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SALT LAKE CITY — On average, homicides committed across the United States are investigated and resolved by police and prosecutors at a rate of 50%, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.
But when it comes to nonfatal shootings, the national average for clearing a case is only between 3% and 18%, he said. Yet, the grief and the trauma a community feels following a nonfatal shooting can be the same as a murder.
"A nonfatal shooting is a failed homicide," Gill said.
That's why prosecutors from across the nation were invited to gather in Salt Lake City this week to discuss better ways to investigate and prosecute shooting cases that don't result in a death.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office hosted a two-day National Prosecution Best Practices Conference with the focus this year being on nonfatal shootings. Some of the attendees included district attorneys and county prosecutors from New York, Washington and Illinois. The idea, according to Gill, was to share ideas and data with leaders and researchers from across the nation and come up with practical and collaborative solutions to questions such as: Why are we not succeeding at non-fatal shootings? and What processes can we change?
"It's all about treating nonfatal shootings as homicides," said Darcel Clark, district attorney for the Bronx in New York. "The trauma on the community is real. People are afraid to come out; innocent bystanders are being hurt by it."
Clark said one of the biggest challenges is finding the gunman in a nonfatal shooting, even when there are witnesses to the event.
"You got to find out who did it first, and the most difficult thing is that part sometimes. ... There may be witnesses, but people are afraid to come forward," she said, explaining that people worry about retaliation. "You've got people who don't want to cooperate because they don't want to be seen as a snitch."
Clark said there are also people who have decided they're going to take care of the matter on their own. "We're getting a lot of that (in the Bronx)," she said.
Even when people don't want to talk, cases still have to be solved by using other means.
"It's technology, it's surveillance. Everybody has a video camera (and) social media plays a role. A lot of people just post it on social media," she said.
Those types of investigations take more work and use up more resources, but they can also result in more arrests.
But just as important as discussing ways to investigate shootings, both Clark and Gill said prosecutors are also sharing ideas about how they can build trust within their communities, reach the people who need help, and try and intervene before a shooting even happens.
"They're afraid. So they've got to trust the DA. They have to trust the police. Nobody wants the DA or the police in their lives until they need us — and they need us," Clark emphasized. "So we have to be there for them whether they want us to be there or not."
"By the time a shooting has occurred, we've already failed as a society," Gill added.
Both Gill and Clark noted that one of the biggest problems they are seeing in their communities, and across the nation, is the rise in youth violence, some of which is tied to gang activity. Clark said in the Bronx, her office's biggest problem is reaching the youth, and "trying to figure out what do they need to stop them from picking up the gun."
"Tell me what I have to do to get you to put that gun down," she continued. "I could come up with all sorts of policies and theories. But you need to speak to the people that it's impacting the most: the community and those who are actually committing the crimes, the offenders. What do they want? What do they need? Let's try to use that as a way to solve some of these problems, as well."
A lot of the nonfatal shootings that Clark sees in her jurisdiction involve people under the age of 18. Sometimes those teens are referred to adult court after they are arrested, and sometimes they remain in the juvenile system.
"But we need to get to those kids before they end up in either one of those systems. That's what the challenge is, is how do we deal with our kids that feel so hopeless, so helpless, that they're now at 13 and 14 picking up guns and using them. Nonfatal shootings is a failed homicide. But some of it is just young people, they don't even know what they're doing," she said.
"They got a gun and they're just shooting, and innocent bystanders are being killed because they're missing their target or they just want to scare people or show off or whatever. But it's a problem that young people feel that they need to carry a gun."
In the Bronx, Clark said a lot of children believe they need to carry a gun simply because everyone else has one.
"So if I don't have one, then somebody that has one is going to get me. I want to get them before they get me. We've got to change that dynamic, that people should know that nobody needs to have a gun. There are ways to resolve our conflicts without violence," she said. "Anybody who carries a gun, they should know that you're either going to be shot or you're going to shoot somebody. But there's so much more at play in our communities because people are afraid."
When asked what a conference in Salt Lake City would have to offer to someone from the Bronx, Clark again reiterated it's about the exchange of ideas, data and information and learning from each other.
"For Salt Lake City ... they may not have what I have. But know what others experience so that if you see this happening in your community or you see the red flags or the signs, you know how you can go about trying to change it or reach out to colleagues across the country who have dealt with it so you know how to deal with it. At the same time, I want to talk to someone like Salt Lake City, 'How is it that you don't have this problem? What are you doing that maybe you could help me bring that into my community?' So we are learning from each other," she said.
Gill concurred that intervening with those who commit crimes under the age of 18 is a nationwide effort, and learning from other prosecutors about how to investigate cases on the front end will have an impact on how they come out in the end.
"Having the brightest people in the country join together and share ideas is how we are going to find new approaches that benefit our community," he said. "The trauma resulting from nonfatal shootings, both to the victim and the community at large, can have lifelong effects that can get overlooked by the criminal justice system. This conference will provide an opportunity to explore how best to address nonfatal shootings, even before crime happens."
