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More than 240 firearms were seized in the summer violent crime reduction effort.
As local, county and federal law enforcement conclude a summer violent crime reduction effort in Cleveland, with yesterday's announcement of 59 suspects indicted following three months of investigations, officials announced plans to continue efforts with a Crime Gun Intelligence Center (
CGIC) in the city.
A “crime gun” is a firearm recovered by law enforcement that has been or is suspected to have been used in a crime or when the possession of the firearm itself is illegal. Only 5% of gun dealers are responsible for 90% of recovered crime guns,
according to Brady United, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating against gun violence.
“We’re committed, together, to have a full-fledged Crime Gun Intelligence Center here in Cleveland, Ohio,” said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) director Steven Dettelbach.
The violent crime reduction effort used data from the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (
NIBIN) to identify illegal firearm sellers and to disrupt gun trafficking.
“NIBIN works on the principle that, although there may be a larger group of people doing crime, the actual number of trigger-pullers who are terrorizing our community is significantly smaller and we need to focus on those individuals as best we can,” Dettelbach said.
Authorities say they seized roughly 240 firearms, more than 200 of which they purchased from illegal sellers. The confiscated firearms also included 17 “ghost guns”, untraceable firearms without serial numbers that are typically assembled at home, and 28 “switches,” devices that convert semi-automatic firearms into fully-automatic weapons.
“[NIBIN] effectively allows us to take a ballistic image from the ejected cartridge casing of a firearm and really it’s sort of a fingerprint of that crime gun. It allows you to connect one shooting to another shooting that might have happened down the street a week before, a month before or even across the state or in another state,” said Dettelbach.
There are currently 25 CGICs in the United States. The interagency centers use NIBIN data to collect and compare digital scans of guns and casings to identify links and matches in shootings across jurisdictions. According to Dettelbach, law enforcement is already practicing crime gun intelligence but a “stand-alone squad” will be created in the coming months.
“We are not done working here together to make sure this is not a one-time deal,” Dettelbach said. “We’re working together to make sure that this kind of technology and intelligence can become a long term, sustainable and permanent force in fighting gun violence here.”
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