court.
After Monday’s hearing in Bridgeview, he was briefly returned to jail for processing before being released.
At his sentencing, Smith urged the Chicago Police Department to create a way for convicted felons to surrender firearms without risking prosecution for illegally possessing them.
Among his supporters in court was Arne Duncan, the former U.S. Education secretary under President Barack Obama and a managing partner at the anti-violence group Chicago CRED. Smith is a volunteer there.
Duncan says he fears Smith’s saga will discourage people from participating in the Chicago Police Department’s gun turn-in program.
“I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, ‘I saw the story,’ and they’re like, ‘We’re never turning in a gun,’” Duncan says. “All we want is guns off the street. That’s what we’re trying to do. So it’s all the wrong messaging.”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Smith’s arrest last week.
Smith’s legal odyssey began March 4, 2023, when he entered the Calumet District police station at 727 E. 111th St.
Smith says he asked to speak with a supervisor so he could hand over his coat, which held a .45-caliber handgun he says one of his workers had taken during a home cleanup job.
But Smith never got the chance to turn over the coat.
An officer at the front desk asked whether he was carrying a gun. When Smith said he was, officers took him into custody, and he was charged with illegal firearm possession.