Partnership to combat gun crime in Southern Colorado seeing success
A Southern Colorado partnership led by the ATF to combat gun crimes has been seeing success since it started two years ago.
The “Southern Colorado Crime Gun Intelligence Center” or CGIC is made up of multiple local law enforcement agencies from around the state and collaborates with federal officials to catch and prosecute serial shooters.
The partnership uses cutting-edge technology to identify where serial shooters are getting their guns to try and stop them from shooting again.
Each person responding to a crime puts evidence like shell casings, fingerprints, or DNA, into a system called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network or NIBIN. NIBIN analyzes each piece of evidence and is able to compare it to evidence gathered from other scenes.
The system has connected multiple crimes to the same gun or shooter. That means one arrest could solve several crimes at once.
“We are going after the worst of the worst,” SAC Debora Livingston with the ATF said. “We have learned that they don’t stop: they keep shooting until someone stops them with handcuffs or prison or until they get shot themselves. Removing a criminal like that from the streets has an extensive impact on the community. With NIBIN, one arrest has the potential to solve multiple shootings, bring justice to victims of multiple crimes and immediately and decisively impacts the safety of the community for the better.”
Just this year, NIBIN and the CGIC partnership arrested 55 criminals and solved dozens of crimes.
El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder can testify to the success of the program.
“We’ve had a number of auto thefts recently, car break-ins, and burglaries where weapons were stolen. We submit those shell casings to the lab, and the lab submits the findings to the CBI, the CBI runs their database, and that’s what ties a number of these different cases together,” Sheriff Elder explained.
The system helped solve several high-profile cases, like a shooting in Denver in 2014 on Super Bowl Sunday. The case went cold for two years, until the suspect committed a crime in Colorado Springs, and NIBIN tied the ballistics to both cases. That gunman is now serving 8 years in prison for attempted murder.
It also helped put several gang members behind bars that were responsible for at least five shootings in the area, including at the Citadel Mall and a Colorado Springs nightclub. Those criminals are serving a combined total of 43 years in prison.
After highlighting the successes, United States Attorney Bob Troyer had a tough message to potential or current criminals: “If you’re going to pick up a gun and shoot someone because you don’t like the color of their clothes or they said something to your girlfriend or they made fun of your car… you’re going to end up for a long period of time in federal prison, out of the state, with very little contact with your friends, family, and the life you know. You’ll be removed from this community.”
The program in Colorado serves as a model for the rest of the country.
