Fiscal Year 2013-2015 Special Budget Meeting

path to solution and/or decisive evidence of guilt. Yet, in several pilot programs in which fingerprints taken at burglary scenes were entered to APIS, the system yielded matches in approximately half the cases. There is, therefore, a significant body of evidence in burglary incidents that is going unused. The Bratton Group team observes that burglary fingerprint comparisons often do not require the numerous print comparisons required by homicide investigations. Yet a suspect identified by a single latent print may provide investigators with a lead as who a pattern burglar is, and their guilt may established by other means, such as their possession of stolen property or their sale of stolen property to a third party. The Bratton Group team recommends a new protocol for prioritizing APIS comparisons for latent prints lifted at burglary scenes. DIU sergeants and their respective burglary investigators would identify cases in which prints of possible value have been found, in which identifiable property has been stolen, and/or in which links have been established (based on modus operandi and other evidence) to a pattern of other burglaries. The DIUs would submit fingerprints from those cases to Criminalistics, where the latent prints would be determined to be a value or not for APIS comparison, and the lifts of value would be promptly searched in APIS. Given the scale of the burglary problem in Oakland, the Department should consider hiring one or two additional fingerprint analysts to work exclusively or primarily on burglary prints so this rich source of evidence and investigative leads can be effectively tapped. Shootings in Oakland often involve uncooperative victims who refuse to give evidence against the assailant, and these cases often are filed or closed out by centralized CID without further investigation. Local investigations of these crimes, conducted by investigators more familiar with the local shooters, local gangs, and local vendettas would likely result in more solvable cases and more cases with leads, even when the victim is uncooperative. Local investigators, using evidence from eyewitnesses and their own knowledge of the patterns of shootings and retaliation in the area, should be able to develop suspects in a larger number of cases. Evidence from shell casings may provide significant support in these investigations. The Bratton Group, LLC 9