Spent shell casing with new pistol

[Ted]

As a detective, I laugh at the idea of planted evidence...for what purpose? To frame someone because...???
The public seems to think there is this "pressure" to solve cases. Pressure from bosses, the public, politicians...nope, there's no pressure, other than the personal investment I put into some cases.
I mean, I'm proud to say I lead my department in cases assigned, cases solved, cases closed, and confessions per case. And even though I lead my department (and my department stats are higher than average for my county solve-rates), I'm only solving something like 30%+ of my cases assigned to me...the department average is like 27%, and the county average is like 25%...how much pressure could there be, when we're only solving less than a third of the crimes out there? (I'm guessing at these numbers, btw, as I haven't seen the stats in awhile...I just remember that I was few percent above my dept, which is a few percent above my county)
I once exonerated a guy who was accused of an assault. The guy was a several-time parolee, and a person nearly any officer would have categorized as a "dirt bag". He was accused of violently assaulting an old woman, by the old woman herself. Come to find out, she needed the parolee out of the picture over this bizarre love triangle. I look at my exoneration of that guy (and prosecution of his accuser) as one of the highlights of my career. When I've mentioned it to other detectives, they nearly UNIVERSALLY say that the idea of convicting the wrong person haunts them (as it does me).
So, unless you can show some kind of reason for personal bias, like the detective had a reason to frame a particular person for this or that, my personal bull **** meter goes off when I hear "planted evidence"...

I'm curious about the number of unsolved cases. You list solving about 30% of cases. How does that change when you get to violent crimes vs. various thefts?

My trailer got stolen in college. I had an idea of who stole it, but no evidence and they didn't have it visible if they had stolen it. Police never found it. Trailers are easy to steal and hard to identify, so that's not surprising.

I witnessed a friend of mine get hit by a drunk driver once. Got the license plate number, called 911. Cops refused to do anything and said the fact that I got the plate number wasn't evidence since the owner might not have been driving. To me that was complete BS and really hurt my opinion of cops, or at least of the NYPD (although anyone who knows the NYPD knows that they are NOT a good bunch).

My car also got broken into once, dashboard smashed, radio etc. stolen. Again, no real good way to find it.

My coworker was shot and killed last year, the person was caught quickly and sentenced. But there was overwhelming evidence and witnesses to the event, it would've been hard not to convict that one.

So I suppose you could say my personal record (of sorts) is 1/4, but should've been 2/4 if the NYPD had done their job. The break-in and trailer theft would've been really hard to solve legitimately since there were no security cameras to get any evidence.

 

[ja_user]

How many firearms out on the street do you suppose have been fired thousands of times, disassembled and reassembled after being used in the commission of a crime?

About as many that are bought legally, registered and then a crime is committed by the person that registered it..

Like I said, Maryland cancelled their program due to costs and lack of results. Sounds like a good idea, just doesn’t work..

 

[Half Fast]

How many firearms out on the street do you suppose have been fired thousands of times, disassembled and reassembled after being used in the commission of a crime?

I suspect that they had lots of legal use before being stolen or pawned or whatever and used in a crime, putting lots of rounds between the casing in the box with the new gun and the casing at the crime scene.

How often do you think the cops recover a brand ew gun?

 

[3393RP]

It's all non relevant conjecture. Mine too. If a gun used in a crime has been recovered and the cops have the original box and shell casing, the gun hasn't been out on the streets and the suspect would probably be the gun owner.

So I'll quit now.

 

[Ghery]

Some of mine included a spent casing, others didn't.

Same story here. And, fortunately, so far Washington doesn't require registration. If I-1639 passes tomorrow that may change, at least for all semi-automatic rifles (which will be called "assault rifles" - all of them!).

 

[James331]

How many firearms out on the street do you suppose have been fired thousands of times, disassembled and reassembled after being used in the commission of a crime?

Near zero.

People don’t spend as much range time as they need too.

Homies using their stolen gun as a status/power symbol normally don’t spend any time on a range or put any rounds down for practice.

I still think the casing is like lie detectors, just garbage science used to make the tax payers FEEL “safe”.

 

[-KLB-]

I think Canada spent insane money on a casing registry that turned into the classic definition of a boondoggle.

 

[weilke]

Having the casing from the sale might be useful if someone buys a new semiauto and immediately commits a crime with it, but I suspect that’s pretty uncommon. Mostly it’s a feel-good thing, largely useless.

That's what they found in Maryland. After 100eds of thousands of shell casings collected and millions of dollars spent, they had solved 1 case. Well, the case was already solved but they managed to get a positive match on the manufacturers sample casing after the fact.

Same thing happened in Canada. It just didn't work.

 

[Hank S]

Same thing happened in Canada. It just didn't work.

But like a lot of things, passing the legislation allowed the loliticians to show that they were "doing something"; that what they did was ineffective and based on junk science is immaterial . . . . .

 

[tawood]

I'm curious about the number of unsolved cases. You list solving about 30% of cases. How does that change when you get to violent crimes vs. various thefts?

My trailer got stolen in college. I had an idea of who stole it, but no evidence and they didn't have it visible if they had stolen it. Police never found it. Trailers are easy to steal and hard to identify, so that's not surprising.

I witnessed a friend of mine get hit by a drunk driver once. Got the license plate number, called 911. Cops refused to do anything and said the fact that I got the plate number wasn't evidence since the owner might not have been driving. To me that was complete BS and really hurt my opinion of cops, or at least of the NYPD (although anyone who knows the NYPD knows that they are NOT a good bunch).

My car also got broken into once, dashboard smashed, radio etc. stolen. Again, no real good way to find it.

My coworker was shot and killed last year, the person was caught quickly and sentenced. But there was overwhelming evidence and witnesses to the event, it would've been hard not to convict that one.

So I suppose you could say my personal record (of sorts) is 1/4, but should've been 2/4 if the NYPD had done their job. The break-in and trailer theft would've been really hard to solve legitimately since there were no security cameras to get any evidence.

My numbers involving murders (fortunately) isn't high enough to calculate...I've only been assigned two murders, and one I got a conviction, and on the other it is technically "unsolved", although I know exactly who did it, I can't prove it. On rape, I'm actually much higher, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a single rape case that I either a) didn't get a conviction, or b) proved it didn't happen. I work in a bar town, and our department gets waaaaaay too many false rape claims...on the other end of violent crime, serious domestic assaults, I have an extremely low conviction rate, but that is very common due to victims backing out (although now that I think about it, we consider those "solved" just not prosecuted)...very low on arson too, but that is also a commonly unsolved type crime due to lack of evidence. Grand theft type cases, I'm probably right at that 1/3, as well as the more serious assaults.
Where a crime takes place (the jurisdiction) has a MAJOR effect on whether or not it gets solved...Just two miles south of the town I work for is the City of Detroit...their case solving rates are in the low single digits. I wouldn't be surprised if NYPD is similar.

 

[tawood]

... I still think the casing is like lie detectors, just garbage science used to make the tax payers FEEL “safe”.

Then you don't understand the science, because it isn't garbage (although I agree with you, somewhat, about lie detectors).

 

[Ben Diss]

New York state used to require that all new guns purchased and registered in the state have the spent casing sent to the state. The current liberal, socialist governor ended the practice after it was determined that no crimes had ever been solved by registering the spent casings and the process was costing the state a great deal of money.

 

[weilke]

Then you don't understand the science, because it isn't garbage (although I agree with you, somewhat, about lie detectors).

The science of matching casings is not garbage. The experience of doing this with a manufacturer provided casing in several jurisdictions is that it has very little value in solving crimes. As someone mentioned earlier, the cases where someone legally purchases a firearm and the committs a crime that requires forensics to solve are very small. If the firearm is stolen and then used in a crime, knowing the original purchaser may be interesting from an intelligence aspect, doesn't do much to solve the crime itself.

Also, markings change over time and both firing pins and barrels can be replaced with little effort. Both are not serialized parts yet they are what can be traced using a casing.

 

[Half Fast]

 

[ja_user]

The thing is they don't need spent casings to find the original owner, it is all very well documented for a minimum of 20 years.

 

[tawood]

The science of matching casings is not garbage. The experience of doing this with a manufacturer provided casing in several jurisdictions is that it has very little value in solving crimes. As someone mentioned earlier, the cases where someone legally purchases a firearm and the committs a crime that requires forensics to solve are very small. If the firearm is stolen and then used in a crime, knowing the original purchaser may be interesting from an intelligence aspect, doesn't do much to solve the crime itself.

Also, markings change over time and both firing pins and barrels can be replaced with little effort. Both are not serialized parts yet they are what can be traced using a casing.

I agree.

 

[Half Fast]

The thing is they don't need spent casings to find the original owner, it is all very well documented for a minimum of 20 years.

True, if they have the gun.

The theory, which hasn't worked, was that a spent shell casing at the crime scene would lead to the gun and hence to the owner, if the gun was registered and the cops had a spent shell casing filed away. As some of us have pointed out, there are many flaws in that theory and it has not worked in practice.

 

[weilke]

True, if they have the gun.

The theory, which hasn't worked, was that a spent shell casing at the crime scene would lead to the gun and hence to the owner, if the gun was registered and the cops had a spent shell casing filed away. As some of us have pointed out, there are many flaws in that theory and it has not worked in practice.

It has worked from a number of aspects:
- politicians favorite contractor got rich
- it appeared as if they did 'something'
- it made firearms more expensive and less available
If your goal was to solve crimes, yes it hasn't worked. If you had any of the other goals it's a success.

 

[Sac Arrow]

The science of matching casings is not garbage. The experience of doing this with a manufacturer provided casing in several jurisdictions is that it has very little value in solving crimes. As someone mentioned earlier, the cases where someone legally purchases a firearm and the committs a crime that requires forensics to solve are very small. If the firearm is stolen and then used in a crime, knowing the original purchaser may be interesting from an intelligence aspect, doesn't do much to solve the crime itself.

Also, markings change over time and both firing pins and barrels can be replaced with little effort. Both are not serialized parts yet they are what can be traced using a casing.

Another issue is that those marks in the chambers, firing pins and breeches are caused by tooling, which can cause several consecutive guns in a production run to have identical defects. Sure, slides, barrels and pins are not normally produced together, but still...

 

[Ted]

My numbers involving murders (fortunately) isn't high enough to calculate...I've only been assigned two murders, and one I got a conviction, and on the other it is technically "unsolved", although I know exactly who did it, I can't prove it. On rape, I'm actually much higher, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a single rape case that I either a) didn't get a conviction, or b) proved it didn't happen. I work in a bar town, and our department gets waaaaaay too many false rape claims...on the other end of violent crime, serious domestic assaults, I have an extremely low conviction rate, but that is very common due to victims backing out (although now that I think about it, we consider those "solved" just not prosecuted)...very low on arson too, but that is also a commonly unsolved type crime due to lack of evidence. Grand theft type cases, I'm probably right at that 1/3, as well as the more serious assaults.
Where a crime takes place (the jurisdiction) has a MAJOR effect on whether or not it gets solved...Just two miles south of the town I work for is the City of Detroit...their case solving rates are in the low single digits. I wouldn't be surprised if NYPD is similar.

I appreciate the input and am glad to hear that the sorts of crimes I'm most concerned with (violent crimes, i.e. murders and rapes) have a much higher resolution rate.

I would agree with your comment regarding jurisdiction just from what I saw in NYC. NYPD from what I've seen is much more about keeping order rather than actually enforcing the laws. That started with Giuliani in the 90s, and it did actually work to improve crime on the whole (80s were bad...). The NYPD has a lot of corruption, and unfortunately is heavily swayed by political and financial motives. Again, a lot of it is around order. They'll do set ups into scaring you to not jump the turnstyles, but won't go after a drunk driver when you have the plate. Most people who are raised in NYC are not fans of the police, unless they have a relative who works for the police. If you have an insider, then you've got a "get out of jail free" card for most offenses. I've seen it happen. Get pulled over for speeding, hassled for 45 minutes. Motorcycle gets pulled over going faster than me at the same time, flashes his PBA card, have a nice day sir.

 

[X3 Skier]

The manufacture wouldn’t ask, the state would. The manufactures were just including them because they had no idea what state they’d be sold in..

What I forgot was “...I was definitely not asked...”,