DA takes data-driven approach to crime
New initiatives will boost ballistics analysis, focus on burglaries and guns
SAN JOSE — Guns and burglaries are getting top priorities for Santa Clara County cops and prosecutors under new initiatives aimed at speeding up bullet analysis — matching firearms to criminals — and pooling crime data to target outlaw crews that account for the lion’s share of home break-ins.
Those focal points came out of a countywide analysis of crime data from 2016 conducted by the recently formed Crime Strategies Unit, a consortium composed of the county’s lawenforcement heads and District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
The data analysis affirmed several South Bay trends that have been chronicled over the years, including a spike in violent crime and property crime rates that are decreasing but remain high.
“I know that we are seeing an increase in both regional suspects, serial burglaries and in contacting suspects with guns, so the start of the Crime Strategies Unit is truly a great step forward for our county,” said Morgan Hill police Chief David Swing, president of the county police chiefs association.
Among the imminent aims of prosecutors is to hire four additional analysts in the county crime lab to pare down the backlog of ballistic evidence
that needs to be matched with existing records. Every handgun leaves a unique series of marks on fired bullets and casings — akin to a fingerprint — that can make them traceable to other crimes, provided that previous bullets have been entered in the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.
That latter element is the point of improvement. Supervising Deputy District Attorney Marisa McKeown said the prompt input of bullet information from a crime ideally can lead to speedy investigations.
“We can connect guns from different crime scenes,” she said. “You can take a shell casing from a shooting and compare it to the gun of a gang member arrested the next day.”
But that TV-crime-procedural swiftness rarely occurs because of understaffing, so Rosen is expected to ask the county Board of Supervisors to increase the number of firearms analysts from six to 10.
“It can take months, in some cases years, to process. We know we have probably dozens of unsolved crimes simply due to understaffing of the firearms unit,” McKeown said. If we can more quickly process guns, we can get realtime leads, solve crimes more quickly and take guns off the street. You can know if a gun picked up in a residential burglary was used in a homicide.”
The other major change coming out of the recent crime data crunching is the consolidation of assorted county theft and burglary task forces — including autos — under the umbrella of the Crime Strategies Unit. They will also be tethered to the resources of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, with the grouping aimed at improving the identification of crime trends that often cross municipal jurisdictions.
Burglaries will be the group’s primary target in the immediate future, McKeown said.
“In a time when violent crime is on the rise and police forces are stretched to the lowest numbers we’ve seen in a long time, we need to be smarter in our approach to crime, and be more collaborative,” she said.
She said that collaboration is responsible for authorities breaking up multiple burglary crews last year, including the “High End” crew out of East Palo Alto linked to over 200 cases, primarily in San Jose and its suburban Evergreen neighborhood.
“These crimes respond really well to a data-driven approach because they happen in pockets,” McKeown said, noting that small numbers of criminals account for a disproportionate amount of burglaries. “One burglar arrested can stop dozens of burglaries from happening.”
Early data bears out that theory: In Evergreen, property crime rates dropped 50 percent after the High End crew was arrested.
Authorities hope that the arrangements will help them accelerate how quickly they jump on new crime trends.
“I am confident that a data-driven regional approach to crime fighting and intelligence will strengthen the proactive and investigative efforts of our officers and deputies,” Swing said. “Also, focusing on gun violence and serial burglars will increase the safety for all of our communities and increase accountability for career criminals.”