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Incident Reviews as a Tool
for Understanding Firearms Violence and Crafting Strategic Interventions: The
Indianapolis Experience
Edmund F.
McGarrell
Director and
Professor
School of Criminal
Justice
Michigan State
University
January 2003
The Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership (IVRP) was convened in December 1997 to address the problem of record-setting levels of homicides that had occurred in Indianapolis from 1994-1997. The IVRP consisted of every local, state, and federal criminal justice agency serving Indianapolis, community partners, and a research team from Indiana University and the Hudson Institute. The IVRP group agreed to employ a strategic problem solving process whereby a working group would systematically analyze homicides and gun assaults, craft strategic interventions based on this analysis, and assess and refine these interventions. The IVRP became part of the Department of Justice’s Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative in 1998 and the strategic problem solving approach has now evolved as a key component of DOJ’s Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN).
The IVRP initiative proved quite successful in Indianapolis. Researchers reported a 40 percent reduction in homicide following the intervention in spring 1999 (McGarrell and Chermak, 2003a). Additionally, the IVRP working group has continued to meet every other week for over five years, analyzing ongoing violence problems and developing strategies. The IVRP initiative is now intimately connected with the Southern District of Indiana’s PSN effort.
Incident
Reviews
One of the critical analytic tools employed in Indianapolis was the incident review. The incident review consisted of case-by-case review of homicide incidents (later to include gun assaults) in order to identify patterns across offenses that might be helpful in crafting interventions to prevent and reduce future violence. As John Klofas, the research partner in the Western District of New York’s PSN program has observed, the incident reviews take advantage of the detailed case-specific knowledge of criminal justice officials and the ability of researchers to identify patterns across cases. This was certainly the case in Indianapolis.
Two types of incident reviews occurred in Indianapolis. The first were two all-day sessions in which a large number of incidents were reviewed. Approximately 75 criminal justice officials from 10 IVRP agencies attended these reviews. The first involved a review of all homicide incidents from 1997, the second all incidents from January-August 1998. Following these “grand” reviews, the IVRP working group held smaller scale incident reviews that involved the review of incidents occurring over the last two weeks (later shifted to a monthly review of incidents over the last month).
The grand reviews were instrumental in gaining a shared understanding of the dynamics of homicides. The bi-weekly incident reviews built on this shared picture and provided a current perspective on what was currently happening on the streets. The information gleaned from the reviews then suggested both broad strategies for reducing violence as well as specific points of intervention for current problems.
The
Incident Review Process
The research team worked with the homicide and major crimes investigation units of the Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) and the Marion County Sheriff’s Department (MCSD) to prepare for the Incident Reviews. Case summaries were prepared that included information such as:
Date, Time, and Location of Incident
Victim and Suspect Demographics
Victim and Suspect Criminal Histories
Type of Weapon
This information was then provided to all review participants prior to the session so that they could check their records for relevant information. Thus, a police officer might describe activity in the vicinity of the crime location, a probation officer might explain his/her experience with the victim, and a gang unit investigator might describe known gang affiliations.
The homicide detective handling the case presented the individual cases. The investigator would typically give an account of the crime. Both open and closed cases were included in the reviews.
A basic set of questions was then posed to each case. These included:
· Do you know what happened in this case?
· Was the victim part of a group of known, chronic offenders?
· Was the suspect part of a group of known, chronic offenders?
· Was the incident drug-related?
· What do you think was behind the incident?
Although some incidents generated brief discussion and little knowledge beyond the detective’s summary, most generated rich discussions from many participants across the various criminal justice agencies about the people, places, and incidents. The research team was responsible for capturing the information about these cases and then relating this information to the other data captured in official police and court records (Click Here to see an example of the coding sheet used to collect data on homicide in Indianapolis).
For Indianapolis, two key findings emerged. First, it was clear that much of Indianapolis’s homicides involved both victims and suspects that could readily be described as being part of a known group of chronic offenders. In some cases these were gangs and in other cases neighborhood crews or cliques. The key point was that they were well known to players in the criminal justice system. The second dimension was that over half of the incidents involved a connection to drug possession, sale, and distribution. This group and drug component became critical in terms of developing a set of interventions intended to reduce violence.
An additional interesting observation was that the picture that emerged from the incident reviews added to that available in official records. This was because homicide investigators were reluctant to list gang or drug motives unless they could conclusively prove this in court.[1] In contrast, in the incident reviews we were interested in a broader understanding of group and drug components whether or not it could be proven as a motive in the present incident.[2] The official homicide records had indicated that gangs and drugs were rarely listed as the motive of the homicide. Thus, reliance on official records blurred these components of the homicide problem in Indianapolis. Following the two grand review sessions, and the continual description of the groups and the drug connection, there was little disagreement among the participants of the crucial role groups and drugs were playing in the violence problem.
Lessons
Learned
The incident reviews proved crucial in several ways. First, the group and drug component suggested possible interventions that were not as apparent when the discussion was focused on more general patterns (e.g., young men in high crime neighborhoods). Second, a group consensus emerged from the review process itself about the nature of homicides in Indianapolis. This consensus helped to focus future discussions of strategies and eliminate some potential interventions that did not seem as likely to have an effect given the deeper understanding of homicides.
When the IVRP working group moved from the grand reviews to the bi-weekly incident meetings the reviews then helped to develop immediate strategies. For example, a series of recent shootings was revealed to involve two groups known to be involved in drug distribution on the west side of the city. The meeting resulted in specific action steps intended to intervene with these groups.
The critical ingredient in the incident reviews was getting the right people in the room for the review. These included investigators but also good, knowledgeable, police officers, probation and parole officers, prosecutors and similar officials known within their agencies as possessing “street knowledge.” Without these types of professionals, the reviews did not generate much beyond what is in the official records. When these officials were in the room and given the opportunity to participate, the incident reviews generated an extremely rich picture of people, places, and relationships that were unlikely to be known by any one individual.
In both the grand reviews and the ongoing reviews, analysis became linked with action. That is, the incident reviews were not merely sources of understanding of the nature of violence but they were rich exchanges of information among professionals within different units of the police department and also across police-prosecution-probation and parole-federal law enforcement agencies. Finally, the reviews often generated information useful for investigators seeking to “close” cases.
Excerpt
McGarrell, Edmund
F. and Steven Chermak. 2003. Strategic Approaches to Reducing Firearms
Violence: Final Report on the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership. Final Report Submitted to the National
Institute of Justice.
Note – The following excerpt from the Final Report of the Indianapolis
Project presents the findings from the problem analysis conducted as part of
the IVRP’s strategic problem solving process.
The incident review followed analysis of existing records that included:
official police records, court records, ATF firearms tracing data, and crime
maps of incidents, probation and parole records, drug complaints and similar
data. The picture that emerged from
these analyses suggested that Indianapolis’s homicide and firearms violence
problem involved young men, using firearms, in geographically concentrated
areas of the city, with long extensive criminal histories. The incident reviews, as described below,
complemented and added to the picture of violent crime.
Digging
Deeper – Homicide Incident Reviews
Although the extensive criminal histories, particularly among victims, caught some IVRP officials by surprise, most of the findings from the analysis of official records only confirmed prior understanding of the homicide problem. “Of course homicides involve young men using firearms in high crime neighborhoods.” To go beyond the picture of homicides gleaned in official data, the IVRP working group decided to follow a process used by David Kennedy and colleagues in Boston and Minneapolis (Kennedy and Braga, 1998). Specifically, the IVRP would bring line level officers and investigators from all the participating agencies together to conduct a case-by-case incident review of homicides. The idea was to assess whether additional patterns could be uncovered through the knowledge of law enforcement, prosecution, probation, and parole officials familiar with the cases, the neighborhoods, and the participants in violence.
Consequently, IVRP brought together officials with street-level intelligence on homicides and violence to participate in a review of every homicide incident occurring in 1997. Participants included detectives and officers from the Indianapolis Police Department and Marion County Sheriff’s Department, prosecutors, probation officers, corrections officials, and federal law enforcement (approximately 75 representatives from 10 agencies participated). The intent was to move beyond the picture of homicides available in official records and tap into the extensive knowledge that exists among the law enforcement professionals working these cases.
The purpose of the review was to find out what was behind each homicide incident.[3] Specifically, we sought to:
· identify the proportion of homicides involving chronic serious offenders and those involving domestic violence
· identify the networks of chronic offenders involved in homicides
· assess the number of homicides related to illegal drug use and distribution
The initial review took place in March 1998 and covered all Marion County homicides occurring in 1997. The research team subsequently conducted a review of the adult and juvenile criminal histories of all suspects and victims. A second homicide review occurred in August 1998 and covered all the homicides from January 1, 1998 through the first week of August.
The research team prepared materials for the homicide incident review. A PowerPoint presentation was developed whereby a summary of each incident was displayed with basic information such as date and location of incident, names and demographic information about victims and suspects, and a brief summary of the incident. Where available, pictures of victims and suspects were displayed. This information was also provided to participants several weeks prior to the review with the request that they look through the incidents and compare to their notes and case files.
During the actual review, a homicide investigator would present the cases that they had investigated. They would go through the case with the summary information displayed to the audience. At the same time, the research team posed to the group the following set of questions for each incident (and the researchers captured the data generated):
· Do you know what happened in this case?
· Was the victim part of a group of known, chronic offenders?
· Was the suspect part of a group of known, chronic offenders?
· Was the incident drug-related?
· What do you think was behind the incident?
During the two initial incident review sessions, approximately 100 cases were reviewed in exhausting nine-hour days. Since that time, as will be discussed subsequently, the review of homicides occurred on an ongoing basis as part of the working group process (every two weeks or monthly).
The homicide review generated a rich description of the backgrounds of victims and suspects, the locations of incidents, and the context and motives of specific homicides. The key findings that emerged from the reviews related to group or gang involvement and the connection to illegal drug use and sale.
We adopted the terminology “groups of known, chronic offenders” to reflect the lack of a consensual definition of gang and the reality that much gang activity in Indianapolis is of a relatively loose structure. That is, many of the groups of known chronic offenders law enforcement encounters are not part of a nationally or regionally organized, well-structured gang but rather may reflect local cliques or crews of offenders who are well-known to law enforcement (see McGarrell and Chermak, 2003b). In addition to these crews, were several more organized gangs with leadership structure and ties to gangs outside Indianapolis. With this definition in mind, the incident review revealed that 58 percent of the homicides in 1997 and 61 percent of those in 1998 involved suspects or victims who were described as being part of a group of known chronic offenders (see Figure 3-13). This is a broader definition than formal crime classifications because it includes incidents that may not have been gang related (e.g., retaliation or initiation) but where the participants were known to be part of these groups.
One example from the incident review appeared to illustrate the value of the approach. During the presentation of an incident occurring on the north side, there was initial silence when the question of the suspects’ involvement in a group of known, chronic offenders was posed. Finally, an officer assigned to the neighborhood spoke up, “your suspects are part of the Dog Pound.” The officer then pulled out his notebook with a list of names, ages, and addresses of members of the north side gang. He also described a series of drug robberies involving the Dog Pound and area drug sellers that were thought to be behind the homicide.
The interesting point from the example was that neither the homicide investigators nor the gang unit were aware of the gang-involvement in the homicide or the Dog Pound gang. At the end of the initial incident review meeting, an FBI gang analyst from Quantico who had been brought in to observe the review stood up and said, “there should be no doubt that Indianapolis has a gang problem.”
The incident review thus moved the group well beyond the problem analysis provided through official records and helped to explain the discrepancy between the incident review finding that approximately 60 percent of homicides involved groups of known, chronic offenders and the official records indication that less than 3 percent of Indianapolis’s homicides were gang-motivated.[4]
The additional key finding from the incident review was the close connection between drug sales, drug use and homicides. Indeed, over half the homicides had some type of drug connection (see Figure 3-14). These included incidents involving known users and dealers as well as incidents tied to drug sales, retaliations, and drug turf battles. Again this is likely to be a conservative estimate because some of the homicides with unknown motives are likely to include drug involvement.[5]
Figure 3-14 N=257 N=257
Homicide Incident Drug-Related
The next largest category of homicides involved household violence situations. These comprised approximately 25 percent of the homicides. The household violence incidents were comprised of just over one-half domestic violence incidents[6], 12 percent child abuse, 9 percent sibling, and an other category involving friends, extended family, and similar situations. The IVRP group decided that the initial focus should be on the group and drug related homicides.[7]
Summary of Problem Analysis
To summarize, the analysis of official records indicated that homicides in Indianapolis tended to involve:
· young men
· using firearms
· geographic concentration within three police districts
· victims and suspects with extensive prior involvement in the criminal justice system
Although seemingly helpful to provide a common picture of the homicide problem, the official records did not take the group very far in terms of information for developing strategic interventions. The incident reviews, however, did. Specifically, the incident reviews created consensus among the IVRP that strategies would need to be focused on the group and drugs component of the violence problem. Indeed, at an Indianapolis Management Accountability Program meeting (IMAP)[8] soon after the first incident review, the Chief of Police stood up and stated that after participating in the incident review there should no longer be any debate about whether the city’s homicide problem was tied to gangs and drugs. Thus, in addition to the components identified above, the problem analysis revealed the need to focus on:
· gangs and groups of known, chronic offenders
· drug sales and drug markets
This
analytic process was crucial for several reasons. First, it eliminated abstract debates over the nature of the
violence problem. Second, the group could
begin to formulate strategies based on common assessment of the problem. Third, the systematic collection of data
proved crucial in community discussions about strategies for reducing homicide.
References
Kennedy, David M. and
Anthony A. Braga. 1998. “Homicide in Minneapolis: Research for Problem
Solving.” Homicide Studies 2:
263-290.
McGarrell, Edmund F. and Steven Chermak. 2003a. Strategic Approaches to Reducing Firearms Violence: Final Report on the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership. Final Report Submitted to the National Institute of Justice.
McGarrell Edmund F. and Steven Chermak. 2003b. Problem Solving to Reduce Gang and Drug-Related Violence in Indianapolis. In, Scott H. Decker (Ed.) Policing Gangs and Youth Violence. Newbury Park, CA: Wadsworth.