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While the phrase signaled my bedtime throughout my early childhood, the origin of it is said to have taken place months before I came into this world. During the summer of 1967, tensions were high, crime was off the charts, and riots had taken place across many major cities. The result came to be known as the “long, hot summer of 1967.” Across the river from where I would be born, Mel Epstein and Tom Gregory of WNEW, known today as Fox 5 New York, coined the phrase, “It is 10 PM, do you know where your children are?” The slogan was not meant to be sanguine, but instead meant to be an evocative warning to parents to focus their attention to where their children may be so they would not become victims or perpetrators of crime.

Today, the FBI reports that 2020 saw a nearly 30% increase in murders from the year prior. This represented the largest single-year increase, since the Bureau began recording crime statistics for the past 60 years. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, an outgrowth in this murder spike was an elevation in the overall violent crime reporting by 5%. Couple this with the weapon statistics that detail how handguns were used in approximately 75% of last year’s murders committed with a weapon, it is hard not to think back to the criminal environment of 1967. Yet, today with the advances in law enforcement capabilities, to include technology, it may be time to rephrase Epstein and Gregory’s slogan and aim it directly at police chiefs throughout the nation so they can be precise in addressing violent crime: “It’s 10 O’Clock, do you know who and where your criminals are?”

There is no argument that police chiefs have a responsibility to the communities they serve. Disagreements arise when discussions focus on how best to conduct the policing mission within such communities under siege by violence. At the most strategic level, particularly when dealing with the scourge of gun violence, we can all agree that justice for victims, resolution for their families, and peace to those communities affected should underpin all efforts the police advance. The key to addressing each of these components requires that police agencies know precisely who is conducting the crime, where they are conducting the crime, and what information is available from past crimes to not only help them prevent and investigate current crimes but to link together and prosecute past crimes.

By leveraging the data sets they already possess, via available technology capabilities that allow such data to be assessed and shared, police chiefs can ensure that their investigative personnel focusing on gun violence – as well as general crimes – can be armed with the answers to those fundamental questions required to suppress violence in affected communities.

Do you know who your criminal offenders are? 


When individuals are arrested across the United States, specific information related to their identity is gathered during the booking process to include fingerprints. This process is so common in law enforcement organizations that it is often overlooked for its importance in investigating future crimes. Information gleaned during the booking process can provide leads to investigators, but at the same time it immediately associates people with the types of offenses that form their criminal persona. For example, police chiefs wanting to know who their violent offenders are in their jurisdiction can easily turn to see who has been arrested for such offenses and who resides in or frequents their communities. Using technology to better manage their own information holdings can aid in narrowing their field of focus on possible perpetrators. This offers police chiefs – through their agency’s investigative capabilities – opportunities to advance precision policing measures needed to target violent offenders as opposed to operating blindly as to who their offenders are.

Do you know if they are recidivist offenders?

In an earlier blog post, I described “ping pong” murders. It is a phrase used to explain the vicious cycle of retaliatory violence that often takes place over territorial disputes, drug markets, and of course, grudges. So, while it is critically important for police chiefs in their jurisdictions to know who the serial shooters are, it is just as important for them to have an understanding on who are the victims of gun violence. The incredible advances in medical technologies have increased the survivability of gun shots that just ten years ago would have been fatal. This has indirectly fueled the “ping pong” phenomena as we routinely see that individual trigger pullers have been gunshot victims themselves, some multiple times. Knowing who the shooters are and conversely who has been shot in your jurisdiction can often reveal investigative leads worth pursuing by detectives.

Do you know if they operate in neighboring jurisdictions?

Gun violence is cross-jurisdictional in nature. In some larger cities, this may mean intra-jurisdictional because a different set of investigators are responsible for adjoining precincts. Regardless, criminals bent on pulling the trigger think nothing of crossing jurisdictional boundaries to commit their crimes. It is vital then that those investigators have the capability to know if the gun involved in their murder case is ever recovered by another agency in another city, county, or state. Fortunately, the ATF’s NIBIN program provides these crucial associations by forensically linking shooting events regardless of where they occur. However, there are still agencies out there that do not understand the value of this national program. Even if those jurisdictions do not confront gun violence regularly, it will be the nature of cross-jurisdictional criminals that see to it that crime guns are recovered in the most remote areas that do not experience violent crime. With that said, it is central to having a robust national capacity that every police executive recognizes the value of NIBIN and ATF’s eTrace system which can provide insight into the origin and transactional histories of the crime guns they recover.

Can your detectives leverage data to identify potential perpetrators?

Law enforcement personnel conduct a myriad of transactions daily with the communities they serve. Many of those interactions occur with criminal offenders. It is not surprising that history tells us that it may be those nominal interactions that can yield incredible significance to identifying criminals and solving crimes. All one must do is recall what led to the identification and arrest of David Richard Berkowitz, also known as New York City’s Son of Sam killer: a simple run of the mill parking ticket. Today, law enforcement agencies have opportunities to access the technologies that will allow them to better manage and make better sense of the transactional data they encounter every day and already maintain. When you add data from ALPRs and gunfire acoustic detection devices, law enforcement can be quickly alerted to the location of perpetrators and vehicles associated with criminal investigations.

Can your detectives quickly utilize forensic intelligence to identify perpetrators?

The FBI’s CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) program has been in existence for some time. Once a DNA match is made within the system, the law enforcement agency that contributed the crime scene evidence to the respective forensic laboratory is notified. While this may seem routine, there are law enforcement agencies out there that may not have the capacity to quickly utilize this information to further not just the cases linked specifically to the CODIS hit, but as opportunities to explore other investigative leads. For example, subjects linked to open burglary cases through DNA may also have a criminal association to a serial shooter. Agencies that can leverage forensic intelligence in a rapid manner can increase their capacity to generate investigate leads internally.

Conclusion

The two key principles of precision policing are focused crime-and-disorder enforcement and community policing. Both principles require the collection, analysis, and evaluation of routine data that can enable law enforcement agencies to narrow their efforts to ensure the right balance of enforcement and neighborhood policing is advanced at a given time. In the long hot summer of 1967, a PSA aimed at parents to know where their children were in the dark of night to prevent and deter crime, can be adjusted, and aimed at police chiefs to remind them of the importance of using data and evidence-based processes they have within their own holdings to address violent crime. The ping pong nature of violent crime and the rise in crimes involving guns require police executives throughout the nation to arm themselves with the information necessary for answering the questions concerning the criminals that frequent their jurisdictions. It’s 10 PM, do you know who and where your criminals are?

It was December 1943, and the Allies knew that if they could only open up a second front it would relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union in the east, and by combining that with the liberation of France it could greatly result in a weakened German stranglehold in western Europe. Yet on this particular day, the international command team of the Supreme Allied Commander Allied Expeditionary Force led by its newly chosen commander, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, met in a dimly lit room in St. Jame’s Square, London, to further discuss the cross-channel invasion eventually codenamed “Operation Overlord.” Deception campaigns were the focus of the better half of the meeting aimed at drawing the German’s attention away from Normandy. However, everyone was anxious to hear when the two phased assault would take place and if the logistics originally proposed by Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan would be approved. You could feel the tension in the air when Morgan rose and stridently spoke the words, “I would like to now table our discussion related to D-Day.” With much surprise and disbelief the American brass in the room, to include Eisenhower, stood up and exited the room leaving behind the British commanders with a look of rejection on their faces. Their work was not done.

The Terms

Once upon a time, I heard the story above. To this day, I have no idea if it was in fact true. I cannot find any record of it; however, what matters most is the important message it yields. You see, the meaning of ‘to table something” can be quite different depending on from where you hail. For Americans, to table something means to remove from consideration indefinitely. Yet, for the British, to table something actually means to place something on the agenda. It is a story that serves to remind us that when we communicate we need to take into account the listener. In fact, it is the listener that plays a much more significant role in the conversation particularly when the speaker has initiated a call for action. The moral of this story is that when we discuss complex problems, concepts, and initiatives it critical that we acknowledge the terms we use to ensure they are understood.

Such is the case when we discuss violence committed with guns. War, terrorism, targeted violence, domestic violence, workplace violence, street violence, school violence, active shooters are many of the reference labels that are placed on incidents of bloodshed involving a gun. Yet, because the motivations of each of these incidents may be different – whether slightly or drastically – it is important that we take the time to ensure that in our discussions to better understand the problem we face we can recognize the nuances related to the different types of gun violence. For example, legislative efforts aimed at banning assault weapons in response to incidents of school violence may do little to impact those communities suffering from bloodshed where the culprit is routinely a 9mm handgun. The logic that all violence involving guns should be addressed in the same manner fails to take into account the trigger pullers themselves.

Understanding Violence

Frederick Calhoun and Stephen Weston, in their book Threat Assessment and Management Strategies: Identifying Howlers and Hunters, posit that all acts of violence fall into one of two categories. They identify one category as impromptu violence, relating that this type of violence results from a “spontaneous, unplanned act that occurs in the emotional heat of the moment.” The second category is intended violence, and as they describe, “culminates a planned, premeditated act.” While both of these types share several of the same steps on the pathway to violence, it is the intended violence category that adds two additional steps; research and planning, and making preparations to commit the act of violence.

By no means am I suggesting that the media, and for that matter governmental programs scrap the lexicon they have used to bring attention to violence in favor of categorizing violence under just two labels: impromptu or intended violence. Instead, what I am in expressing is that we ensure that when we discuss violence we do so in a manner that focuses on bringing justice to the victims, resolution to their families, and peace to affected communities. To do so means we all need to do a better job of understanding the nuances involved with the perpetrators associated with the particular bright line incidents of violence we are discussing. By understanding their pathways to violence we can do a better job of preventing the next shooting.

Ping Pong

This past July, Thomas Hogan and Gary Tuggle wrote an article entitled Stop Retaliatory Homicides Before they Start. They opened up the article with yet a new phrase to describe the surge in gun violence across many United States cities: “ping pong murders.” They use this phrase to explain the vicious cycle of retaliatory violence that is unfortunately taking place among many adjoining neighborhoods plagued by drug dealing, territorial disputes, and grudges. Now as we seek to address this nationwide problem we first need to know what it is and what is not.

For those community members caught in the crossfire of ping pong shooting murders, for them it is no different than being in the middle of a terrorist incident or mall shooting. The bullets are still flying and the probability of death or injury is the same. For law enforcement, it is critical that the incident be categorized quickly because it offers different options for the prosecution of the offenders, which in turn provides resources and guides the investigation.[1]Nevertheless, for the rest of us looking to provide solutions to this overarching problem of gun violence it is critical we understand the pathway to violence that the perpetrators, and in the case of ping pong murders where today’s victim becomes tomorrow’s shooter, on so we can design and implement measures to off ramp them.

So what category do ping pong murderers fit within? Impromptu or intended violence? I turned to Pete Gagliardi, practitioner-expert-author, who has international experience in implementing gun violence prevention solutions. When I pose this question to him, he explained that much of the street level gun violence we see today across our cities is what he refers to as “nonsensical” disputes. In other words, the violent response to the perceived wrongdoing by the perpetrator does not match the actual harm of the perceived wrongdoing in the eyes of law abiding people that would consider the grievance so minor they would never get physical about it never mind shoot someone over it. Conversely, similar to crimes of passion, territorial fights over money or power, while they never justify violence, are easier to understand and can be viewed as a norm of the “underworld” – at least more “sensical” than shooting somebody because they looked at you funny or “dissed” you on a social media post. While it is easier for us to characterize these street level gun violence incidents as sensical or nonsensical we recognize that this is much too subjective since we view the incident through our own lense of bias.

So to answer the question, we turn to the interviews of illegal gun possessors over the years. Many say they carried their guns for protection and to ward off an attack, similar to an alarm company’s sign placed on your front lawn that is there to ward off would be burglars. So maybe there is a third type of violence in between impromptu and intended. For sake of argument, maybe we call it “implannedtu” where violent perpetrators who carried their guns for prevention and protection wound up pulling the trigger for something either sensical or nonsensical.

Conclusion

When the Allies initiated their intended violence plan against the Germans in Normandy it was easy for us to recognize that as war. Yet today’s bloodshed in communities across the United States come from multiple directions involving diverse perpetrators that carry with them a sundry of grievances. Like any problem, once we can better understand its components the faster and better we become at solving them. Gun violence plagues this nation at unprecedented levels. It impacts us in our homes, in our streets, in our schools, in our malls, in our workplaces, and in our places of worship. Maybe a first step toward understanding the problem is to develop a lexicon and taxonomy that we can reference, share, and discuss. It will better enable us to come to terms with the terms of gun violence.

Note: While I have no factual accounting to source a story I heard many years ago, I was fortunate enough to speak with historian Willian Schuber about the time period. He was able to provide historical significance to the role that Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan played in the planning of D-Day.

Note: In January 2019, Ali Muhammad Brown plead guilty for killing Brendan Tevlin following his killing of three other men in Seattle as part of a jihad-inspired terrorist act in the state of Washington. Prosecuting the case as terrorism in New Jersey would have presented logistical challenges that were overshadowed by the strength of prosecuting the case via a state murder charges. See https://www.nj.com/essex/2018/03/ali_muhammad_brown_pleads_guilty_in_brendan_tevlin.html

For so many police executives, being confronted with the scourge of gun violence within their jurisdictions while being expected to address such crime it may seem like they are facing an unsolvable issue. Yet, throughout the nation there are law enforcement programs available for review and evaluation that are worth replicating. These programs combine local capabilities with programs to address and suppress gun violence. They leverage local information and criminal intelligence, the ATF’s NIBIN and eTrace programs, and information-sharing collaborations and capabilities. A review of these successful programs often identifies five key principles that underpin their success….

https://www.rffactor.com/blog/investigating-gun-violence-the-key-is-the-principles/

Please take some time and think about the victims, their families and all the men and women who served on September 11, 2001, and days after to search, secure, protect, defend, and re-build. Here is a recent piece I shared on those stories that have changed me over the last 20 years.

https://blog.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/changed-forever-by-stories-of-9-11/

Read this article reporting how forensic ballistics evidence gathered by law enforcement agents across Benton County, Washington, has linked their prime suspect to a double homicide and string of arsons at separate locations throughout the Tri-Cities.

The report indicates that police officers recovered fired shotgun shells at a home where two homicides and arson took place. Similar evidence was found at each of the facilities targeted in a string of arson crimes, where the suspect used a shotgun to breach entry to each building.

Police sent the shell casings to ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) for evaluation. Tests confirmed that the shotgun shells recovered at all three scenes were discharged from the same firearm that the suspect had possessed.

For the rest of this bizarre story, follow the link below.

To all involved in these cases, thanks for the work that you do!

https://www.rffactor.com/blog/atfs-nibin-heats-up-case-against-gunman/

In the attache article, Ralph Clark provides an understanding as it relates to his company’s (ShotSpotter) gun fire acoustic detection application and the recent negative focus it has received from critics who have not conducted an objective analysis of the tool, its algorithms, processes, and the value it is providing police departments across the country who face the scourge of gun violence.

https://www.rffactor.com/blog/of-kitchen-strainer-algorithms-cherrypicked-data-and/

His remarks underscore the importance for understanding the value of stakeholder buy-in when advancing technology to support anti crime initiatives.

https://www.rffactor.com/blog/speaking-of-regional-crime-gun-processing-protocols/

Advancing a robust crime gun intelligence capability requires a multitude of handoffs and handshakes among a diverse group of independent stakeholders that include: a) the police (investigators, analysts, commanders), b) forensic technicians, c) prosecutors, and d) the public. Each of these stakeholder groups have their own mission sets, goals, objectives, and often language. As such, each may view the processes involved with crime gun intelligence, and for that matter how they contribute to public safety slightly differently.

Because NIBIN is such a fundamental component toward safeguarding the public from gun violence and arresting serial shooters it Is critical that efforts are made to explain the use, benefit, and ultimate objectives of NIBIN. Forensic technicians who work with NIBIN understand the forensic value of NIBIN, but may also need to understand how investigators can benefit not only from the evidentiary value that NIBIN provides, but the intelligence – or premonitory – value it can provide to investigators. Investigators require an understanding of exactly what NIBIN can provide them from both an evidentiary and premonitory perspective. Prosecutors require not only an understanding of how NIBIN supports both forensic and investigative processes, but how they can use it to advance their cases within the courtroom. And of course, the public needs to understand how NIBIN provides law enforcement a precision based tool for curtailing gun violence and arresting and prosecuting serial shooters.

Robert Troyer, former United States Attorney of Colorado, takes on the challenge of providing prosecutors that understanding of NIBIN in his recently released “NIBIN Toolkit for Prosecutors.” The toolkit covers the following topics:

• What NIBIN is and isn’t.
• How the NIBIN process works.
• How a prosecutor can benefit from NIBIN.
• Answers to frequently asked questions.
• Links to reference materials.
• Common terms and definitions.
• Models, including witness outlines, warrant/complaint affidavit language,demonstrative images and diagrams, and language for common courtroom presentations and pleadings.

By improving the understanding of NIBIN it will make it easier for prosecutors to take advantage of the benefits of this tool and at the same time weave NIBIN deeper into the fabric of criminal prosecution to maximize its public-safety impact. NIBIN can enable prosecutors to leverage this firearm-crime reduction technology to help convict dangerous criminals and to protect those convictions on appeal. Overall, this toolkit is aimed at assisting prosecutors tackle cases involving NIBIN.

The toolkit can be found by visiting the following link:

https://www.ultra-forensictechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NIBIN-ToolkitForProsecutors_20210610-1.pdf

How do you stop gun violence when it reaches a point that an innocent 13-year-old is gunned down while taking the trash out on Christmas Day? You do everything in your power, you marshal your forces, and you deploy them using a proven plan. Building a crime gun intelligence program requires a will to make changes and embrace innovations to address violent crimes in one’s jurisdiction.

Join me in this webinar, hosted by the Justice Clearinghouse, where I discuss the foundational components involved with the New Jersey State Police’s adoption of a rigorous crime gun intelligence capability, which continues to innovate making it a model to adopt.