The Bratton Group Report - City of Oakland

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Experience in other jurisdictions has shown that an individual weapon may be used in multiple shootings, either by the same shooter or by people who are sharing a weapon. Ballistic analysis can establish links between shootings and provide maps of shooting patterns that chart how a firearm has been used across a geographic area and across a period of time. It may be the case that a gun used in a shooting was also used in a homicide. As the Department moves forward with its Ceasefire program to try to reduce violence, and especially gun violence, an analysis of links between firearms and crimes and firearms and gangs would be extremely useful in identifying targets for the Ceasefire effort and in directing and coordinating enforcement actions related to Ceasefire. For all these reasons, the Bratton Group team recommends a more comprehensive effort to analyze shell casings found at shooting scenes and to connect them to other casings found at other crime scenes. The actively used firearms in Oakland – the ones being used in multiple shootings – should be well documented, and firearms and shells recovered by the police should be compared to database of firearms and shell casings linked to other crimes. Once again, an increase in staffing at Criminalistics for this specific purpose is recommended. Crime scene technicians in Oakland work without direct supervision and therefore with little systematic organization. They are nominally supervised by a coordinator, a police officer who is also a full-‐time evidence technician, but the primary function of the coordinator is to organize and oversee the work schedule, not to prioritize or evaluate the quality of the work. The evidence technicans are supervised on a daily basis by patrol shift sergeants, who have little knowledge of their work. After reporting for work to a patrol sergeant at a line-‐up, evidence techs respond to radio calls almost at will, with no one actively prioritizing calls. There are no run numbers assigned to the calls, and it is not possible to determine with exactitude how many scenes have been processed by each technician each year. As the Bratton Group team understands the situation, the only way to determine if a scene has been processed is by whether or not a check box on the incident report has been checked. The Bratton Group, LLC 10
The Bratton Group team suspects that a good deal of time and energy is being wasted by technicians to process scenes that will never be further investigated or to process scenes of less importance instead of scenes where physical evidence might be of greater use to investigators. In addition, the technicians have no real advocate in the Department, for needed equipment or policy changes, other than the coordinator whose status as a police officer limits his influence. The evidence technician unit is being transferred to the Central Investigation Division. The Bratton Group team recommends that the Department use the occasion of the transfer to revise systematically the management of the evidence technicians, appointing a genuine supervisor, preferably a sergeant, and establishing a systematic dispatch protocol that both prioritizes and tracks all crime scene runs. The evidence technician supervisor would coordinate with the DIU sergeants in the five districts to help establish priorities on which scenes should processed and which scenes should be processed first. Coordinating the DIUs with Centralized CID The establishment of District Investigation Units will result in some reconfiguration of the Criminal Investigations Division (CID). As already mentioned in this memo, the Bratton Group team recommends that the Major Crimes Section 1 significantly reduce the scope its investigations, to focusing on homicides and assault cases that have resulted in grave injury and in which the victim is likely to die, with the gun assault or shooting cases assigned to the DIUs. Likewise, much of the workload for what is now Major Case Section 2 would also move to the DIUs. Although the DIU sergeants would report and work closely with the district captains, the Bratton Group team recommends that they also have a reporting requirement to a designated lieutenant in CID. This CID lieutenant would schedule weekly meetings with the DIU sergeants from the local districts to discuss current cases and compare notes about pattern crimes and trends. This meeting would help bring to light any robbery or burglary patterns that are spanning two or more districts and any The Bratton Group, LLC 11
Page 1 and 2: District-‐Based Investigations
Page 3 and 4: deterrent to others inclined to
Page 5 and 6: Major Crimes Section 2 is assi
Page 7 and 8: investigators assigned to the D
Page 9: path to solution and/or decisiv
Page 13 and 14: Appendices 1. District-‐Level
Page 15 and 16: NOTE: An investigation can be
Page 17 and 18: 28-DAY REVIEW (28 days from init
Page 19 and 20: OAKLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT DISTRICT
Page 21 and 22: Initial Findings and Preliminary
Page 23 and 24: adequate personnel. The murder
Page 25 and 26: Wednesday, March 27 th and met
Page 27 and 28: e in Oakland the week of Apri
Page 29 and 30: CompStat will be the response
Page 31 and 32: serious assaults. The Bratton G
Page 33 and 34: eventually the who of crime. T
Page 35 and 36: THE COMPSTAT REPORT Crime Analysis
Page 37 and 38: The Data on the Following Samp

The Bratton Group Report - City of Oakland

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