Crime Gun Intelligence Center and Crime Gun Ballistics

In 2013, Denver’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center (CGIC) was created to facilitate the use of data and technology in criminal investigations related to gun violence.¹Police Executive Research Forum, “The ‘Crime Gun Intelligence Center’ Model: Case Studies of the Denver, Milwaukee, and Chicago Approaches to Investigating Gun Crime,” May 2017, https://www.policeforum.org/assets/crimegunintelligencecenter.pdf. As of 2016, CGIC was operated by four ATF agents, six task force officers, three intelligence research specialist, two Industry Operations Investigators, and two civilian contractors.²Ibid.

Current CGIC partners include Denver, Aurora, and Lakewood Police Departments; Colorado Bureau of Investigation; First District Attorney’s Office; Second District Attorney’s Office; Seventeenth District Attorney’s Office; Eighteenth District Attorney’s Office; Colorado Department of Corrections; Division of Adult Parole; Colorado Attorney General’s Office;  University of Colorado Denver; and United States Attorney’s Office, District of Colorado.

The CGIC utilizes the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) to analyze ballistic evidence, such as guns, bullets, or shell casings recovered from a crime scene. NIBIN can then link crime guns to other crime scene evidence uploaded to NIBIN and possibly connect the evidence to other crimes or defendants.³Ibid.

The current CGIC processes NIBIN results within days, and sometimes sooner.⁴Ibid. Within the first two years, the CGIC was credited with the arrest of 25 repeat shooters connected to 40 different incidences.⁵Ann Givens, “Denver Builds Out Pioneering Gun Crime Investigation Unit,”  The Trace, April 12, 2019, http://bit.ly/2J5Hm7a. Denver has made an arrest in 70 percent of crimes in which ballistic data has been submitted to NIBIN, far above the national average.⁶The national average for arrests in homicide cases is 46 percent, and the national average for arrests in nonfatal shootings is 30 percent. See: Givens, “Denver Builds Out.” As of 2016, 65 defendants have been arrested on state charges, and those defendants are suspected of committing over 170 shootings.⁷Police Executive Research Forum, “The ‘Crime Gun Intelligence Center’ Model.” Twenty-four of those arrested have been prosecuted federally for straw purchasing and illegal possession of a firearm.⁸Ibid.