Case Study: The Boston Gun Project andOperation Ceasefire

Case Study: The Boston Gun Project andOperation Ceasefire

The Boston Gun Project was aproblem-oriented policing initiativeexpressly aimed at reducinghomicide victimization amongyouths in Boston in the mid 1990s(Kennedy et al., 1996; Kennedy et al., 2001). It represented aninnovative partnership betweenresearchers and practitioners toassess the city's youth homicideproblem and implement an inter-vention designed to have a sub-stantial near-term impact on theproblem.

Project research showed that theproblem of youth homicide wasconcentrated among a small num-ber of chronically offending gang-involved youth. Project researchalso showed that firearms associ-ated with youth, especially withgang youth, tended to be semi-automatic pistols, often ones thatwere quite new and apparentlyrecently diverted from retail. Manyof these guns were first sold atretail in Massachusetts as well as

being smuggled into Boston fromout of state. The Project began inearly 1995 and implementedwhat is now known as the"Operation Ceasefire" interventionbeginning on May 15, 1996. TheCeasefire intervention had twomain elements: (1) the "pullinglevers" focused deterrence strate-gy to prevent gang violence, and(2) a direct law enforcement attackon illicit firearms traffickers supply-ing youth with guns.

The Boston Police Departmentand Harvard University researchersinitiated the Boston Gun Projectwork by approaching key criminaljustice and social service stake-holders in Boston to support aresearch and development

process by designating one keyline-level person to participate ina working group. These stake-holders initially includedMassachusetts Probation,Massachusetts Department ofYouth Services (juvenile correc-tions), Suffolk County DistrictAttorney's Office, U.S. Attorney'sOffice, Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF),and Boston Community Centers.In the working group setting,practitioners discussed theirviews on the nature of youth gunviolence in Boston and Harvardresearchers used available infor-mation resources to closelyexamine these insights to createa detailed description of the gunviolence problem.

Project research showed that the problem of

youth homicide was concentrated among a

small number of chronically offending gang-

involved youth.

With the benefit of a cleardescription of the problem, theinteragency working group devel-oped a new approach to preventingyouth violence known as OperationCeasefire. The violence preventionplans were presented to the execu-tives of the key agencies involved inthe initiative. The executivesapproved the violence preventionplans and pledged to support theimplementation of the newapproach.

Deterring GangViolenceThe Boston Police Department'sYouth Violence Strike Force (YVSF),an elite unit of some 40 officers anddetectives, coordinated the actionsof Operation Ceasefire. An intera-gency working group, comprised oflaw enforcement personnel, youthworkers, and members of Boston'sTen Point Coalition of activist blackclergy, was convened on a bi-weekly basis to address outbreaksof serious gang violence.

Operation Ceasefire's "pullinglevers" strategy was designed todeter gang violence by reaching outdirectly to gangs, saying explicitlythat violence would no longer betolerated, and backing up thatmessage by "pulling every lever"legally available when violenceoccurred (Kennedy, 1997). Theselaw enforcement levers includeddisrupting street-level drug markets,

serving warrants, mounting federalprosecutions, and changing theconditions of community supervi-sion for probationers and paroleesin the targeted group.Simultaneously, youth workers, pro-bation and parole officers, and cler-gy offered gang members servicesand other kinds of help. If gangmembers wanted to step awayfrom a violent lifestyle, the Ceasefireworking group focused on provid-ing them with the services andopportunities necessary to makethe transition.

The Ceasefire Working Group deliv-ered their anti-violence message informal meetings with gang mem-bers; through individual police andprobation contacts with gang mem-bers; through meetings withinmates of secure juvenile facilitiesin the city; and through gang out-reach workers. The deterrencemessage was not a deal with gangmembers to stop violence. Rather,it was a promise to gang membersthat violent behavior would evokean immediate and intenseresponse. If gangs committedother crimes but refrained from vio-lence, the normal workings ofpolice, prosecutors, and the rest ofthe criminal justice system dealtwith these matters. But if gangmembers hurt people, the WorkingGroup focused its enforcementactions on them.

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A large reduction in the yearlynumber of Boston youth homi-cides followed immediately afterOperation Ceasefire was imple-mented in mid-1996. A U.S.National Institute of Justice (NIJ)sponsored evaluation found thatthe Ceasefire intervention wasassociated with a 63% reductionin Boston youth homicide andsimilar large reductions in non-fatalserious gun violence (Braga et al.,2001). This reduction was sus-tained for the next five years (seeFigure 1). The Ceasefire program,as designed, was in place until2000.

During the early years of new mil-lennium, the Boston Police experi-mented with a broader approachto violence prevention by expand-ing certain Ceasefire tactics to abroader range of problems suchas serious repeat violent gunoffenders, the re-entry of incarcer-ated violent offenders back into

high-risk Boston neighborhoods,and criminogenic families in hotspot areas. These new approach-es, known broadly as BostonStrategy II, seemed to diffuse theability of Boston to respond toongoing conflicts among gangs.Youth homicide, most of which isgang related, has returned as aserious problem for the City ofBoston. In Fall 2004, the BostonPolice implemented a new vio-lence prevention campaign, whichborrows heavily from Ceasefire'stight focus on disrupting cycles ofviolent gang retribution (For addi-tional discussion of the implemen-tation of Ceasefire, see Kennedy,Braga, and Piehl, 2001; Braga andWinship, 2005).

Disrupting IllegalGun MarketsThe interagency Boston GunProject working group also devel-oped a gun market disruptionstrategy to address the patterns of

illegal diversion identified by theresearch. The resulting strategywas appropriately focused on theillegal diversion of new handgunsfrom retail outlets inMassachusetts and elsewhere.For investigative and tacticalpurposes, guns with quick time-to-crime offer law enforcement anopportunity to identify illegal guntraffickers. New guns havepassed through fewer hands andthis makes it much easier for lawenforcement to investigate itsdiversion and its diverters, and tomount prosecutions.

Records are likely to be morecomplete and more available;individuals listed on paperwork areeasier to find; guns are less likelyto have been resold, given away,or stolen; and the chain oftransfers to illicit consumers islikely to be shorter (Kennedy et al.1996). While youth handgunswere given investigative priority,

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the gun trafficking initiative wasintended to reduce the generalavailability of new handguns to allgun-using criminals in Boston,regardless of possessor age. Thekey elements of the Ceasefire gunmarket disruption strategy were(summarized from Kennedy et al.,2001):

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A U.S. National Institute of Justicesponsored evaluation found thatthe Ceasefire intervention wasassociated with a 23% reductionin the monthly percentage ofrecovered crime handguns thatwere new. Ceasefire had a signifi-cant impact on the supply of newhandguns to criminals in Boston(Braga and Pierce, 2005).

The Role of BallisticsImaging TechnologyIn March 1995, Boston was one ofthe first major cities to receive IBISballistics imaging technology fromthe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).The system was considered fullyimplemented when the BostonPolice Department Ballistics Unitmade its first IBIS match in July1995 (Braga and Pierce, 2004).Since adopting the technology, theBPD test fires all recovered crimeguns and the expended bulletsand cartridge casings are imagedand entered into the IBIS database(Braga and Pierce, 2004).

Confirmed IBIS matches are a keypart of the BPD's evolving gun vio-lence reduction strategies (fromOperation Ceasefire to the newlyimplemented Street ViolenceSuppression Project). Every twoweeks, the Boston Police convenean interagency working groupcomprised of BPD officers anddetectives, ATF agents, Assistant

U.S. Attorneys, Assistant SuffolkCounty District Attorneys,Massachusetts State Police,Massachusetts Probation officers,Department of Youth Services(juvenile corrections) case workers,and other criminal justice practi-tioners as needed. This meetingserves as a scanning and analysisforum for ongoing conflicts amongviolent gangs and other gun inci-dents with high potential for retali-ation.

After specific violence problemsare identified, BPD officers anddetectives are assigned responsi-bility for devising and implementingappropriate violence preventionplans to halt outbreaks of violence.Strategies are developed at a sep-arate response development meet-ing; however, implemented plansand progress updates are present-ed at the bi-weekly meetings todisseminate knowledge on whatworks (and what doesn't) and tohold officers responsible for keep-ing targeted groups and individualsfrom shooting at each other.At the routine scanning and analy-sis meetings, BPD crime analystsand intelligence officers presentinformation on gun incidents overthe previous two weeks. RecentIBIS matches are highlighted at thebeginning of each meeting.

Members of the working groupdiscuss the circumstances associ-ated with the linked incidents;information developed throughinterviews with arrested offenders,victims, and witnesses; availableintelligence on current "beefs"between gangs or the activities ofserious violent offenders in thelinked areas, and analyses of otherphysical evidence collected at the

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crime scenes, such as DNA andfingerprints. If guns are recoveredand successfully traced by ATF,information on the first retail pur-chaser and licensed dealer arepresented. In essence, an "infor-mation chain" is constructedaround the events linked by ballis-tics evidence. The amount andtypes of information associatedwith linked gun crime events canvary tremendously across matches(see Figure 2).

A recent evaluation suggests thatthe IBIS technology significantlyincreased the productivity of theBPD Ballistics Unit in linking gunscrimes (Braga and Pierce, 2004).The analysis found that the adop-tion of the IBIS technology was

associated with a more than 6-foldincrease in the number of cold hitmatches per month. Clearly, theIBIS technology significantlyincreases the ability of law enforce-ment agencies to make ballisticsmatches across crime scenes.

The cost effectiveness estimatesand qualitative evidence also sug-gests that the IBIS technologyallows law enforcement agenciesto make hits that would have oth-erwise not been possible. BeforeIBIS was adopted by the BPD,ballistics matching across guncrime scenes was an ad-hoc andtedious process. Now, the BPDcan systematically compare recov-ered gun crime evidence to itsentire inventory of evidence with

little effort. The research alsofound that serious violent offenderswho were well known to the crimi-nal justice system were involved incrimes linked through IBIS match-es. IBIS matches were also asso-ciated with high conviction ratesfor these offenders.

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References

Braga, Anthony A., David M. Kennedy, Elin Waring, and Anne M. Piehl. 2001. "Problem-Oriented Policing, Deterrence, and Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Boston's Operation Ceasefire." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38: 195 - 225.

Braga, Anthony A. and Glenn L. Pierce. 2004. "Linking Gun Crimes: The Impact of Ballistics Imaging Technology on the Productivity of the Boston Police Department's Ballistics Unit." Journal of Forensic Sciences, 46 (4): 701 - 706.

Braga, Anthony A. and Glenn L. Pierce. 2005. "Disrupting Illegal Firearms Markets in Boston: The Effects of Operation Ceasefire on the Supply of New Handguns to Criminals." Criminology and Public Policy, 4(4): 201 - 232.

Braga, Anthony A. and Christopher Winship. 2005. "Partnership, Accountability, and Innovation: Clarifying Boston's Experience with Pulling Levers." In Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives, edited by David L. Weisburd and Anthony A. Braga. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kennedy, David. 1997. "Pulling Levers: Chronic Offenders, High-Crime Settings, and a Theory of Prevention." Valparaiso University Law Review, 31: 449- 484.

Kennedy, David, Anthony A. Braga, and Anne M. Piehl. 2001. "Developing and Implementing Operation Ceasefire." In Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project's Operation Ceasefire. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.

Kennedy, David, Anne M. Piehl, and Anthony A. Braga. 1996. "Youth Violence in Boston: Gun Markets, Serious Offenders, and a Use-Reduction Strategy." Law and Contemporary Problems, 59: 147 - 196.

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