Law enforcement leaders tout collaboration, focus on guns in Baltimore homicide decline

Local, state and federal law enforcement leaders on Thursday credited Baltimore’s roughly 20% drop in homicides last year to collaboration between agencies and a continued focus on illegal guns.

The city ended 2023 below 300 killings for the first time in almost a decade — prompting a pair of press conferences this week for officials to discuss their roles in the decline. A day after Mayor Brandon Scott highlighted his administration’s comprehensive violence reduction strategy, local law enforcement leaders took their turn, joined by the director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Local leaders of agencies such as the U.S. Attorney’s Office, State’s Attorney’s Office, Baltimore Police, Maryland State Police, FBI, DEA and ATF pointed to teamwork among law enforcement — whether through joint task forces, the sharing of gun tracing information or recently established monthly meetings between city police and prosecutors.

And ATF officials, including Director Steven Dettelbach, emphasized the role that targeting guns has played in the fight against violent crime.

The “Triple-C” gang case, for instance, began with matching shell cases identified through the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, known as NIBN, according to the ATF’s special agent in charge of the Baltimore Field Division, Toni Crosby. Information from a NIBN lead led ATF and Baltimore Police to identify dozens of other crimes and contributed to charges that were first unsealed in 2021 against numerous members of the gang, Crosby said.

One of them, Correy Cawthorn, was sentenced in court Thursday, officials said. Crosby called that sentencing the result of “relentless investigative work.”

“Many decades ago, the feds and the state and locals, they might work together, but I remember people saying, ‘This is a one-way street. You can give us information, but we’re not going to share with you,'” Dettelbach said. “Now, our whole system is set up to send leads out to state and local law enforcement.”

Baltimore officials announced last month the city was suing the ATF, alongside gun control advocates Everytown Law, over a rejected data request about the histories of guns used in Baltimore crimes. Scott argued at the time that to target gun dealers, his administration needed information such as the top 10 sources of guns or the average “time-to-crime” statistics documenting how long it takes from a gun’s legal purchase to when it is used in a crime. The request was denied due to the “Tiahrt rider” that the ATF says blocks it from releasing information about firearms traces to individuals or agencies aside from law enforcement or prosecutors.

On Thursday, Dettelbach said the agency was bound by federal laws and court interpretations of those laws, when it comes to sharing trace information. But, he said, among law enforcement, “these things are shared routinely, and they’re used to make criminal cases.”

Erek Barron, the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, and Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates also pointed to collaboration, including the number of gun cases picked up by federal prosecutors. Barron said his prosecutors jointly screen gun cases to identify the “worst of the worst” to take federally.

In 2022 and 2023, Barron said, more Baltimore City cases were taken for federal prosecution under the national Project Safe Neighborhoods program than in the office’s past 15 years.