The Joyce Foundation featured the Crime Gun Connect platform developed by MK Analytics with our partners at Everytown for Gun Safety and the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.
CGC was highlighted as a case study of how law enforcement agencies could optimize their crime gun data using analytics tools and making use of Collective Data Sharing (CDS)
Law Enforcement Agencies Nationwide Are Underutilizing Federal Tools For Solving Gun Crimes, New Study Finds
The Joyce Foundation | Sabrina Miller, smiller@joycefdn.org
July 9, 2024
CHICAGO, IL - About half of all law enforcement agencies nationwide don’t use federal crime gun intelligence tools that can identify major gun traffickers, increase clearance rates for gun crimes, reduce bias in policing and save lives, according to a new study released today by The Joyce Foundation.
Optimizing Crime Gun Intelligence
The Joyce Foundation
July 2024
eTrace/CDS Case Study: The Illinois AG’s Crime Gun Connect Platform
In June 2022, the Illinois Attorney General’s office (IL AG) launched Crime Gun Connect (CGC), a new gun crime intelligence platform for law enforcement use. Developed in collaboration with the Illinois State Police, Everytown for Gun Safety (a national gun violence prevention non-profit), and MK Analytics (a data analysis and technology firm), the online platform is a digital database of more than 120,000 crime gun trace records from 287 participating law enforcement agencies, going back to 2010. The platform is available to and uses data collected from law enforcement agencies in Illinois that are enrolled in eTrace and have also opted into CDS.
The theory behind CGC is that mapping multi-agency crime gun trace data over time can assist law enforcement in maximizing the value of trace data. Prior to CGC’s launch, such a database did not exist for law enforcement agencies in the state.