Chicago City Wire

A federal judge has sentenced a Rockford man to more than five years in federal prison for illegally possessing firearms.

U.S. District Judge Iain D. Johnston on Tuesday sentenced Renard Macklin, 36, to 70 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Macklin pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of illegal firearm possession. As a previously convicted felon, Macklin was prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms.

Macklin admitted in a plea agreement that he possessed a firearm on two occasions while being a convicted felon. On October 10, 2020, he was driving a vehicle with a Ruger AR-15 style rifle loaded with a large capacity magazine and one round in the chamber. When Rockford Police attempted to pull him over, Macklin fled at high speed. On March 16, 2021, Macklin possessed a stolen semi-automatic handgun loaded with a 15-round magazine, which was seized by the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office during the execution of a search warrant in Rockford.

The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Christopher Amon, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives; Carla Redd, Chief of the Rockford Police Department; and Gary Caruana, Sheriff of Winnebago County. The government was represented by Deputy Criminal Chief Jessica Maveus.

Holding illegal firearm possessors accountable through federal prosecution is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction strategy. In the Northern District of Illinois, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and law enforcement partners have deployed the PSN program to address various violent crime issues facing the district, particularly firearm offenses.