DC Shootings To Get Special Look By Police Partnership With ATF

WASHINGTON, DC — The Metropolitan Police Department, together with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. attorney’s office, has created a joint unit to investigate and prosecute non-fatal shootings and violent gun offenders in the District of Columbia.

The partnership, known as the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network Investigations Unit, or NIU, will consist of a team of MPD detectives, ATF special agents and intelligence analysts, and an assistant U.S. attorney that will focus on investigating leads generated by the ATF.

The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network is a “proven investigative and intelligence tool that can link firearms from multiple crimes scenes, allowing law enforcement to identify, investigate, and prosecute the trigger-pullers who terrorize our neighborhoods,” the MPD said Tuesday in a news release.

In recent shootings in the District, a 6-year-old girl was shot and killed last Friday in Southeast D.C. The girl, Nyiah Courtney, was walking with her father, mother and older sister when the shooting occurred. The girl, her mother and four others were struck by bullets.

Last Saturday, a shooting outside the third-base gate at Nationals Park terrorized the fans inside the stadium and injured an innocent bystander from Arlington who had left the stadium and was waiting for an Uber.

The MPD has yet to arrest the shooters in either incident.

In 2020, the MPD and ATF entered 2,789 cartridge cases into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, consisting of test fires from recovered firearms and cartridge cases recovered at crime scenes. About 25 percent of all firearms entered into the database were linked to a previous shooting and 60 percent of all recovered cartridge cases were linked to other shooting events, according to the MPD.

“Focused coordination and follow-up are essential to ensuring that shooters will be identified and arrested before they can reoffend,” Charlie Patterson, special agent in charge of the ATF Washington Field Division, said in a statement.

D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee III said the gun violence in the District “is unacceptable, and it is our responsibility in law enforcement to make people feel safe.”