Article Review (5)
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Gun violence prevention practices among local police
in the United States Christopher S. Koper
Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA, and
Daniel J. Woods and Bruce E. Kubu Police Executive Research Forum, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the study is to examine gun violence prevention practices among urban police in the USA, assessing their scope, effectiveness, limitations, and impacts. Design/methodology/approach – A national survey was conducted with police agencies serving cities of 100,000 or more people. Findings – Strategies used most frequently and rated as most effective include targeted efforts focussed on high-risk places and groups, as well as multi-agency problem-solving efforts, particularly those involving federal authorities. However, most agencies make limited use of proactive strategies to reduce gun crime, and there are substantial gaps in the enforcement of many gun laws. Results also suggest that gun crime is lower in places where police engage in more intensive gun-related enforcement and prevention efforts. Research limitations/implications – The survey focussed only on large US cities. Implementation of the strategies could not be examined in detail, and assessments of the effectiveness of strategies reflect the views of practitioners. There is a need for more in-depth research on gun-related enforcement and prevention practices, their effectiveness, and the organizational and environmental factors that facilitate or hinder them. Practical implications – The study highlights strategies that should be given priority consideration in policy decisions. The findings also suggest that police efforts to address gun crime can be enhanced considerably – and that doing so may produce demonstrable reductions in gun crime. Further examination of policy changes necessary to facilitate these efforts is warranted. Originality/value – This study represents the first national survey of gun violence reduction efforts by police in the USA.
Keywords Police, Firearms, Violence, Enforcement, Prevention, National, Survey, Urban, Effectiveness, USA
Paper type Research paper
Introduction Controlling gun crime continues to be a difficult challenge for policymakers and practitioners in the USA. In 2010, there were nearly 10,000 murders with firearms in the USA[1] and another 3,38,000 non-fatal violent crimes with guns (Truman, 2011).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1363-951X.htm
Received 18 June 2012 Revised 25 September 2012
29 October 2012 Accepted 1 November 2012
Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management
Vol. 36 No. 3, 2013 pp. 577-603
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1363-951X
DOI 10.1108/PIJPSM-06-2012-0052
This research was supported by funding from the Joyce Foundation and the Motorola Foundation (the authors thank Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum for making the latter funding available to support the study). The authors thank Jacob Berman and Nathan Ballard for additional assistance with data collection and analysis. The authors also thank Nina Vinik, Heath Grant, and Chuck Wexler for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the views of any of the aforementioned persons or organizations.
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The prevalence of guns is thought to contribute to particularly high levels of homicide in the USA (e.g. Hoskins, 2001; Zimring and Hawkins, 1997), where some estimates imply that the total costs of gun violence – including medical, criminal justice, and other costs – could be well over $100 billion per year (calculated from Cohen et al., 2004; Cook and Ludwig, 2000).
Yet finding common ground for legislative solutions to this problem is quite difficult, making it especially critical to effectively enforce existing laws and utilize other prevention approaches. Indeed, debates on controlling firearms violence often revolve around whether the nation needs tougher gun laws or better enforcement of laws that already exist. However, these debates are not well informed by systematic information on what law enforcement agencies are doing to reduce gun violence, the success of those efforts, and the factors that facilitate or hinder those efforts. To address these gaps, this paper presents results from a national survey of gun violence prevention efforts by local police in urban US jurisdictions. The study describes the range, scope, prevalence, and limitations of police efforts to reduce gun violence, and offers some preliminary assessments of the effectiveness and impacts of these practices.
Background: police and gun crime Police typically handle gun crimes reactively, investigating violent gun crimes and making arrests for illegal possession or carrying when they encounter violations during routine activities (e.g. answering calls for service and making traffic stops). To varying degrees, police also use proactive strategies to emphasize a focus on gun crime. These include disrupting the illegal supply of firearms, reducing illegal gun possession and carrying, targeting known gun offenders and others at high risk for gun violence, undertaking educational and preventive activities, and collaborating with other criminal justice, government, and community organizations on initiatives that combine enforcement, prosecutorial, and prevention elements (e.g. see Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), 1999).
However, despite efforts to promote many of these practices among US police (e.g. International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), 2008, 2011; OJJDP, 1999), relatively little is known about how widely police use these various strategies or about the outcomes of these efforts. What is known of police efforts to reduce gun violence is largely anecdotal, based on descriptions or evaluations of strategies in a relatively small number of jurisdictions (e.g. Braga et al., 2001; Brill, 1977; Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, 1998; Dunworth, 2000; Koper and Mayo-Wilson, 2006; OJJDP, 1999). Evidence suggests that there are substantial differences across jurisdictions in the intensity of gun enforcement and prevention efforts (e.g. Brill, 1977; Sherman and Bridgeforth, 1994). However, there has been no systematic research to examine the range, scope, and prevalence of police efforts to reduce gun violence across the nation. Further, little is known about the effectiveness of many police strategies to reduce gun crime or whether levels of police enforcement and prevention effort are related to rates of gun crime.
Overall, available evidence suggests that police efforts targeted on high-risk places, behaviors, and actors are effective, particularly when conducted in the context of multi-agency problem-solving efforts. For example, crackdowns on illegal gun carrying in gun crime hot spots, often done through directed patrols focussed on gun detection, appear effective in reducing gun crime and improving citizens’ perceptions of neighborhood conditions in targeted areas (Cohen and Ludwig, 2003; Koper and
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Mayo-Wilson, 2006; McGarrell et al., 2001; Sherman and Rogan, 1995; Villaveces et al., 2000). Efforts targeted on high-risk groups such as gangs, probationers, parolees, and known chronic offenders are another important evidence-based approach to reducing gun crime (e.g. Bynum and Varano, 2003; Delaware Statistical Analysis Center, 1998). The “pulling levers” or “focused deterrence” approach that concentrates law enforcement, prosecution, and social service resources on high-risk groups, typically through face to face contacts known as “notification meetings,” has become a popular approach of this sort that has been evaluated favorably in several sites (e.g. Braga, 2008; Braga et al., 2001, 2008; McGarrell et al., 2006, 2009; Papachristos et al., 2007; Tita et al., 2003). Pioneered in Boston, this strategy has become a blueprint for other successful local and national initiatives in the USA, including the Federal Government’s Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program (McGarrell et al., 2009, 2010). The threat of federal prosecution for gun crimes, which often provides for much more harsh penalties than are available at the state level, is a central component of this approach.
More generally, it has become increasingly common for police to work collaboratively with other criminal justice, government, social service, and community organizations to diagnose and address gun violence problems using a multi-faceted, problem-solving approach (e.g. Koper et al., 2010; OJJDP, 1999). The pulling levers strategy is a leading example of this. The Federal Government has sponsored other initiatives of this sort, such as the Partnerships to Reduce Juvenile Gun Violence Program (Sheppard et al., 2000), the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (Roehl et al., 2006, 2008), and PSN (McGarrell et al., 2009, 2010). The growing federal role in addressing local gun crime problems, largely through PSN, is also reflected by the 73 percent increase in federal firearms prosecutions that occurred from 2001 through 2005 (McDevitt et al., 2006, p. ii).
In contrast, police efforts to attack the supply side of the gun crime problem appear to have little or unknown effectiveness. Gun buyback or exchange programs that offer cash or other reimbursements to persons who relinquish their firearms to police do not appear to be an effective way of disarming high-risk persons or reducing the overall criminal supply of firearms (Callahan et al., 1996; Kennedy et al., 1996a; Romero et al., 1998; Rosenfeld, 1996; also see reviews in National Research Council (NRC), 2005, pp. 95-96 and Sherman, 1997), though some argue that they have value as a community outreach and mobilization strategy (Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), 2010; Rosenfeld, 1996). At the same time, there is scant evidence about the extent or effectiveness of police efforts to disrupt illegal gun markets through investigation of gun theft, gun trafficking, and other illegal gun sales. Many US agencies, particularly in urban areas, appear to trace the sales histories of recovered guns with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and to work with ATF on efforts to attack illegal gun trafficking (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), 2002; Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2000; OJJDP, 1999). However, there has been little in-depth study or assessment of such efforts. The tools available to police to address illegal gun markets vary substantially depending on state and local gun laws (for instance, many states have no provisions for licensing gun owners or gun dealers, regulating private gun sales, or requiring citizens to report stolen firearms). Yet even in jurisdictions with more restrictive gun laws, there has been little examination of police uses or experiences with these laws. This constitutes an important “missing link” in debates over the efficacy of many gun control laws (e.g. see Hahn et al., 2003). Some studies show that locally-based efforts to disrupt gun
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trafficking, discourage straw purchasing and illegal secondhand sales, regulate and work cooperatively with licensed gun dealers, and investigate corrupt or negligent gun dealers can reduce the flow of new firearms to criminal users (Braga and Pierce, 2005; Ridgeway et al., 2011; Webster et al., 2006a, b, 2009). But whether such efforts are commonplace and can reduce the gun supply sufficiently to reduce gun crime are unclear (also see Braga et al., 2002, 2012; NRC, 2005).
Finally, education and prevention strategies conducted by or involving police include teaching children and youth about gun safety and the consequences of gun violence, promoting safe storage of firearms by adults through education and the distribution of lock boxes, and participating in a variety of other gang and violence prevention programs (e.g. OJJDP, 1999, pp. 169-200). Research suggests that efforts to change gun-related attitudes and behaviors have not had great success (NRC, 2005), but many programs of these sorts have not been evaluated.
In sum, current knowledge is rather limited on the use and effectiveness of police strategies to reduce gun violence. In this study, we sought to provide new insights into these issues through a national survey of local US police agencies in urban areas.
Study objectives, methods, and data One objective of our study was to provide more extensive information on the nature, scope, and prevalence of various police efforts to reduce gun crime, including the extent to which police use evidence-based and other “promising” strategies (e.g. see OJJDP, 1999). A related objective was to examine police enforcement of selected gun control laws, particularly those that would seem to enhance the ability of law enforcement to prevent the transfer of guns to illegal possessors (e.g. laws requiring gun registration or regulating private gun transfers). We also sought to determine whether and how police efforts to address gun crime differ between jurisdictions with stronger and weaker gun controls. For example, do police make greater efforts to address illegal gun markets in jurisdictions with stronger gun controls? A fourth objective was to ascertain which strategies police consider to be most effective for reducing gun crime. Are police views on effective strategies consistent with available research evidence? And, given the limited evaluation research on this topic, do police views and experiences suggest additional strategies that may have promise for future evaluation and diffusion? Finally, a fifth objective of the study was to gauge variability across jurisdictions in the overall intensity of police efforts to address gun crime and to make some preliminary, exploratory assessments of whether stronger police efforts reduce gun crime.
To these ends, we developed a police agency survey instrument that included items on violent gun crime, weapons arrests (i.e. arrests for illegal weapon possession and carrying as reported to the Uniform Crime Reports), and gun recoveries (from all sources) in the study jurisdictions; state/local gun laws and enforcement activities related to those laws; and the use and perceived effectiveness of an extensive list of enforcement and prevention strategies that agencies might use to address gun crime.
In the fall of 2009, this survey was administered by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) to all 263 primary law enforcement agencies serving cities of 1,00,000 or more people in the USA[2]. We focussed on police in large cities due to the concentration of gun crime in urban jurisdictions and the likelihood that addressing gun crime is a higher priority for police in these localities;[3] thus the findings are not representative of police practices in smaller cities, suburban jurisdictions, rural areas,
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or the nation as a whole. Overall, 164 agencies (62 percent) responded to the survey[4]. Selected characteristics of the study agencies and jurisdictions are shown in Table I.
Analysis of responding and non-responding agencies showed that the responding sample is more heavily weighted toward larger agencies policing larger cities with more serious violence problems. Responding agencies served populations averaging over 4,00,000; in contrast, non-responding agencies served populations of about 1,71,000. (Among agencies serving cities of 2,00,000 or more, 71 percent responded to the survey.) Further, responding agencies had officer to population ratios 18 percent larger than those of non-responding agencies, and their cities had homicide rates 55 percent higher than those of non-respondents[5]. These comparisons suggest that the responding agencies represent those for which the problem of gun violence is most salient[6]. Note, however, that the findings may not generalize as well to agencies in smaller cities with less serious gun violence problems.
Results Gun laws and enforcement We begin with an examination of selected gun laws in the study cities and enforcement activities related to these laws. Federal and state laws prohibit certain categories of people from gun ownership (e.g. convicted felons), and federal law, as well as some state laws, requires that people purchasing guns from firearms dealers (who must be licensed by the Federal Government and possibly by state or local governments) undergo background checks by law enforcement to confirm their eligibility. Our survey examined selected state and local laws that go beyond these basic gun controls, with an emphasis on laws that may enhance the ability of police to attack the supply of guns to offenders.
Only 31 percent of large city agencies reported that their state or locality required people to obtain a permit to purchase a firearm (Table II). Further, roughly three- quarters of the local agencies in jurisdictions requiring permits did not have authority or discretion over the granting of those permits. About one-third of agencies (35 percent) operated in a state or locality that required registration of firearms with law enforcement, and 40 percent were in a jurisdiction that either prohibited carrying of a concealed handgun (4 percent) or gave police discretionary control over granting permits to carry a concealed handgun (36 percent) (Table II)[7]. Turning to Table III, 38 percent of agencies indicated that their state or locality required background checks for private gun sales, while 29 percent reported that their state or locality required gun owners to report losses or thefts of firearms. Finally, 21 percent of the agencies had legal authority to inspect licensed gun dealers.
Average 25th percentile Median 75th percentile
(1) Officer strength 1,115 229 400 839 (2) Population 4,04,884 1,32,246 1,99,000 3,80,227 (3) Gun recovery rate (per 100K) 231 127 217 305 (4) Weapons arrest rate (per 100K) 118 62 97 156 (5) Violent gun crime rate (per 100K) 239 86 196 337
Notes: Statistics on gun crime, gun recoveries, and weapons arrests were averaged for the years 2006 through 2008; the number of agencies with available data for calculation was as follows: (1) n¼163; (2) n¼164; (3) n¼149; (4) n¼146; (5) n¼147
Table I. Descriptive statistics
for study respondents
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A caveat to the preceding figures is that they are based on reports from the agencies. We relied on agencies’ reports of gun laws based on the belief that law enforcement professionals would be knowledgeable about their state and local firearms laws and the complexities and nuances of how those laws operate. Even allowing for some
Yes (%)
No (%)
State or locality requires that people have a permit to purchase a firearm 31 69 If Yes, agency has responsibility for granting these permits 27 73 If Yes, agency has discretion in whether or not to grant permits 22 78 State or locality requires registration of firearms 35 65 If Yes, use system to identify cases of potential straw purchasing and other illegal transfers 60 40 If Yes, use system ensure compliance with laws by licensed gun dealers 54 46 If Yes, use system to conduct audits to ensure possessors are still lawful 53 47 If Yes, use system to identify cases of illegal gun trafficking 70 30 If Yes, use system to notify officers about possible presence of firearms at locations 63 37 State or locality prohibits carrying of concealed weapons or requires a permit that is issued at the discretion of police 40 60
Note: Based on a survey of 164 urban police agencies. Unless otherwise noted, missing data rates were negligible
Table II. Gun control laws and enforcement activities related to permit systems, firearm registration, and carrying of concealed weapons
Yes (%) Frequently/ regularly (%) Occasionally (%) Never (%)
State or locality requires background checks for private gun sales 38 – – – If yes, how frequently does agency investigate cases of potentially illegal transfers? – 28 40 32 States or locality requires gun owners to report losses or thefts of firearms 29 – – – If yes, how frequently does agency investigate cases under this law? – 44 44 12 Agency has responsibility for inspecting local gun dealers 21 – – – If yes, how often does agency inspect dealers? – 27 61 12 If yes, how often does agency investigates dealers suspected of making illegal sales? – 16 62 22 Agency collects or receives records from NCIC or a state system on denied gun purchases 36 – – – If yes, how frequently does agency follow up on these cases? – 45 47 8
Note: Based on a survey of 164 urban police agencies. Unless otherwise noted, missing data rates were negligible
Table III. Gun control laws and enforcement activities related to private sales, reporting of gun thefts, regulation of licensed dealers, and monitoring of prohibited buyers
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respondent error, however, the data suggest that most urban police operate in contexts where gun laws are relatively limited[8].
Moreover, our greater interest was in examining how agencies enforced or otherwise used certain laws that they reported as being applicable in their jurisdiction. Overall, enforcement and other uses of several of these laws were rather limited. Agencies operating in a state or locality that required gun registration, for instance, were asked a series of questions about ways that they might use these records of gun owners and firearms to identify illegal gun transfers, illegal gun possessors, and other situations potentially involving firearms (Table II). Between 60 and 70 percent reported using registration systems to identify “straw purchasing”[9] and other forms of illegal transfers and trafficking, while 54 percent reported using them to ensure that licensed gun dealers were operating in compliance with applicable laws and reporting requirements (these laws typically require gun dealers to report their sales to police). Gun registration systems can also be used to identify previously lawful purchasers who have become ineligible due to new convictions or other reasons (Wright and Wintemute, 2010). California authorities have instituted such a program in recent years and discovered that almost 36,000 handguns and assault weapons are possessed by previously legal California purchasers who are now ineligible to have those weapons (Associated Press, 2011; Connolly and Luo, 2011). However, only about half (53 percent) of the agencies with access to a gun registration system in our sample reported using the system in this manner. Finally, 63 percent of the agencies in jurisdictions with gun registration reported using the system to warn officers of the possible presence of firearms at locations to which they are responding (for officer safety purposes). Hence, while many agencies with access to gun registration data report using them in these strategic ways, many others do not.
We found similar patterns with respect to a number of additional laws (Table III). Only 28 percent of the agencies operating in a state or locality that required background checks on private gun sales investigated illegal private sales on a regular basis, and 32 percent indicated that they never conducted such investigations. In a follow-up item, 43 percent of the agencies that did not investigate these cases regularly cited resource constraints as a reason that they did not pursue more such investigations. Likewise, less than half (44 percent) of the agencies in jurisdictions requiring gun owners to report losses or thefts of firearms investigated these types of cases regularly, even though these laws are intended to provide police with better information on firearm thefts and to discourage people from making straw purchases or other illegal gun transfers and then falsely reporting the guns as stolen or missing.
Law enforcement authority over licensed gun dealers can also be significant tool for curbing illegal gun markets. Corrupt licensed dealers can serve as large sources of firearms to illegal markets (ATF, 2000a), and some research suggests that half of licensed dealers in urban areas may be willing to sell guns in potential straw purchase situations (Sorenson and Vittes, 2003). Further, studies suggest that closer regulation of gun dealers by law enforcement and undercover investigations directed at problematic dealers help to reduce the flow of new firearms into criminal markets (Webster et al., 2006a, b, 2009). Yet among the sample of agencies with authority for inspecting gun dealers, only 27 percent inspected dealers on a regular basis, and only 16 percent regularly investigated dealers suspected of making illegal sales (though the latter may reflect low levels of problems with illegal sales by gun dealers).
Finally, only about a third of the agencies received data from federal or state systems on prospective or actual gun buyers who fail background checks[10].
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Less than half (45 percent) of the agencies that received such information followed up on these cases regularly, though most of the remainder did so occasionally.
Use of gun violence prevention strategies All agencies were asked a series of questions regarding their use of a wide range of gun violence prevention strategies, beginning with whether they had a special unit devoted to gun enforcement operations. Less than six of every ten agencies (57 percent) indicated having such a unit. Functions performed by these units included directed patrol (62 percent), surveillance/investigation of known gun offenders and other high- risk groups (66 percent), investigation of gun trafficking (61 percent), monitoring of gun dealers (34 percent), and working with federal and/or state agencies on gun crime problems (89 percent).
The responding agencies were also asked about the use of 41 gun enforcement and potential gun violence prevention strategies that were identified based on an extensive review of research studies and other literature describing or evaluating strategies to reduce gun crime (e.g. IACP, 2008; Koper et al., 2010; Koper and Mayo-Wilson, 2006; NRC, 2005; OJJDP, 1999; Sherman and Eck, 2002). Below, the strategies are grouped into those emphasizing gun removal/disposal, gun trafficking, illegal possession and carrying, prevention and outreach, high-risk groups, comprehensive approaches, and gun safety. Agencies were asked to report the frequency with which they used these strategies on a three-point scale: never, occasionally, or frequently/regularly (Table IV)[11].
Removing guns from the community. Agencies did not report extensive use of gun acquisition strategies such as gun buyback programs. Nearly two-thirds of the agencies (61 percent) did not use gun buybacks, and most (55 percent) also reported not having other programs for voluntary gun disposal. Although the utility of gun buyback programs is questionable, experts do recommend that police establish protocols for voluntary surrender of firearms (IACP, 2008).
Reducing gun trafficking. To address gun trafficking, virtually all agencies (99 percent) reported tracing the sales histories of recovered guns with the assistance of ATF. A gun trace conducted by ATF is an investigation that typically tracks a gun from its manufacture through its first point of retail sale by a licensed dealer. It thus provides police with information about where and when a gun was first purchased at retail and about the buyer and seller involved in the transaction. Gun traces can be used to solve particular crimes and as a tool for assessing patterns in illegal gun markets. Additional survey items on tracing practices (not shown) indicated that more than three-quarters of agencies that trace guns reported tracing all recovered guns (64 percent) or all guns associated with any crime (13 percent); only 17 percent reported tracing guns only when needed on a case-by-case basis. However, the use of gun tracing for addressing illegal gun markets appears to be more limited. Whereas almost all respondents reported using tracing data to investigate violent crimes, only 53 percent reported using tracing data to identify retail sources of crime guns and only 61 percent reported using tracing data to identify other suppliers of crime guns such as straw purchasers and gun traffickers.
Virtually all respondents (96 percent) also reported entering information on recovered bullets and ammunition casings into the National Integrated Ballistics Information System (NIBIN), a national system administered by ATF to match images of markings made on fired cartridges and bullets. This system helps police to link crimes involving the same firearm and serves primarily as an investigative tool for
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Frequently/ regularly Occasionally Never
Gun removal/disposal Gun buyback program (n¼163) 3 36 61 Programs or procedures (other than gun buyback) for voluntary disposal (n¼159) 8 37 55 Gun trafficking Trace recovered firearms (n¼162) 74 25 1 Check recovered firearms for ballistics matches (n¼159) 66 30 4 Investigate retail sources of crime guns (n¼161) 12 46 42 Investigate straw purchasing and unlawful transfers (n¼163) 20 43 37 Monitor gun shows for illegal buyers and sales (n¼159) 8 28 64 Debrief adult gun offenders about their gun sources (n¼162) 58 35 7 Debrief juvenile gun offenders about their gun sources (n¼163) 64 29 7 Local gun trafficking investigations with ATF (n¼164) 46 47 7 Multi-jurisdictional investigations with other local, state, federal agencies (n¼164) 27 53 20 Investigative and undercover operations to suppress unlawful street sales of guns (n¼163) 19 55 26 In-depth investigations of gun thefts (n¼163) 39 53 8 Educational or cooperative efforts with dealers (n¼164) 7 23 70 Monitor denied gun sales (n¼164) 11 24 65 Link ATF data on multiple sales to crime gun information (n¼163) 22 33 45 Illegal gun possession and carrying Directed patrols or specialized units emphasizing gun detection in hot spots (n¼164) 43 30 27 Checkpoints for unlawful possession of guns in vehicles (n¼164) 4 7 89 Hotlines or reward programs for tips on illegal gun possession, carrying, use (n¼164) 41 35 24 Consent searches at homes of juveniles thought to illegally possess guns (n¼164) 15 64 21 Shot spotter listening devices (n¼161) 9 5 86 Prevention and outreach Neighborhood meetings on the issue of gun crimes (n¼162) 15 53 32 Media/public education campaigns (n¼162) 8 56 36 Letters/information to gun buyers about pertinent laws (n¼163) 1 11 88 Gun safety education in schools (n¼162) 10 41 49 Violence prevention programs targeting youths in schools (n¼163) 30 55 15 Targeting high-risk groups Focusing on gangs (e.g. prevention programs, suppression activities) (n¼163) 71 23 6 Shooting response protocol stressing prevention of retaliation (n¼163) 36 33 31 Work with street/gang outreach workers (n¼163) 23 40 37 Targeting known gun offenders through investigation, surveillance, warrants (n¼163) 49 45 6 Enhanced monitoring of high-risk probationers and parolees (n¼160) 39 37 24 Joint ATF initiatives to target offenders and hot spots (e.g. violent crime impact teams) (n¼160) 41 32 27 Joint initiatives with state/local prosecutors to prioritize gun offenders (n¼164) 38 42 20
(continued)
Table IV. Use of gun violence reduction strategies
(percentages using the strategies frequently/
regularly, occasionally, or never)
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solving gun crimes (e.g. see Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), 2012; Braga and Pierce, 2004). However, we also list ballistic matching as a potential anti-trafficking strategy because, like tracing information, these matches can also be used to assess patterns in the movement of firearms. This may be helpful in gun trafficking investigations, particularly if a firearm is linked to offenses involving multiple people, thus providing an opportunity to track transfers of the firearm. More than half (57 percent) of the agencies using NIBIN reported entering information for all recovered bullets and casings rather than for just those linked to specific investigations (item not shown), but the survey did not ascertain further information about specific uses of this tool.
Other common strategies to address gun trafficking included debriefing offenders (adult and juvenile) about their gun sources (used frequently by 58-64 percent of agencies and occasionally by 29-35 percent), conducting investigations with ATF (and, to a lesser extent, with other agencies) (used frequently by 46 percent and occasionally by 47 percent), and investigating gun thefts (used frequently by 39 percent and occasionally by 53 percent)[12]. Agencies reported more modest use of several other anti-gun trafficking strategies. Relatively few agencies (19 percent), for example, reported frequent investigation of unlawful gun sales or sources of recovered guns (including retail and street sources), though most agencies reported at least occasional efforts along these lines. Most agencies did not monitor denied gun sales (65 percent), monitor gun shows (64 percent), or undertake educational or cooperative efforts with gun dealers (70 percent). However, the latter two activities may have had limited relevance to some agencies, depending on the number of gun shows and gun dealers in their jurisdiction[13].
Deterring illegal gun possession and carrying. Strategies most commonly used by police to target illegal gun possession and carrying included directed patrols or specialized units focussing on gun crime hot spots and hotlines or reward programs for
Frequently/ regularly Occasionally Never
Submit information on felons with guns to the US Attorney’s Office (n¼164) 55 35 10 Remove guns from scenes of domestic violence calls (n¼161) 72 27 1 Check on gun ownership by people under restraining orders (n¼161) 25 40 35 Cross-jurisdictional and information sharing efforts to track violent offenders (n¼162) 47 42 11 Notification meetings (n¼159) 14 30 56 Comprehensive approaches Multi-agency and community partnerships to address enforcement, prosecution, and prevention (e.g. Project Safe Neighborhoods or Weed and Seed) (n¼163) 64 20 16 Gun Safety Distribution of gun storage or safety devices (n¼163) 20 61 19 Education campaigns to inform gun owners about safe storage (n¼163) 8 60 32
Note: Based on a survey of 164 urban police agencies. Unless otherwise noted, missing data rates were negligibleTable IV.
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tips on guns. Nearly half of the agencies made frequent use of these strategies, and about three-quarters used them at least occasionally. Most agencies (79 percent) conducted occasional consent searches at the homes of juveniles thought to be in possession of weapons (e.g. see Decker and Rosenfeld, 2004), but few (15 percent) did so regularly. Few agencies (11-14 percent) reported any use of roadblock checkpoints for weapons or shot spotter listening devices.
Prevention and outreach. Although most agencies made at least occasional use of most of the listed prevention and outreach strategies, few used them regularly. Almost one-third reported frequent use of youth violence prevention programs in schools. However, no more than 15 percent reported regular use of a number of additional strategies focussed on education and awareness. These included general efforts to raise public awareness about gun violence as well as more targeted efforts to teach gun safety in schools or to educate gun buyers about pertinent laws regarding firearm uses and transfers (e.g. see Ridgeway et al., 2011).
Targeting high-risk groups. Half or more of the agencies reported regular use of strategies to target and/or disarm gangs (71 percent), known gun offenders (49 percent), and domestic violence offenders (72 percent). Likewise, just over half (55 percent) frequently submitted gun cases to the US Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution. (Ballistic matching, discussed above, was also used regularly by two- thirds of agencies. This investigative tool is also worth noting here as it can facilitate the identification of repeat gun offenders.) Strategies used by a majority of agencies but with less frequency included targeting offenders and hot spots with ATF (used frequently by 41 percent and occasionally by 32 percent), shooting response protocols (used frequently by 36 percent and occasionally by 33 percent), working with gang outreach workers (used frequently by 23 percent and occasionally by 40 percent), enhanced monitoring of probationers and parolees (used frequently by 39 percent and occasionally by 37 percent), working with state prosecutors to prioritize gun offenders (used frequently by 38 percent and occasionally by 42 percent), and removing guns from persons under restraining orders (used frequently by 25 percent and occasionally by 40 percent). In contrast, more than half of the agencies (56 percent) did not use notification meetings with high-risk groups (see the earlier discussion of the pulling levers strategy), and only 14 percent used them regularly[14].
Comprehensive approaches. Most agencies reported involvement in multi-agency partnerships to address enforcement, prosecution, and prevention approaches to gun violence. These include federally sponsored efforts such as PSNs and Weed and Seed, as well as locally initiated efforts. Approximately two-thirds of agencies (64 percent) reported regular participation in these efforts, and 84 percent reported at least occasional participation.
Promoting gun safety. Finally, most agencies engaged in some efforts to promote gun safety, including the distribution of gun storage and gun safety devices and participation in public education efforts. However, no more than 20 percent of agencies engaged in these efforts regularly (similarly, see the response on school-based gun safety education listed in the section on prevention and outreach).
Summarizing strategy utilization. The survey results show that urban police use a wide variety of strategies to address gun crime. However, only eight of the 41 strategies we examined were used on a regular or frequent basis by the majority of responding agencies: tracing recovered guns (74 percent), removing guns from the scenes of domestic violence (72 percent), focussing on gangs (71 percent), checking recovered firearms for ballistics matches (66 percent), multi-agency and community partnerships
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(64 percent), debriefing juvenile and adult offenders about their gun sources (64 and 58 percent, respectively), and submitting cases to the US Attorney’s Office (55 percent). This suggests that strategies to reduce gun violence may be somewhat underutilized or underdeveloped relative to the seriousness of the problem. In other words, there may be considerable room for police to expand on these efforts, particularly with respect to the use of other tested and evidence-based strategies (e.g. crackdowns on illegal gun carrying, use of notification meetings, and enhanced monitoring of high-risk probationers and parolees).
The effects of gun crime and gun laws on the use of gun violence reduction strategies To assess how use of these strategies varied with a jurisdiction’s gun laws and level of gun crime, we ran a series of ordinal and generalized logistic regression models (not shown) that predicted how extensively the agencies used each strategy (on our three- point scale) as a function of the jurisdiction’s gun laws and whether the jurisdiction’s rate of violent gun crime was above or below the median value of this rate across all cities[15]. As expected, levels of gun crime prompted greater use of the listed strategies, as nearly half were used more frequently in jurisdictions with higher levels of gun crime[16].
Gun laws, in contrast, had more limited effects. Most notably, agencies with the authority to inspect licensed dealers used many of the strategies more frequently, including several oriented toward gun markets and gun trafficking – debriefing gun offenders about gun sources, investigating straw purchasing, investigating retail and street sources of crime guns, monitoring gun shows, working with licensed gun dealers, and linking information on recovered guns to ATF data on multiple sales (i.e. purchases of multiple guns by the same individual from the same dealer at one time or in a short span of days)[17]. Other gun laws, however, were not as strongly related to the practices reported by the agencies. For example, agencies with access to gun registration systems were more likely to check on firearms possession by persons under restraining orders. However, they were no more likely than other agencies to investigate straw purchasing or retail sources of crime guns, both of which can be facilitated by the availability of gun registration data. Similarly, agencies in jurisdictions regulating private sales were no more likely to investigate straw purchasing and other illegal gun transfers.
For further assessment, cities located in states with the most restrictive combinations of state gun laws were compared with the rest of the sample. Using the state gun law rankings of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (which are based on the totality of gun laws in each state) and other selected sources on gun laws (e.g. Legal Community Against Violence, 2008; Vernick and Hepburn, 2003), 11 states were designated as high gun control states[18]. (Among other measures, these states generally have some form of licensing for gun owners, gun registration, and/or regulation of private gun sales.) This enabled us to determine whether police practices varied based on the overall level of gun control in a jurisdiction, and it provided an additional data source with which to validate results found using the gun law designations reported by the agencies. Police in the high-control jurisdictions did not make greater use of the gun-related strategies overall, nor did they have a strong tendency to make more use of market-oriented strategies as might be expected based on their laws. Of note, however, police in the more restrictive states were more likely to monitor gun buyers, check on gun ownership among people with restraining orders, investigate unlawful street sales of firearms, and conduct gun buybacks. Strategies
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they used less often included initiatives with prosecutors, perhaps signaling less reliance on more punitive, deterrence-oriented strategies to reduce gun crime in areas where gun availability is more limited.
Perceived effectiveness of gun violence prevention strategies Agencies were asked to rate the effectiveness of strategies they used on a three-point scale: little or no effectiveness, moderate effectiveness, or very effective. In total, 80 percent or more of users provided effectiveness ratings for two-thirds (68 percent) of the strategies, and at least 70 percent of users provided effectiveness ratings for 90 percent of the strategies (the few remaining strategies were rated by roughly two-thirds of their users)[19]. For each strategy, Table V shows the percentage of agencies using the strategy at least occasionally and the strategy’s effectiveness as rated by users that provided an effectiveness rating. (Note that the effectiveness ratings for some strategies may reflect their usefulness in solving particular cases as well as their effectiveness in reducing gun crime more generally.)
% Used
Very effective
Moderate effectiveness
Little or no effectiveness
Gun removal/disposal Gun buyback program 39 9 24 67 Programs or procedures (other than gun buyback) for voluntary disposal 45 2 26 72
Gun trafficking Trace recovered firearms 99 22 59 19 Check recovered firearms for ballistics matches 96 39 46 15 Investigate retail sources of crime guns 58 10 56 34 Investigate straw purchasing and unlawful transfers 63 20 52 28 Monitor gun shows for illegal buyers and sales 36 6 67 27 Debrief adult gun offenders about their gun sources 93 16 49 35 Debrief juvenile gun offenders about their gun sources 93 14 55 31 Local gun trafficking investigations with ATF 93 47 44 9 Multi-jurisdictional investigations with other local, state, federal agencies 80 37 52 11 Investigative and undercover operations to suppress unlawful street sales of guns 74 25 65 10 In-depth investigations of gun thefts 92 16 67 17 Educational or cooperative efforts with dealers 30 17 65 17 Monitor denied gun sales 35 15 49 36 Link ATF data on multiple sales to crime gun information 55 19 64 17 Illegal gun possession and carrying Directed patrols or specialized units emphasizing gun detection in hot spots 73 46 44 10 Checkpoints for unlawful possession of guns in vehicles 11 22 61 17 Hotlines or reward programs for tips on illegal gun possession, carrying, use 76 11 50 39
(continued)
Table V. Perceived effectiveness of
gun violence prevention strategies (percentages
using the strategies and percentages of users rating them as very
effective, moderately effective, or not effective)
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With the exception of gun removal strategies, the strategies were rated as moderately or very effective by the majority of agencies. In most cases, a plurality or majority of agencies rated each strategy in Table V as moderately effective. Two strategies that were rated very effective by the majority of users were submitting cases to the US Attorney for prosecution (rated as very effective by 60 percent) and removing guns from the scenes of domestic violence calls (rated as very effective by 56 percent).
% Used
Very effective
Moderate effectiveness
Little or no effectiveness
Consent searches at homes of juveniles thought to illegally possess guns 79 21 58 21 Shot spotter listening devices 14 17 55 28 Prevention and outreach Neighborhood meetings on the issue of gun crimes 68 8 58 34 Media/public education campaigns 64 9 59 32 Letters/information to gun buyers about pertinent laws 12 15 39 46 Gun safety education in schools 51 11 76 13 Violence prevention programs targeting youths in schools 85 16 71 13 Targeting high-risk groups Focusing on gangs (e.g. prevention programs, suppression activities) 94 42 60 6 Shooting response protocol stressing prevention of retaliation 69 37 59 4 Work with street/gang outreach workers 63 20 60 20 Targeting known gun offenders through investigation, surveillance, warrants 94 45 48 7 Enhanced monitoring of high-risk probationers and parolees 76 47 43 10 Joint ATF initiatives to target offenders and hot spots (e.g. violent crime impact teams) 73 45 47 8 Joint initiatives with state/local prosecutors to prioritize gun offenders 80 44 51 5 Submit information on felons with guns to the US Attorney’s Office 90 60 34 6 Remove guns from scenes of domestic violence calls 99 56 37 7 Check on gun ownership by people under restraining orders 65 34 51 15 Cross-jurisdictional and information sharing efforts to track violent offenders 89 37 58 5 Notification meetings 44 18 68 14 Comprehensive approaches Multi-agency and community partnerships to address enforcement, prosecution, and prevention (e.g. Project Safe Neighborhoods or Weed and Seed) 84 49 47 4 Gun safety Distribution of gun storage or safety devices 81 24 44 32 Education campaigns to inform gun owners about safe storage 68 20 60 28
Note: Based on a survey of 164 urban police agencies. See text for response rates to effectiveness ratings
Table V.
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Several other strategies targeting high-risk groups, such as those focussing on known gun offenders, gangs, probationers, and parolees, were also rated as very effective by nearly half of the agencies and as at least moderately effective by nearly all. Agencies gave similarly high effectiveness ratings to directed patrols/specialized units focussed on gun crime hot spots, local gun trafficking investigations with ATF, and multi-agency community partnerships.
Gun removal strategies, such as gun buybacks, were the only strategies considered ineffective by the majority of users (67-72 percent). Other strategies that received relatively low effectiveness ratings included neighborhood meetings, educational efforts (including media campaigns and sending information to gun buyers), hotlines or tip programs to report illegal guns, and distribution of gun storage and safety devices. Generally, these strategies were rated as ineffective by roughly one-third of the agencies that had used them, though a majority still considered them to be at least moderately effective. This was also true for a few market-oriented strategies including investigation of retail sources of crime guns, debriefing offenders about their gun sources, and monitoring denied gun sales.
To summarize some key findings, Table VI presents the strategies that agencies were most likely to both use frequently and rate as very effective. Submitting cases to the US Attorney’s Office for prosecution was the leading strategy, with 39 percent of agencies using it frequently and rating it as very effective. Other common and highly rated strategies involving cooperation with federal authorities included participation in multi-agency initiatives like PSNs and working with ATF on gun trafficking investigations and targeted enforcement initiatives (e.g. the Violent Crime Impact Team program – see Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), 2005; Chipman and Pappas, 2006). Other strategies in this top list included efforts focussed on high-risk groups (e.g. gangs), places (i.e. gun crime hot spots), and situations (e.g. domestic violence incidents). Further, local police put substantial emphasis on collaborative efforts with other federal, state, and local criminal justice agencies.
Strategy % of
respondents
Submit information on felons with guns to the US Attorney’s Office for prosecution 39 Remove guns from scenes of domestic violence calls 37 Multi-agency and community partnerships to address enforcement, prosecution, and prevention (e.g. Project Safe Neighborhoods or Weed and Seed) 34 Focusing on gangs (e.g. prevention programs, suppression activities) 32 Check recovered firearms for ballistic matches 29 Directed patrols or specialized units emphasizing gun detection in gun crime hot spots 29 Targeting known gun offenders through investigation, surveillance, and warrants 29 Local gun trafficking investigations with ATF 27 Enhanced monitoring of high-risk probationers and parolees 24 Joint initiatives with ATF to target gun offenders and hot spots (e.g. violent crime impact teams) 24 Joint initiatives with state/local prosecutors to prioritize gun offenders 23 Cross-jurisdictional and information sharing efforts to track violent offenders 21
Note: Based on a survey of 164 urban police agencies
Table VI. Strategies most likely to
be used frequently and rated very effective
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The most extensively used and effective strategies were very comparable between cities with high and low levels of gun crime based on a comparison of cities above and below the median rate of gun crime. Top strategies (ranking in or near the top 10) were also very similar between agencies in states with stronger and weaker gun controls. (This was examined using the high/low state-level gun control indicator discussed above and by comparing jurisdictions having both gun registration and regulation of private sales, as reported by the agencies, to other jurisdictions[20].) However, agencies in states with less restrictive gun controls tended to put more emphasis on working with federal prosecutors and ATF. This suggests that police in these states are more reliant on federal assistance for prosecuting and punishing gun criminals and attacking illegal gun trafficking. In places with more restrictive gun laws (such as those having gun registration and regulation of private gun sales), agencies put somewhat more emphasis on gun tracing and checks on gun ownership among people with restraining orders. This likely reflects the ability of police to do more with these tools in places where police can more readily link a firearm and its chain of custody to particular individuals.
Assessing overall police efforts and their impacts For the final set of analyses, we created three measures of a police agency’s overall effort level in targeting firearms: gun recoveries per violent gun crime, weapons arrests (for illegal weapons possession and carrying) per violent gun crime, and gun enforcement/prevention strategies used regularly (as reported in the survey) per violent gun crime. (The gun recovery, weapons arrests, and gun crime figures are based on three-year averages for 2006-2008[21].) In general, rates of gun crime, gun recoveries, and weapons arrests varied substantially among the cities (Table I). However, the effort measures presented here (see Table VII) provide a method of standardizing for population size and levels of gun availability and gun violence when comparing gun recoveries, weapons arrests, and strategies utilized across jurisdictions. The logic is that agencies making greater proactive efforts to target guns will recover greater numbers of guns, make more weapons arrests, and use more gun violence reduction strategies relative to their level of gun crime. Others have used similar measures to examine variation in firearms enforcement efforts across agencies and over time (Brill, 1977; Sherman, 2000; Sherman and Bridgeforth, 1994). Using these measures, we sought to describe the variability in gun-related effort levels across the sample and to make some preliminary assessments of whether these effort levels
Weapons arrests per 100 gun crimes (1)
Gun recoveries per 100 gun crimes (2)
Strategies used regularly per 100 gun crimes (3)
Average 80 154 5 Percentiles
25th 31 62 1 Median 50 106 3 75th 93 174 5
Notes: The weapons arrests, gun recovery, and gun crime figures are based on data for 2006, 2007, and 2008. The gun crime figures are based on homicides, robberies, and assaults with guns. The number of agencies with available data for each calculation were as follows: (1) n¼136; (2) n¼135; (3) n¼147
Table VII. Effort levels in gun enforcement and gun violence prevention strategies
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are related to levels of gun crime across cities. In other words, do more intensive police efforts to target firearms help to reduce gun crime?
For every 100 gun crimes, agencies on average recovered 154 guns, made 80 weapons arrests, and used five strategies regularly to reduce gun crime (Table VII). There was considerable variation, however, in the agencies’ effort levels. The bottom 25 percent, at most, made 31 weapons arrests, recovered 62 firearms, and utilized one strategy regularly per 100 gun crimes, while the top 25 percent made at least 93 arrests, recovered at least 174 guns, and utilized at least five strategies regularly for every 100 gun crimes. The three effort measures had statistically significant correlations ranging from 0.36 to 0.57, showing that agencies scoring higher on one also tended to score highly on the others.
Police tended to make more weapons arrests per gun crime in states with high levels of gun control; this was particularly true in jurisdictions with more restrictive gun carrying laws. In other regards, however, an agency’s effort levels were not related to the jurisdiction’s gun laws (whether based on the state-level high/low-gun control indicator or the individual laws reported by the agencies) or the availability of firearms in the state (approximated by the percentage of suicides committed with guns – see NRC, 2005). Hence, police in jurisdictions with stricter gun laws do not necessarily put greater effort into weapons enforcement or achieve more substantial results. To a considerable degree, these ratios may reflect both the agency’s emphasis on guns and its overall emphasis on proactive policing activities (e.g. its use traffic stops, pedestrian checks, etc.) that can lead to more gun detection. Additional study of the variation in these effort levels, and the organizational and environmental factors that facilitate or hinder gun violence prevention efforts, would seem useful.
To assess the association between the effort measures and gun crime in the study cities, Figure 1 contrasts the percentage of violent crimes (murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults) committed with guns between cities where police agencies scored in the top 50 percent on the effort measures (i.e. high-effort cities) and cities where the police scored in the bottom 50 percent (i.e. low-effort cities). For each effort measure, the percentage of violent crimes committed with guns was around 25 percent in the high- effort jurisdictions and around 35 percent in the low-effort jurisdictions. More specifically, the share of violent crimes involving guns was 25 percent to 33 percent lower (in relative terms) in cities where police put greater emphasis on gun-related
Weapons arrests
Note: High effort = top 50 percent on weapons arrests, gun recoveries, and gun violence reduction strategies used per gun crime
Gun recoveries
Strategies
Lower effort
High effort40
35
30
25
P e
rc e n t o f V
io le
n t C
ri m
e th
a t is
G u n C
ri m
e
20
15
10
5
0 Figure 1. Gun enforcement/
prevention efforts and the share of violent
crimes involving guns
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enforcement and prevention. These patterns were consistent for larger and smaller cities (based on a comparison of cities with populations above and below 2,50,000) and in jurisdictions with stronger and weaker gun controls (based on a comparison of cities using the state-level high/low global gun control indicator and a comparison of cities with and without the combination of gun registration and regulation of private sales as reported in the survey). Similarly, rates of violent gun crime per population were also considerably lower in the high-effort jurisdictions, regardless of city size or the restrictiveness of applicable gun laws (analyses not shown).
These patterns should be interpreted with caution. In places with less severe crime problems, for instance, police may have more time to utilize proactive strategies that lead to more gun recoveries and weapons arrests, and thus higher effort ratios. If so, this would tend to overstate the impact of police efforts on gun crime. On the other hand, police could also be expected to put a greater emphasis on strategies targeting gun crime in places where gun violence is more prevalent (as found in our earlier analyses). This tendency would lead to higher effort ratios in places with more gun crime and potentially mask some of the impact of police activity. To some degree, these patterns might also reflect the workings of other social factors that affect both police activities and gun crime. Nevertheless, the data provide intriguing indications of the potential for police to reduce gun crime through enhanced gun enforcement and gun violence prevention efforts.
Discussion This study represents the first national survey examination of gun violence reduction efforts by local police in the USA, and it provides a number of insights that may be useful in guiding future research and policy development. One caveat to the study is that it is based on large US cities, so the results may not generalize well to other nations or types of jurisdictions. Further, we could not provide detailed information on how the agencies were implementing their strategies. Care should also be taken in judging the effectiveness of strategies based on these data, as they reflect the impressions of practitioners rather than evidence from scientific assessments. Further, a notable minority of agencies using many of the strategies did not provide effectiveness ratings. That said, we offer some tentative generalizations and implications from the results.
Urban police engage in a wide array of enforcement and prevention efforts to reduce gun crime. Targeted policing efforts focussed on high-risk places and groups – such as gun detection in hot spots, targeting of violent gangs, and removal of guns from domestic violence offenders (which is required in some states) – are some of the most frequently used and effective strategies as rated by police. Further, police give substantial emphasis to multi-agency investigations and comprehensive approaches that combine enforcement, prosecution, and prevention efforts. Ballistics matching technology is enhancing the ability of police to solve gun crimes, and investigation of gun trafficking with ATF, facilitated by gun tracing, is the most frequently used and effective supply-side strategy for disrupting illegal gun markets. These practices are largely consistent with research evidence and expert opinion on effective strategies to reduce gun violence and should arguably be given strong consideration in policy and funding decisions.
At the same time, the findings suggest that police efforts to address gun crime can be enhanced considerably – and that doing so may produce demonstrable reductions in gun crime. Many evidence-based and promising strategies for reducing gun violence, including directed patrols in gun crime hot spots and enhanced monitoring of
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probationers and parolees, are not used regularly by most urban police agencies. Other innovative approaches, such as consent searches at the homes of at-risk juveniles and notification meetings with high-risk groups, receive relatively little use. With some exceptions, local police efforts focussed on illegal gun markets, prevention and outreach, and gun safety appear to be particularly underdeveloped. Even among agencies that trace recovered firearms, many do not report using them to address illegal trafficking. The need for these strategies is, of course, greater in places with more gun crime. Care should also be taken in recommending these strategies because some have not been carefully evaluated. Yet given the seriousness and costliness of gun violence, these efforts should perhaps be given higher priority by police, particularly in urban areas. Further, the strategies examined in this study were usually considered to be at least moderately effective by agencies using them. At a minimum, further experimentation and testing with a wider variety of strategies would seem beneficial, as would further research on the factors that influence the strategies that police choose to address gun crime.
Similarly, there are substantial gaps in the enforcement of many gun laws. Agencies operating in states and localities with gun registration, regulation of private sales, theft/loss reporting requirements, and regulation of licensed gun dealers engage in limited efforts to enforce or use these laws, despite their potential to enhance law enforcement efforts directed at disrupting illegal gun markets. In some of these jurisdictions, state police agencies may take the primary role in enforcing these laws. Nonetheless, heavier involvement by local police agencies could perhaps improve the rigor, comprehensiveness, and effectiveness of supply-side efforts. Resource limitations appear to be a significant impediment to better enforcement of gun laws for many police agencies. Others may include weak or vaguely worded laws that make investigation and prosecution of illegal sales difficult or a lack of significant penalties for violations like straw purchasing. Policy changes, including a reprioritization of gun enforcement efforts and better cooperative and data sharing arrangements among local, state, and federal agencies, may also be necessary to facilitate these efforts. These issues warrant greater attention in future research and policy discussions (e.g. PERF, 2010).
Local police also depend heavily on cooperation with federal authorities in their efforts to reduce gun crime, particularly in jurisdictions with less restrictive gun controls. Submitting cases to the US Attorney for prosecution was the leading strategy identified by local agencies for addressing gun crime. Local police also emphasize cooperation with federal authorities in multi-agency programs like PSNs and Weed and Seed, and they rely heavily on collaboration with ATF for gun trafficking investigations and some targeted enforcement efforts. Furthermore, in many jurisdictions, ATF is the primary or only agency that regulates licensed gun dealers. Continued and expanded federal support for these cooperative efforts would thus seem critical to local police efforts to reduce gun crime. Because ATF resources are stretched thin, local police might also consider devoting more officers to ATF task forces. ATF can deputize officers participating in these task forces to give them federal authority in conducting gun enforcement operations. This could bolster strategically targeted operations to disrupt illicit gun markets, for example.
The reliance of local police on federal prosecution of gun offenders also reflects the general laxity with which many gun offenses are treated at the state level. A problem commonly cited by police officials is that state-level penalties are slight for offenses like illegal gun possession, illegal gun carrying, and even illegal gun sales (e.g. straw
595
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purchasing) (PERF, 2010). Further, gun charges are often dismissed in plea bargaining arrangements. Penalties for gun violations are often much more severe in the federal system, and the threat of federal prosecution is a key element of successful gun violence reduction programs like PSNs. In comments provided with the survey, police frequently cited the need for tougher punishment for gun offenses including illegal possession and carrying, and some agencies reported that recent changes to this effect in their state or local laws had improved their ability to reduce gun crime. Offenders and victims involved in serious gun violence often have long criminal histories, including prior weapons violations (e.g. Cook et al., 2005; Kennedy et al., 1996b; Scocas et al., 1997; Tierney et al., 2001). All of this suggests there may be a need for state and local officials – including prosecutors, judges, and legislators, as well as police – to treat gun violations of all sorts with greater priority and severity. Cooperation between police and state prosecutors to prioritize gun offenders is a helpful step in this regard and one that police often rated as highly effective.
To conclude, police are using a wide variety of strategies to reduce gun violence, and there are many that they find to be effective. These efforts could be intensified and strengthened in various ways that could further enhance the effectiveness of police in suppressing gun crime. However, the success of these efforts will also be tied to the resources and emphasis given to gun crime by other local, state, and federal officials. These issues, and others identified in this paper, may provide a fruitful basis for future research on police approaches to reducing gun violence.
Notes
1. Calculated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports statistics (available at: www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr).
2. The survey was addressed to the chief executive of each agency (i.e. the chief, commissioner, or Sheriff) and that person was asked to complete the survey or to designate an agency representative to complete the survey. Roughly 70 percent of the persons that completed the surveys had a rank of lieutenant or higher and approximately 20 percent were sergeants or detectives. The remainder consisted primarily of police officers, planning and research staff, or crime analysts.
3. In 2007 (the most recent year for which national UCR data were available at the start of our study), roughly 56 percent of the nation’s murders, 60 percent of its gun robberies, and 53 percent of its gun assaults occurred in cities of 1,00,000 or more people.
4. Based on the size of the population under study, we sought to achieve at least a 60 percent response rate in order to obtain estimates with projected 95 percent confidence intervals of plus or minus 5 percent for the full sample (Van Bennekom, 2002).
5. For these comparisons, we used total homicide rates as a proxy for gun crime (nationally, approximately two-thirds of homicides are committed with guns). In 2009, the total homicide rates for the responding and non-responding cities (as reported in the Uniform Crime Reports) were 8.91 and 5.73, respectively.
6. For this reason, we did not weight the survey data to adjust for differences between the responding and non-responding agencies.
7. Laws regarding the issuance of permits to carry concealed weapons are often referred to as “shall issue” or “may issue” laws. Shall issue laws require that police issue permits to those who pass requirements stipulated in the law (e.g. criminal history and training requirements). May issue laws, in contrast, give police discretion in granting these permits even when applicants are legally eligible. In may issue jurisdictions, police may require
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PIJPSM 36,3
applicants to show good cause of why they need a permit and/or give greater scrutiny to the character of applicants (Legal Community Against Violence, 2008).
8. Conducting in-depth legal research on the state and local gun laws of these jurisdictions was beyond the scope of our study. As noted, we believed that local police would have reasonably accurate knowledge of the workings of these laws in practice, which can be complex and ambiguous to discern from the written statutes (indeed, legal researchers often seem to disagree in their coding of gun laws). As one illustration of a rough external check, 84 percent of the agencies reporting that their state or locality required background checks for private sales were in a state that appeared to have some form of this regulation according to at least one of a number of sources including the Legal Community Against Violence (2008), Vernick and Hepburn (2003), and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The remaining agencies may have mistakenly reported that their state or locality had this form of regulation, or they may have been alluding to a local statute. Similarly, we examined the reports of agencies in seven states that have regulation of private sales according to the Brady Campaign and at least one of the other aforementioned legal sources. Among these agencies, 85 percent reported that their state or locality had regulation of private sales. To compensate for potential respondent error in the gun law measures, we also used a state-level gun control indicator in some of the correlational analyses described below. Our other primary use of the reported gun law measures was to examine how agencies enforced the laws that they reported for their jurisdiction.
9. Straw purchasers are legally eligible gun buyers who purchase guns for ineligible buyers or gun traffickers.
10. In some states, local police have responsibility for conducting background checks on prospective gun buyers (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006). In other states, local police would need to obtain data on denied gun sales from federal and/or state authorities. Nationally, between 1,20,000 and 1,50,000 gun purchase applicants are typically denied per year (Bowling et al., 2010).
11. These terms were left open to the respondent’s interpretation.
12. All agencies reported checking recovered guns against databases of guns reported stolen to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information System (NCIC).
13. Though not listed in Table IV as an anti-trafficking strategy, nearly all of the agencies (91 percent) also attempted to restore obliterated serial numbers on recovered firearms. An obliterated serial number is widely recognized as an indicator that a firearm was illegally trafficked. However, over half of these agencies (55 percent) only attempted to restore the serial numbers of guns that were linked to specific investigations.
14. Notification meetings entail face-to-face meetings between high-risk groups (i.e. gangs, probationers, and/or parolees) and a variety of criminal justice and community representatives, including local and federal law enforcement and prosecutors, other criminal justice officials (e.g. probation and parole authorities), social service providers, and community members. In these meetings, practitioners seek to: promise a coordinated and aggressive law enforcement response to gun violence; make offenders more visible to law enforcement and the community, thus reducing offenders’ sense of anonymity; and offer support services such as employment assistance and substance abuse treatment (e.g. see McDevitt et al., 2006). Available accounts suggest that these meetings are typically conducted in cooperation with US Attorneys through the PSN program or similar efforts. As shown below, most agencies reported involvement in multi-agency initiatives like PSN, but these agencies may not have all taken active part in notification meetings run by US Attorneys. It is also possible, however, that some respondents did not make the connection between PSN and notification meetings when answering the survey.
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15. In cases where the outcome variable had insufficient variation across the three usage response categories (never, occasionally, and frequently/regularly), we collapsed the categories into a dichotomy as appropriate and used regular logistic regression.
16. Even in the high gun crime cities, however, only 13 of the 41 strategies were used on a frequent/regular basis by a majority of agencies (and only five were used by 70 percent or more).
17. Federal regulations require licensed dealers to notify ATF whenever they sell multiple handguns to any one individual within five consecutive business days (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), 1995). These transactions, referred to as multiple sales, are considered to be a potential indicator of gun trafficking (e.g. see ATF, 2000b; Koper, 2005, 2007).
18. The states in this group include California, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Illinois. We based these selections on the Brady Campaign’s 2008 rankings, which were closest in time to the survey period. However, the Brady Campaign’s top rankings were the same in 2011, giving consistency to our measure.
19. The effectiveness items also had a response option for “unknown” effectiveness (agencies selecting this option were counted among those that did not provide effectiveness ratings). It is notable in this regard that a substantial minority of agencies using many of these strategies had insufficient information to judge the effectiveness of their practices. This arguably underscores the need for further evaluation of many gun violence prevention practices, a point to which we return in the discussion section.
20. We chose these particular gun laws for this comparison because their combination would seem to provide police with some of the most effective tools for identifying patterns of illegal gun transfers.
21. The weapons arrests and gun recovery ratios were calculated for each year and averaged across years with non-missing values. The strategies ratio measure is based on the number of strategies the agencies reported using in 2009 and the average annual number of violent gun crimes based on non-missing values from 2006 to 2008. For the strategies ratio measure, the strategies were summed regardless of their perceived effectiveness.
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Further reading
Harlow, C.W. (2001), Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
About the authors
Dr Christopher S. Koper (PhD, Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason
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University. He is also a senior fellow and co-director of the evidence-based policing research program in George Mason’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. Dr Koper was formerly the Director of Research at the Police Executive Research Forum and has also worked for organizations including the University of Pennsylvania, the Urban Institute, the Rand Corporation, and the Police Foundation. He specializes in issues related to policing and firearms policy. Christopher S. Koper is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Daniel J. Woods is a Research Associate at the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). While at PERF he has worked on survey construction, data management and analysis in different areas of law enforcement. Prior to joining PERF, he worked as a Research Specialist with the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was primarily responsible for analyzing data from the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE), conducted in Canberra, Australia. He received a M.A. in Criminology & Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland and his PhD in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Bruce Kubu is a Senior Research Associate at the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and has been with PERF since 1999. He has over 16 years of experience in the field dealing with survey methodology. On behalf of PERF, Kubu directs the Law Enforcement Center for Survey Research (LECSR). He has managed numerous projects since joining PERF, including dozens of projects involving surveys. Prior to joining PERF, Kubu worked at the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (W/B HIDTA), which is part of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He earned his Master’s degree in Criminology from the University of Maryland.
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