I read this and agree with it. It seems like enforcing the laws on the books is effective.
If Guns Could Talk ...
Actually, Dallas police now ‘interview’ firearms to keep criminals off the streets
EDITORIALS
This year, 128 people have been slain in Dallas, most of them with a gun, and that number is likely to grow by the time this editorial is printed. As gun rights groups are keen to remind us, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. But Dallas police have discovered that guns can serve as valuable witnesses against the people who pull the triggers.
Anew department initiative is taking a closer look at guns as sources of evidence.
Acting Police Chief David Pughes called it “interviewing the gun.” When a crime is committed using a firearm, two separate investigations are triggered: one into the crime, another into the gun. Police track down previous owners of the gun, whether that gun has been used in previous crimes, and what “known associates” the gun has enjoyed.
Doing so can reveal criminal networks, sources of illegal gun sales, and other details that help pinpoint the nexus of crimes. It’s like having an inside witness to criminal networks, one that has no moral reticence about informing on his associates.
Since DPD began its Summer Crime Reduction Plan on May 20, it has seized more than 200 guns, each with a story to tell. Police are finding that many guns are used in multiple crimes. They’re also finding that perpetrators of violent crime are no longer content to use just any firearm.
Many of the seized guns are high-end, expensive pieces.
And the guns accomplish something else: They keep the accused off the streets longer. DPD has collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. attorney’s office to ratchet up the response to crimes involving firearms. “They have agreed to file cases that they would not ordinarily file,”
Pughes said, meaning gun-related offenses that might have previously landed at the Dallas County district attorney’s office are now being filed as federal cases. That means more post-arrest interviews, more time off the street for accused criminals, and more resources directed toward exposing criminal networks.
“What we’re finding is that we’re arresting the same person over and over and over again,” Assistant Chief of Police Avery Moore told us. “So the idea is if we can take these individuals federally, they get more time, i.e. we get them off the street, which is the whole point.”
In fact, under the new arrangement, a gun simply has to be present to prompt a federal charge. “If we can tie a gun to it, it doesn’t even have to be used in the offense,” Moore said. “If we go there, we make an arrest, and there’s a gun in the location, they will take that federal as well.”
The approach is similar to a strategy used in Richmond, Va., in 1997 called Project Exile. It had impressive results. After launching Project Exile, firearm homicides in Richmond dropped by 22% year over-year, compared with a national average reduction of about 10%, according to the National Institute of Justice.
It’s hard to imagine this program couldn’t be similarly effective in Dallas.
Every violent person removed from the streets makes a difference.
At the beginning of the summer crime initiative, DPD identified 100 of Dallas’ most-wanted individuals — people who had been arrested on multiple occasions for violent crimes. In a four-day span, police took 53 of those people into custody, a remarkable success rate. In the weeks following that effort, violent crime started to trend down: 5% lower in July than June, 3.5% lower in August than July. It would be an overstatement to say that the removal of those 53 people caused the decline in crime — the issue is more complicated than that — but the correlation is suggestive.
The pool of violent offenders in Dallas may not be as large as it seems.
All of this correlates to the element of DPD’s efforts that seems most impressive to us, namely its strategic, proactive, datadriven approach. Even while Chief U. Reneé Hall has been mysteriously sidelined on medical leave (she returns on Monday), when her team could be marking time or losing ground, the department’s leadership is stepping up. From state troopers to federal prosecutors, DPD is taking the city’s crime surge seriously, and enacting new and creative ways to address it. Even as creative as interviewing a gun.
If Guns Could Talk ...
Actually, Dallas police now ‘interview’ firearms to keep criminals off the streets
EDITORIALS
This year, 128 people have been slain in Dallas, most of them with a gun, and that number is likely to grow by the time this editorial is printed. As gun rights groups are keen to remind us, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. But Dallas police have discovered that guns can serve as valuable witnesses against the people who pull the triggers.
Anew department initiative is taking a closer look at guns as sources of evidence.
Acting Police Chief David Pughes called it “interviewing the gun.” When a crime is committed using a firearm, two separate investigations are triggered: one into the crime, another into the gun. Police track down previous owners of the gun, whether that gun has been used in previous crimes, and what “known associates” the gun has enjoyed.
Doing so can reveal criminal networks, sources of illegal gun sales, and other details that help pinpoint the nexus of crimes. It’s like having an inside witness to criminal networks, one that has no moral reticence about informing on his associates.
Since DPD began its Summer Crime Reduction Plan on May 20, it has seized more than 200 guns, each with a story to tell. Police are finding that many guns are used in multiple crimes. They’re also finding that perpetrators of violent crime are no longer content to use just any firearm.
Many of the seized guns are high-end, expensive pieces.
And the guns accomplish something else: They keep the accused off the streets longer. DPD has collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. attorney’s office to ratchet up the response to crimes involving firearms. “They have agreed to file cases that they would not ordinarily file,”
Pughes said, meaning gun-related offenses that might have previously landed at the Dallas County district attorney’s office are now being filed as federal cases. That means more post-arrest interviews, more time off the street for accused criminals, and more resources directed toward exposing criminal networks.
“What we’re finding is that we’re arresting the same person over and over and over again,” Assistant Chief of Police Avery Moore told us. “So the idea is if we can take these individuals federally, they get more time, i.e. we get them off the street, which is the whole point.”
In fact, under the new arrangement, a gun simply has to be present to prompt a federal charge. “If we can tie a gun to it, it doesn’t even have to be used in the offense,” Moore said. “If we go there, we make an arrest, and there’s a gun in the location, they will take that federal as well.”
The approach is similar to a strategy used in Richmond, Va., in 1997 called Project Exile. It had impressive results. After launching Project Exile, firearm homicides in Richmond dropped by 22% year over-year, compared with a national average reduction of about 10%, according to the National Institute of Justice.
It’s hard to imagine this program couldn’t be similarly effective in Dallas.
Every violent person removed from the streets makes a difference.
At the beginning of the summer crime initiative, DPD identified 100 of Dallas’ most-wanted individuals — people who had been arrested on multiple occasions for violent crimes. In a four-day span, police took 53 of those people into custody, a remarkable success rate. In the weeks following that effort, violent crime started to trend down: 5% lower in July than June, 3.5% lower in August than July. It would be an overstatement to say that the removal of those 53 people caused the decline in crime — the issue is more complicated than that — but the correlation is suggestive.
The pool of violent offenders in Dallas may not be as large as it seems.
All of this correlates to the element of DPD’s efforts that seems most impressive to us, namely its strategic, proactive, datadriven approach. Even while Chief U. Reneé Hall has been mysteriously sidelined on medical leave (she returns on Monday), when her team could be marking time or losing ground, the department’s leadership is stepping up. From state troopers to federal prosecutors, DPD is taking the city’s crime surge seriously, and enacting new and creative ways to address it. Even as creative as interviewing a gun.
