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Gun Buyback Programs: Reducing Gun Violence or a PR Stunt?

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Jeff Beaver

Getting Guns Off the Streets:

A recent slew of devastating mass shootings have sparked national outcry and reinvigorated a heated debate over gun violence in America. Faced with increased pressure to respond and take action to reduce gun violence, communities are turning to “Gun Buyback” programs–with gusto- in an effort to take guns, especially those with the capacity for mass casualty, off the streets.

Since the shootings in Connecticut a few weeks ago, dozens of cities across the US are launching buy-back programs in hope that these efforts will prevent future gun-violence . In all over 30 gun buy-back events have been held nation-wide in the weeks since the gruesome Connecticut massacre. Many are being hailed a ‘successes’ by officials who tout record numbers of firearms being turned in to authorities. Just a few weeks ago, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa touted that law enforcement agents had collected 2,037 firearms at the city’s recent buy-back event–the most since it started its buy-back program in 2009.

Off the Streets or Out of the Attic?

LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at a buyback event in Van Nuys

While a dumpsters full of firearms looks impressive, experts dismiss the effectiveness of gun buybacks in reducing crime because these events typically attract people less likely to commit violent crimes and guns least likely to be used in a crime. According to studies most gun-related crimes are typically committed by young men with newer firearms, while gun-buyback events typically attract an older crowd turning older guns that are often not in good working condition: hunting rifles or old revolvers from someone’s attic.

Do Buybacks Make a Dent?

Here are a few stats just to have an idea of the enormity of firearms in circulation vs. those collected by buybacks:

The federal government estimates that there are currently over 310 million firearms in circulation within the US, nearly one for every man, woman and child
In the buybacks since Sandy Hook, an estimated 10,000+ guns have been collected
Studies suggest that a 10% reduction in U.S. households with guns would result in only a 3% reduction in homicides
The guns collected by LA in their latest buy-back event, sadly account for only one day’s worth of gun sales in the state of California (2,000 firearms are bought and sold every day in the state).

An Expensive PR Stunt?

Images of police officers taking back guns looks good on the evening news but with thousands spent by local governments to buy back guns and little evidence to prove that buybacks directly reduce gun violence, a gun buyback can come off as an expensive PR stunt. But doesn’t have to. While gun buybacks may not directly reduce reduce gun violence, they can be used to heighten awareness and rally the community, especially when accompanied by a grassroots outreach campaign that works with gang prevention and intervention agencies, community and religious leaders. A comprehensive outreach effort serves not only to encourage participation in neighborhoods suffering from high levels of gun violence, but also to educate communities about the risks and dangers of gun and gang violence.

What do You Say?

Do you think gun-buybacks are effective? A waste of money? PR stunts? How is your community helping to combat gun violence/crime? Share your insights and best practices in the comments section below:

School Gun Violence: Lessons Learned & Hope for the Future

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Brad Rutledge

Gun Violence. It’s a topic that has been dominating the headlines starting with the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and then ignited a national bonfire of outrage and sadness with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting from Dec. 14, 2012. It’s continued with more shootings, including the recent event at Lone Star College in Houston on Jan. 22, 2013. The issue has become even hotter, as now our schools have become seemingly common settings for mass shootings.

With each of these tragic shootings, I hear people ask about things like warning signs, and question who knew about these potential threats – and most importantly, why nothing was done. These are the same questions I ask myself.

The other trend we’re seeing explode on the national scene, is the question who is to blame? This has triggered a national debate on the controversial issue of gun control, video game violence, and mental health. While I’ve gotten caught up in the whirlwind of these important topics we face as a society, I also couldn’t help but wonder if we’re using all of the tools and technology that is available today to keep students, and our children safe.

It’s interesting to note, that when students are provided a way to confidentially share information with school officials about problems – they will! And this information is often used to stop crime, solve cases, and avoid tragedies like suicides. For example, Douglas County School District in Colorado has helped prevent a growing number of suicides by having a trusted mobile app available where students can provide tips to school officials. You can read more about this success story here .

But having the right tools in place often times isn’t enough. Take the Lone Star College shooting for example. According coverage in The Huffington Post the Lone Star College System had both an emergency alert system in place to warn students of possible scenarios like this, as well as an active shooter preparedness plan. It appears there was a break-down in both systems.

For example, according to accounts, many students learned of the shooting from media, or from the college web site, even though they had the emergency alert application installed on their phones. One theory of the failure of the emergency alert system is that many of the buildings on campus have limited, to no cell reception.

Secondarily, the particular situation at Lone Star College did not fit the definition of an active shooter in the preparedness manual, potentially stopping action, or creating some confusion. So while the institution had taken steps to prepare for this type of scary scenario through technology and training, some of these unexpected problems led to unaware students, and possibly confused staff, and local police. Luckily it didn’t turn into a broader tragedy.

Finally, in terms of preventing these crimes in the future, there is likely to be new legislation, as well as national programs to keep students and our children safer at school. We also expect to see a list of lessons learned in how to better respond to these situations in the future. While we know we can never fully prevent these tragedies, we know we can do more; we know we can do better.

Happy New Year – A Letter From the CEO

Posted on January 16, 2013 by admin

Looking Back on The Year That Was

This past year has seen a lot of change for PublicEngines and our products. CrimeReports, CommandCentral, and TipSoft all went through new product updates that made them better than ever. One deeply rewarding milestone for us was being recognized and ranked #297 on the Inc 500/5000 by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in the US. This is an honor in which we deeply appreciate and recognize our customer’s and partner’s support for helping us get there. To be mentioned within the list means that many more communities are safer now than even just the year before. And we’re working hard to continue that trend for 2013.

Around mid-year we launched a new Website - www.publicengines.com - full of information about our products, recent news articles, and testimonials that highlight how other customers are lowering crime in their jurisdictions. I invite you to come back often to sign up for our bi-monthly thought-leadership webinar series, read the blog, or watch a training video.

And finally, while we launched new and improved versions of each product, we also announced CityConnect, a customizable mobile application designed to help law enforcement agencies to better connect with the public. CityConnect was recently recognized by Law Officer Magazine in its annual Best of the Best New Products for 2012. We’re excited about giving citizens a single-source app where they can find any and all information made available from their local law enforcement agency – including social media feeds, the agency website, blog, crime map, and tipping program.

Building Momentum That Lasts

Turning to 2013, we continue to focus on providing law enforcement agencies great products to help them better fulfill their mission of preventing, reducing, and solving crime. A survey conducted in October indicated that the market is poised for new and improved analytics, reporting mechanisms, and greater administrative control within CommandCentral. I’m pleased to inform you that we’ll deliver you these and many more new features in 2013. Our goal is to help crime analysts perform their jobs in a quicker and more efficient manner, as well as empower their officers with information that leads to better tactical planning; resulting in lower crime rates.

Our focus with CrimeReports is to build features that help citizens become more active in sharing information with their local law enforcement agency and their friends about crime in their area. It’s rooted in the belief that a more informed public is a safer public. Stay tuned to for product updates that make the site easier to navigate and more intuitive to use.

Of course, one of the biggest trends facing us all is the increasing use of smart phones. They are seemingly in the hands of everyone. That was the reason why we announced CityConnect as a mobile application last fall. So far, we’ve received tremendous interest in the product and will continue to invest further in mobile solutions that help law enforcement agencies take advantage of these increasingly important devices.

Finally, you will also see improvements to TipSoft – our anonymous tipping service – including direct integration to CityConnect and other capabilities to better receive and process anonymous information from the public. You’ll also see TipSoft make a big splash in the education environment as more and more school administrators adopt the platform as the premier anti-bullying solution.

Your Success Is What Drives Us

At PublicEngines, we measure our success based on our customers success. That’s why we want to help law enforcement agencies and local governments be more productive, better engaged with their community, and able to do more even though they may have less budget and/or personnel than in years prior. We strive to provide great products and exceptional client services. But we also know that there is always room for improvement. I invite you to let us know what we can do to make you more successful. Whether you’re a customer with a feature suggestion or just curious about seeing our products in action, I encourage you to reach out to my team directly by calling 1-888-888 CRIME.

Cheers to Making 2013 a Safer World For Us All.

William Kilmer
Chief Executive Officer
PublicEngines

The Grinch Did Not Steal Christmas

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Detective Seals

In my last blog I spoke about how to get ready for an increase in crime; the kind we typically witness around the holidays. I spoke about how to use your past crime data to help get a better understanding of what may happen this season. One of the most important steps in criminal intelligence is fully understanding your past crime trends. If you do not understand your past trends and patterns you might be caught off guard with emerging patterns throughout the year.

Prepare for Seasonality by Comparing Like Periods Year-Over-Year

While I was writing that blog I was preparing an intelligence product that outlined a holiday forecast for my jurisdiction. I knew from past experience of looking at our crime data that the crimes we were most interested in around the holidays were thefts and burglaries. I began with our theft reports broken down for the last few years between zones. And I noticed that all zones seemed to be fairly level year after year with the numbers not changing much up or down. However one of our zones, zone two, arguably our heaviest commercial shopping zone, had an increase in theft reports of 26. This was a significant increase given that the regular number hovered around 20 reports and now had spiked to 48. Looking at the burglary reports I noticed another significant increase this time in one of our smallest residential zones, zone three. While the burglary reports in zone three generally hovered around a handful, they had spiked to 15.

Move Beyond Sharing Information. Make a Plan

It was obvious to me that I needed to put together a tactical plan on combating thefts in zone two and burglaries in zone three. I needed to get this information to our patrol division so they could make a difference this holiday season. I conducted a time of day, day of week breakdown on each of these crime types in order to give our patrol a target date and time. Understanding of course that these times and days would be from years past but would give them a starting point. The most important part however, was to give them an area of patrol in which most of these crimes were happening. I found that far burglaries in zone three they were scattered fairly evenly throughout the zone. However, for our staffs in zone two, I found that they were concentrated in sort of a wedge pattern around our main retail area.

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Our patrol did an excellent job working the times and days and areas that were forecasted – even bringing in overtime officers when needed. They went to work throughout November and December with an intelligent tactical plan to stop the increase in these specific crime types in these specific zones. The best I was realistically hoping for was for the numbers to level out and perhaps drop slightly. The end result was a four-point drop in our burglaries in zone three. This was still higher than historic years of around a handful but a marked decrease from the year prior. The greatest success was in our thefts in zone two; we had an 11 point drop from the previous year! While we did not see a decrease from the historic numbers we were able to stop the increase from the previous year. This was, after all, our initial goal: to stop the dramatic rise in burglaries and thefts in these two zones. We succeeded by pairing the tenants of Intelligence-led Policing along with CommandCentral by PublicEngines (an analytics package) and then giving those tools to our patrol division and letting them do what they do best. So all-in-all, the Grinch most definitely did not steal Christmas.

Tis The Season to be Stealing

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Detective Seals

Every Christmas season, police departments see the same pattern: shoplifting, entering autos, burglaries, and general theft increase exponentially. This occurs until we ring in the New Year and our “super-cop” selves solve all the crimes and lock up all the bad guys causing those crimes to decrease……right? Well, not exactly. Truth is, those style crimes increase because of the seasonal increase “criminal opportunity”.

Crime fluctuates with seasonality

Let me explain, the Christmas season gives criminals a once-per-year opportunity to prey on our good citizens who are not concerning themselves with safety and security. Instead, they are concerned with running and buying, hustle and bustle, wrapping and cooking……oh yeah, and peace, good will and all that other stuff. The criminal element sees this as a special holiday of their own; let’s call it “Stealapalooza”. So, what do we do about it? Same old, same old each year right? Not this year!

We have all heard that the greatest indicator of future crime is past criminal patterns. So let’s use those past patterns to do some good. Even if you don’t have a criminal intelligence division, you surely have someone in your department who likes to dig into your crime data; perhaps it’s that officer who needs a publisher to approve their reports. Sure, their over-detailed retelling of removing a cat from a tree has been annoying in the past, but now you can put their endless thirst for detail to good use!

Start with small focused searches of your high traffic commercial areas, looking for patterns of date and time in your theft reports. Make sure officer “eager beaver” has access to multiple years of reports and have them compare the past holiday seasons theft reports, week to week. I said week to week, not week by week. What I mean is, compare the same weeks from different years to each other, and don’t compare November to December and so on. Compare December week one year one to December week one year two….. apples to apples, not apples to oranges.

Now seeing as you have chosen a paper hound to do this task, I am confident it won’t take them long to identify time of day, day of week patterns in your theft data. But now what do you do with that data? Trust it and the patterns contained in it! Begin to direct your officers to these past patterns, explaining what type of crime was in each pattern and the details surround those patterns. The proof will come in your increased arrests, but not only that, the increased officer presence in your newly proven holiday high crime areas will prevent more crime than you realize. (Until after Christmas and you compare this years’ numbers with your previous data.) Empower your officers with real data for real time crime fighting and help your citizens to have a merrier holiday season!