Department of Forensic Sciences
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
U.S. Attorney's Office
Reducing gun violence in the District is a top priority for the Bowser Administration, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), and the community. To reduce gun crime in the District, MPD collaborated with multiple federal and local government agencies, including the DC Department of Forensic Sciences, in 2015 to create and launch the DC Crime Gun Intelligence Center (CGIC), which links evidence across cases where the same gun is used. We investigated whether improvements made to the CGIC, including additional staff, training, and expedited processing of shell casings, made between November 2017 and April 2019 had an impact on crime rates, gunshot alerts, and gun-related arrests. We found no measurable effects on these specific measures during the study period.
Why is this issue important in DC?
In 2018, homicides increased across the District with 160 reported incidents, compared to 116 homicides reported in 2017. At the same time, the use of firearms in violent crimes also increased.
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Observations from law enforcement suggest that there is a small group of repeat offenders who commit violence, particularly firearm-related violence, in Washington, DC. The CGIC helps to identify these repeat shooters by linking evidence across crime scenes across cases where the same gun is used. Ultimately, these links should help prosecute cases to hold these repeat violent offenders accountable.
“You never know if that shell casing is going to be the shell casing that closes one of your violent crimes.”
What did we do?
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded MPD a grant to make several improvements to the CGIC, including the expedited processing of shell casings recovered by MPD, and the hiring of additional staff members, such as forensic personnel for the DC Department of Forensic Sciences and a specialized analyst detailed to the CGIC. The funds also allowed MPD to train more detectives on ATF's National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) and the Crime Gun Intelligence process. These improvements were piloted in the Seventh Police District (7D) from November 2017 through April 2019.
7D has historically had a concentration of gun crime. Because of this concentration, comparing 7D against the other six police districts, where gun crime rates are lower, would not be a good way to evaluate the effects of these CGIC improvements. Instead, we used quasi-experimental methods to combine the smaller geographic areas into a comparison group that has crime trends similar to the 7D’s. We compared crime rates, gunshot alerts, and gun-related arrests between this newly-created comparison group with those actually occurring in the Seventh District. We also conducted surveys with MPD detectives to gauge their perceptions of the usefulness of CGIC and NIBIN products.
What have we learned?
While we found no measurable effect of the improvements to CGIC on violent crime rates, gunshot alerts, calls for service for sounds of gunshots, or arrest rates, there was some early evidence through descriptive analysis and detective surveys to suggest that the improvements in the CGIC generally, are useful to moving the criminal investigation process forward.
What comes next?
There are reasons to believe that some of the effects of the improvements to CGIC will only kick in after more time has passed. For example, it may take multiple years for cases linked to the CGIC to make their way through the court system and to successfully apprehend and prosecute the offenders. With this reality in mind, MPD plans to maintain the CGIC improvements and will continue to track outcomes for another 18- to 24-months.
What happened behind the scenes?
Members from The Lab and agency partners traveled to both Philadelphia and Denver to observe CGICs in those jurisdictions and interview local staff. The Lab also conducted multiple interviews and exercises to understand the current state of CGIC and administered a focus group with six MPD detectives to hear about the benefits and drawbacks of the kinds of intelligence information they receive from CGIC.