Tulsa Police Create New Unit To Track Illegal Guns

The Tulsa police department just recently split up its gang unit to create a new unit called the CGU or Crime Gun Unit. It focuses on tracking illegal guns used in crimes and the criminals who pull the trigger.

Technology has gotten so much better that once they find a shell casing at a scene, they can match it to a gun and once they have that gun, it's just a matter of tracking down who fired it. NIBIN is a national database of digital images of spent bullet and cartridge cases found at crime scenes. It's like the national fingerprint database or DNA database but for guns.

"It's just like a fingerprint. When they fire a gun, it leaves a mark on a shell casing, cartridge case and every gun makes its own mark," said Sergeant Sean Larkin.

Under a microscope, lab technicians can compare a cartridge found at a scene to one fired from a gun that's been recovered somewhere else and come up with a match. Police say they find lots of guns at scenes of domestics or at drug houses and now they can quickly learn if that gun is connected to any shootings then track down who had it.

"That type of evidence in this day and age in court, especially for a jury to hear, it's a huge, huge factor," said Larkin.

Larkin said criminals get guns from breaking into homes or businesses or from a straw purchaser, someone who bought it legally, then gave to them, plus criminals share and trade guns all the time.

"We haven't found the gun yet maybe, but, we find shell casings from 3 to 4 shooting scenes over a couple of months and start looking at reports and we have different suspect descriptions because guns get passed around, traded for dope, sold for money, etc," said Larkin.

So, the whole goal of this unit, of course, is to get guns out of the hands of criminals and hopefully cut down on some of these violent crimes.