 Thank you for everyone for joining. I am Charmaine Clark with the Office of Community Development, Community Liaison. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on this Zoom training. We will be talking about the Safeguarding Your Neighborhoods, the Project Safe Neighborhoods Program, which will be conducted by the Columbia Police Department. I want to acknowledge our director, Gloria Syed, who is the Director of Office of Community Development. I have my colleague, Valerie Austin, that is on this Zoom as well. So we will get started. We have Sergeant Moody, who is with the Columbia Police Department as well as Marcia Noble. She is the ceasefire coordinator, and we are about to get started with this training. Sergeant Moody, you may take it over. Good afternoon, everybody. Again, my name is Sergeant Moody with the Columbia Police Department. I'm over the crime gun intelligence unit here. It's been a unit that started here. I just got added on to the unit about four months ago. Some of you I know from working the community response team and some other projects up around the North Columbia area. So happy to be here and happy to present this information. Ms. Clark said Ms. Noble is here. Besides me, I'll let her introduce herself real quick. Hi, it's a pleasure to be here. I go by Jan Noble's. I'm the ceasefire coordinator here with the Columbia Police Department. This is a new position for me as well. I started in October of 2020. Before that, I spent eight years as a Victims Advocate with the Columbia Police Department, and about seven years before that as a Victims Advocate with the Richland County Solicitor's Office. So I may look familiar to some of you as well, due to those reasons. Thank you for having us. We want to go ahead. We can go ahead and get the PowerPoint up. We can go. Like I said, we've been brought here to talk about Project Safe Neighborhood. And to share with everybody the strategies Columbia Police Department is used to make our community safer. Columbia, unfortunately, has a share of crime, including violent crime and gun crime. Community safety is not just a law enforcement issue. We must have help and support from the community. That's why all of y'all are here, and to learn about it, and to help us out as well. And many of you on today's calls are community stakeholders who may in position to help our efforts. You can go on to the next slide. Project Safe Neighborhood is a proven evidence-based violence reduction strategy that focuses law enforcement community and service providers on individuals who are most likely to commit gun crimes. The foundations for the Department of Justice PSN strategy are three-tiered. It's community-based. It's targeted, and it's comprehensive. It's community-based with each local program. It's contoured to fit the specific violent crime problems in our areas. It's targeted, it utilizes law enforcement and community intelligence along with cutting-edge technology to identify and target the most violent offenders for enforcement action. It's comprehensive due to us. It directs US attorneys to marry enforcement efforts with support of prevention and reentry strategies to truly combat violent crime in a lasting way. The concept of Project Safe Neighborhoods that many cities across the country have similar crime problems so that if we all collectively share best proven practices, we can adapt and emulate programs that have proven successful in our cities. Some of the highlights for the City of Columbia Police Department's program. With the community, we have several community meetings, which I've been a part of, and some of y'all have been a part of. We do home visits with youthful offenders. We do handle with care initiatives, where school-aged children are exposed to crime. We do a handle with care form on scene. We pass those to our school resource officers and get passed to our schools. And so that while they're at school, they can get counseling, they get handled. They can be brought off to the side, checked on. During the school year, make sure that everything's OK due to that traumatic experience that they had. We do Project Child Safe, which is the gun lock program, where we distribute free gun locks. We have several gun locks pretty much in every region. And also, officers can have a few in their cars and bring them to the community meetings where we can hand those out to people who may need them. We have Ceasefire Columbia, which Ms. Nobles helps with. And our focus deterrence program that connects with at-risk offenders. Our targeted approach is we use technology evidence and intelligence to identify offenders who illegally possess and are used firearms. Some of the technology, we use a ShotSpire, which we've talked about in the past in different things. We use Niven, which is the national database, to put shell casings into to identify then different guns and different shell casings from crime so that crimes can be connected and incidents can be connected. We have the City of Columbia surveillance camera network that we use on a regular basis when an incident happens. We check on that. We have license plate readers from the city. And we do support our local law enforcement intelligent efforts to identify criminal offenders. CBD also has created the crime gun intel unit, which I am ahead of, to leverage the intelligence we create. We host bi-weekly crime meetings with local law enforcement, area law enforcement personnel, the probation parole, prosecutors, like I said, with Richland County and different things like that. We can discuss crime trends, crime offenders, and any intelligence that we need to get out. So the local law enforcement will know what's going on. And then we do connect with our law enforcement partners. Covers the comprehensive network. First off, let's get started about ShotSpotter. Some of you may not have heard what ShotSpotter does. ShotSpotter is a company that describes itself as an advanced system of sensors, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to detect local and alert. Detect, locate, and alert leads to gunfire. Basically, how this works is there. We have a lot of sensors through a seven mile area of Columbia, our hardest hit areas for violent crime. And those sensors work with each other once there's a gunshot detected. It goes through a quick check through ShotSpotter alert system. And then we get an alert on cell phones. We have an application that officers have on their cell phones that we get an alert that's supposed to come to us within 30 seconds of the shot fired incident. Then that, of course, gets officers in route to those incidents a lot quicker. And hopefully, we're able to catch those violent offenders in the action by getting there quicker. Let me go on to the next one there. The mission of the CGIC is to identify, analyze, investigate crime, gun, intelligence with the goal of producing actionable intelligence to assist in identifying, arresting, and prosecuting offenders who unlawfully possess, enter, use firearms, and identify illegal sources for crime guns that are being used in Columbia. In January of 2020, last year, CPD stood up our new crime gun intel unit after receiving federal grants to focus on the offenders firearms and locations associated with gun crime. Our crime gun unit staff with an inspector, which is Inspector Modzolesky, unfortunately, couldn't be here today. Sergeant being me, seven additional sworn and non-sworn investigators, officers, journalists, and we have an explosive detection K-9 team. And we also have Ms. Nobles, the ceasefire coordinator. Part of our team includes an assistance listener who has visibility on the cases we develop and the offenders we identify for state prosecution. As stated previously, Columbia, like many cities, our size has a problem with crime, to include violent crime and gun crime. In Columbia, like many of these cities, identified a need for crime gun unit to focus on and develop intel on armed offenders, crime guns, and hotspot areas for gun violence. With the ultimate goal of breaking the cycle of gun violence, getting these firearm offenders off our streets, we're storing peace to our challenged neighborhoods. Go on to the next one. Although our crime gun unit may be new to CPD, the concept has been utilized around the country for the past several years before becoming formalized by the ATF and the DOJ a few years ago. The CPD was the first department in the state to receive a federal grant and stand up a dedicated crime gun unit. The original County Sheriff's Department has since stood up a Niven Task Force, which, as I said before, we work very well together and we share information pretty much daily with them. And the Myrtle Beach Police Department has received their own crime gun unit grant as well this year. As a result of the formalization, DOJ defines seven core processes which are best practices that all crime gun units should follow. In the first two steps, after we lawfully take firearms in the custody and collect and fired, cartridge casings, at crime scenes, we will test fire the Niven eligible, seize firearms and submit those test fired casings and seized evidence casings to sled for them to be entered into the Niven system. We also trace the firearms our officers were seizing in order to determine where these crime guns were coming from. In step one, ShotSpotter has significantly improved our ability to get all shooting scenes and improved our ability to render aid to victims, witnesses and neighborhoods while identifying suspects and collecting ballistic evidence. Crime Gun and Tell analysis of the next slide will give you an overview of what we key on, but our analysis is to develop actionable intelligence that can further an investigation with the goal of identifying armed offenders and getting them off of our streets. Once we are able to charge armed felons, our local and federal prosecutors who are already part of our team, such as the solicitor's office and the US attorney's office all work together to hold these identified offenders accountable. The Crime Gun and Tell analysis, all of our CJU processes have been formalized into a CPD policy that has been distributed throughout the police department. Steps three and four in the CGIC process. This chart provides our operational flow, overview of data intel, our crime gun intelligence focus on and what we do with it. On the left side of the chart are the core intel sources for our crime gun that our crime guns would use daily. You got the ballistics evidence, the Niven data which we talked about, the crime gun recovery info, the E-traces which are what we put the guns in a system for the federal government and it tells us who bought that gun so that we can then part of those people where the guns from if they were stolen and different things like that. The CGIC then couples this intel with arrest and development and ongoing investigations as well as shooting incidents then layers that information with surveillance video and other lawfully obtained information and intelligence that will hopefully help us build this intel in the three main categories. The gun intel, the shooter, possessor intel and shooting locations intel as we try to develop X-mal leads for follow-up investigation. You go on to the next. So what is Niven and Lavin's terms is like a gun leaving fingerprints on a fired shell casing. That shell casing where the firing pin hits the back of the shell casing leaves an identifiable mark that we can test and that we can evaluate and that we can match with other shell cases to tell which guns that shell casing came from and match them to the different scenes. Then we then put that information into the database where we can match with all over the country. We've gotten hits from shell casings from California, from the North Carolina, from Georgia, from pretty much all over where we've had notifications from. We go on to the next slide. Like I said, right there, you have the basic anatomy of a gun and then you have the shell casing right there and the bullet on the bottom right there with the shell casing, the cartridge casing, the bullet, the gunpowder and the primer. Like I said, where the firing pin strikes the primer in the back of the shell casing there, it leaves an identifiable mark that we are able to distinguish. You go on to the next slide. This is just pretty much going over the same thing. Like I said, these are some of the marks that we see on the shell casings that help us identify the shell casings from the individual gun. As I said, these are our core deliverables that the crime gun unit puts out. The CGI leads that we develop are given a unique number. The tier one leads will be initially referred to the assigned investigator while tier twos will be assigned to CGIU, my personnel. Tier threes are still provided to assigned officers for intel purposes, like multiple shot, spotter shooting scenes linked via Niven with no crime gun recovery and no victim's witnesses or suspects. The crime gun unit will not conduct an independent investigation in tier one leads unless we receive the concurrence of the assigned investigator. So basically any kind of crime where a person is hit or something like that, one of our investigators gets put on it of course and then those leads that we get from Niven go straight to those investigators so that they can develop those leads and hopefully help aid them in their investigations. All gun possession cases reviewed for possible federal adoption. We do have three task force officers that are assigned to the unit and to the department. Those task force officers work hand in hand with ATF. A couple of them are in the ATF's offices and then one we have on site here at headquarters. But those TFOs, those task force officers are able to make federal charges on all of our cases that we bring up gun related crime in the federal system. All gun possession cases, if the offender case is federally eligible and it meets the current guidelines our TFOs will prepare to refer the case through the local ATF office. The TFOs should be communicating with the assistance listeners that we are reviewing their case for possible adoption. And if we are writing the case for federal adoption to ensure that we don't take a plea on state or case charges. Our violent offenders list is another thing that we put together in the crime gun unit. This is our top 10 offenders in Columbia identified through a documented Intel based scoring system represent our priority offenders who are on the street. They're not in custody, even those with pending charges. The list is posted on the CPD shared drive. That way all officers, all members of the CPD can get that violent offenders list and is shared through the solicitors office. This process will be explained later. This is our process of using Intel to identify our priority gun offenders, communicate it to our stakeholders such as Richland County, PPP and the solicitors office to be sure these offenders get our focused attention. Since not every gun offender possessor may be a priority case, we want to make sure everybody knows who really needs our attention. You can go on to the next. And I'll pass it on to Ms. Nobles to talk about the ceasefire initiative we have. Hey, good afternoon again. So ceasefire Columbia is a part of the safe neighborhood grant that we received. And just to kind of give you guys a little bit of a background, criminal justice statistics tell us that a fair percentage of crime, particularly gun and violent crime is committed by repeat offenders. That same research tells us that when offenders are arrested and convicted of crimes, 70% will re-offend and be re-arrested in a couple of years. For the re-offenders, the numbers only go down. The numbers are worse for the younger offenders. They have a lack of education, a lack of job training and employment opportunities. They have substance abuse problems. So when these re-offenders are released, they had right back to the same communities. And so that's what we're trying to do is target specific communities with ceasefire Columbia. So what we do essentially is identify chronic repeat offenders that have not gotten the message. We bring the offenders in for what we call a call in where they're put on notice by law that if they re-offend, we will hold them accountable. It is a two-pronged approach. So on one hand, we have law enforcement with the threat of prosecution. And the other prong to that is we introduce them to social service providers on our ceasefire team. These social service providers are comprised of government and non-profit organizations who offer help to break the cycle of recidivism by helping them get educated, get clean, get counseling and get job training. The ultimate goal being to lower recidivism rates that lead to lower crime rates, which leads to safer communities. We can go on to the next slide. This is a few pictures of previous ceasefires that we've had and it lists the law enforcement agencies that we partner with, as well as some of the service providers we partner with. And just to kind of reiterate again, the goal of ceasefire Columbia is to deter crime, develop and promote community outreach efforts, provide training for participants and support other gun reduction strategies. The way to accomplish this goal for us is to continue building relationships and trust between prior offenders and community stakeholders, service providers and our citizens. The community at large is impacted when offenders choose to re-offend. And so by taking part in crime reduction strategies, you can make a difference in your community. And so that's what we're trying to do is bring attention and awareness to these programs so that the general public is aware of what we're trying to do to combat crime in your neighborhood. Thank you. Next slide. 2020, a year in which we launched our crime gun unit, the COVID-19 pandemic began many cities across our country experienced astronomical increases in crime to include violent crime and murders while Columbia actually had decreases in all of our violent crime. Initial terms on our strategies are encouraging but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. As you can see at the bottom of the slide, the Columbia had a 24% decrease in murders and about a 2% decrease in aggravated assaults since these initiatives have started. And that ends our presentation for you. I don't know if we're opening it up for questions but we'll be glad to take any if you have any. Thank you, Sergeant Moody and Ms. Nobles. We are open for questions. I think it was some real good information that was given a little more detailed information to some of our neighborhood leaders and that was the goal. So we are opening for questions. If anyone has any questions, would you please state your name, neighborhood that you're representing and you may state your questions, direct your questions to Ms. Nobles and Sergeant Moody. Come on, one question, someone has a question. It was real good. Well, I mean, I do have a question. Okay, Ms. Matthias. And I'm representing a college space community council as well as I work in the North Main area. Will we get a copy of those slides or that information that was presented? I can get with Sergeant McIntyre, the CRT Sergeant. Ryan McIntyre? Yes, ma'am. I'll get with McIntyre and I'll send him a copy of the slides and then he can send them out to you. I'll make sure he marks you down and anybody else who would like a copy of the slides. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. Any other questions, comments, in reference in regards to the Project Safe Neighborhoods program? Thank you. Charmaine, this is Laura Bell speaking. Okay. Wendemere Springs. And I would just like to say thank you to the Columbia Police Department for all of their efforts to keep us safe. These programs seemed very well-intentioned and I'm sure they're doing a lot to promote safe neighborhoods and I really appreciate their efforts. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, that was the goal with this presentation. That was the goal for this presentation to give more detailed information to the community leaders and neighborhood leaders because we do know some of the officers, they'll come out and they'll give brief information of what's going on in your neighborhood. So we wanted to focus more detail like Ms. Noble talked about the ceasefire information and how the numbers have, the percentages have been going down since these new programs have been implemented. So we wanted to give people familiar with that so you can share and spread the information to the other people in your neighborhoods if you have any problems, especially with some of the things that are going on now in our neighborhoods. So this is very vital and good information. So that was the whole goal and the target for this presentation. So do we have any more questions, comments? If you do, please state your name, your neighborhood that you're representing and you can direct them to Ms. Noble and Sergeant Moody. If you have any questions or concerns or comments. Oh, and what? Okay. Well, Sergeant Moody and Ms. Noble, Marcia Noble, thank you very much for your brief presentation, prayerfully and hopefully everyone enjoyed it. If they need to get in contact with y'all, where would you like for them to contact you at? Would you mind giving them that information? Yeah, you can contact me at 803-413-3524. Again, it's 803-413-3524. Or if you wanna give me an email, you can email me at urskine.moody at columbiasc.gov. And it's urskine-e-r-s-a-i-n-e.moody at columbiasc.gov. Okay. Again, thank everyone for joining. I really appreciate it. And hopefully, like I said once again, hopefully you enjoyed this brief presentation. Thank you again for joining us and you will be posted on our next upcoming All Access event. Thank you.