On Q Professional Investigations

National Incident-Based Reporting System Includes More Detailed Data

Today, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program released details on more than 5.4 million criminal offenses reported by law enforcement through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) during 2014. According to NIBRS, 2014, 6,520 law enforcement agencies—charged with protecting more than 93 million U.S. inhabitants—reported 4,759,438 incidents involving 5,489,485 offenses, 5,790,423 victims, and 4,414,016 known offenders.

Among the report’s highlights:

Of the offenses reported during 2014, 63.6 percent involved crimes against property, 23 percent involved crimes against persons, and 13.4 percent included crimes against society (so-called “victimless” crimes like gambling).

Concerning the relationship of victims to known offenders, 52.7 percent of the 1,273,602 victims knew the individual perpetrating the crime but were not related to them. Nearly a quarter of the victims (24.8 percent) were related to their offenders.

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Three women were charged with shoplifting in two incidents at Kohl’s department store, 290 Tunxis Hill Road, over the last week.

Stacy Flanagan, 45, of High Meadow Road, was charged Monday with sixth-degree larceny after store security alleged they saw Flanagan put several pieces of jewelry into her purse, before going into a dressing room and hiding clothes under her jacket, according to the report.

She then walked past the registers before being detained, police said. The merchandise totaled $338 in value.

Flanagan was released on a promise to appear Dec. 14 at state Superior Court in Bridgeport and warned not to return to the store.

Two Bridgeport women were charged with shoplifting at the store on Friday of last week.

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The suspicious fire that started in a top floor apartment in a building near 35th and Kaul in Milwaukee on Tuesday night, December 8th was so intense all the units are unlivable and the building remains boarded up. Police say they know who started the fire because the suspect was already detained when they arrived.

It was a hectic scene outside the Florist Townhomes Tuesday night — an apartment complex with 24-hour care for its residents.

“It’s definitely unbelievable just to see it,” said David Tribble Junior, Silvermill Plaza security officer.

Tribble was the first person to arrive at the scene.

“I seen flames blazing out of the window,” Tribble said.

Tribble was also the first person to run into one of the residents he recognized from her trips to the plaza to shop.

“I asked her what happened and she said, ‘I set the fire,’” said Tribble.

When Tribble asked her why…

“She said ‘because someone stole my cigarettes.’ I grabbed her and I said, ‘just come with me and I will make sure you’re safe,’” said Tribble.

Tribble held the 27-year-old woman until the Milwaukee Police Department showed up.

“She was calm, very calm. She answered all the questions straight forward, very honestly and very cooperative,” said Tribble.

Now a few days later, he says he’s still a little overwhelmed by it all because even though no one was hurt, he can already see the dramatic affect this is having on those that lived in the complex.

“It’s sad seeing them sit outside or wondering if they can come back or when are they going to come back into their homes and it’s around Christmas,” said Tribble.

Officials with the facility say all of the clients have been taken care of and placed elsewhere. They don’t know when or if they will be allowed back in.

Electric crews came by on Thursday to start the process of inspecting the building.

Milwaukee police continue to investigate this as a possible arson case.

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A robber camouflaged as a security guard hit the jackpot Friday outside Greektown Casino when he stole several bags of loot from an armored truck parked along the curb, making off with more than $500,000, according to Detroit police.

No one was hurt. No weapons were brandished, and no threats were made, police said.

“The FBI has taken the lead on the investigation because it seems to be of a suspicious nature,” Assistant Police Chief Steve Dolunt said without elaborating. “Detroit police are working with the FBI on this heist. We’re still looking at video to see how this person escaped.”

The FBI, through spokeswoman Jill Washburn, confirmed it is investigating the case, but Washburn declined further comment.

The heist happened at around 8 a.m. ET at the intersection of Beaubien Street and Monroe Avenue downtown, police said. A black male wearing a Loomis Armored security guard shirt approached the armored vehicle, took the bags of money out of the back and took off.

The driver of the armored vehicle thought that the thief was a co-worker because he was wearing a uniform shirt, said a source familiar with the case.

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The resulting images and information are uploaded to a database which connects national law-enforcement agencies

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Regional Crime Lab recently made a high-tech upgrade to its ballistic imaging system to increase the ability to discover links between firearms cases.

The new Integrated Ballistics Imaging System (IBIS) shoots high-definition photos and creates 3D digital images of firearm evidence taken from crime scenes.

The system compares the photos to others entered into regional and national databases to determine if evidence analyzed by the crime lab matches evidence gathered elsewhere, said crime lab criminalist Shannon Floyd.

The system is not designed to match evidence to a firearm, however.

Actually matching a gun to a bullet or shell casing still requires human analysis from criminologists like Floyd who conduct microscopic examinations of evidence.

“If a crime happened today, and the investigators think this was the gun, they are going to submit the gun, submit the bullets and say, ‘Is this the gun?’ We don’t even have to have this system to do that. We do a comparison and do a result on our own,” Floyd said. “(IBIS) is an additional tool to not only say that this was the gun but to also say we put it in the database, and now it has hit on something from two years ago that we didn’t even realize was related.”

The process begins when an agency submits a firearm and evidence to the crime lab for analysis. Criminologists at the lab test fire the gun, collect and analyze the evidence and use the IBIS for digital imaging.

For imaging a bullet casing, it is secured in a specially designed cradle which is placed inside the imaging system. An array of automated cameras photograph the evidence at multiple angles and take digital measurements.

The resulting images and information are uploaded to a database which connects law-enforcement agencies across the country.

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A fourth UPS employee accused of stealing more than $100,000 worth of tablet computers from a Northeast Side shipping facility as part of a theft ring was arrested Wednesday morning.
Peter Garnica, 31, faces a charge of cargo theft between $100,000 and $200,000 as well as engaging in organized criminal activity, according to arrest warrant affidavits.

In one round of alleged theft, Garnica stole a cargo load of 140 Surface Pro 3 tablets valued at $132,094.62 from the freight shipping facility located at 4111 NE Loop 410. He sold the cargo to a buyer for $30,000, according to an affidavit.

Garnica’s access to the cargo because of his job allowed him to load the shipment onto a different truck, according to the affidavit.

Detectives said Garnica later stole $7,000 more worth of Surface Pro 3 tablets while working alongside three others, two of whom were co-workers at the facility.

One affidavit notes the thefts occurred from December 2014 to June 2015.

Collaborative efforts from SAPD and the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office led to the October arrests of three others identified by police as UPS employees. Juan Betancourt, Michael Rozier and James Cross were charged with engaging in organized crime, according to SAPD.

SAPD spokesman Officer Douglas Greene described the theft ring as a fencing operation, in which goods are stolen from various businesses around the city and county and resold to consumers.

Items recovered include contraceptive pills, perfume, electronics, vacuums, Spurs memorabilia and much more. Greene said the locations where the stolen good were held looked like Amazon warehouses that were packed with stolen goods and well organized.

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A convicted murderer who escaped from an Ohio prison in 1978 by cutting through cell bars and a fence was captured in Minnesota’s capital, where he had a job delivering newspapers, the U.S. Marshals Service said Friday.

Oscar Juarez, 66, was among Ohio’s most wanted fugitives and evaded being caught while on the run despite being arrested but let go at least seven times in the 1980s.

He was taken into custody Thursday night in St. Paul, Minnesota, at an apartment building on a tree-lined street, said Pete Elliott, the U.S. marshal for northern Ohio. It wasn’t clear how long he had been in Minnesota.

He was living alone in St. Paul under a different name, said Chris Clifford, the supervisory deputy U.S. marshal in Minneapolis. Juarez told authorities he’d been living in Minnesota for 20 years, but “we are finding that hard to believe,” Clifford said.

Juarez made an initial appearance before a U.S. magistrate in St. Paul on Friday. He will be held until a hearing next week to determine his identity and argue detention.

He gave the magistrate a different name when he was asked if he understood his rights. But Elliott said there was no doubt it was Juarez, noting his fingerprints were a match and the name he gave was that of a deceased person.

Juarez was arrested at least six times on minor charges in California and once in 1988 in Texas, but he went undetected because he was using fake identities, Elliott said.

“We know if he was in several different states over the years,” Elliott said. “It wasn’t one thing that led us to his doorstep. It was a number of things and good old-fashioned police work.”

He apparently worked as a welder and machine operator, the FBI said in a most wanted advisory.

It appears that Juarez had family in Texas and Ohio and may have picked Minnesota at random, Clifford said.

Juarez was serving a life sentence for fatally shooting a Toledo man after a bar fight in 1975.

He escaped from a state prison in Marion three years later by sawing through prison bars and cutting through a fence, according to the marshals. They say he also put a dummy in his bed and covered it with blankets.

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DNA has undoubtedly been a breakthrough for modern criminal investigation. It has freed the innocent, solved decades-old cold cases, and given detectives a kind of molecular witness in many cases that may have otherwise remained unsolved.

Except better and more-sensitive technology means more potential problems, in some cases. Mixes of DNA, and the “1-in-X” probabilities are currently being evaluated by some crime labs.

But the latest reevaluation involves “touch DNA” – the invisible genetic markers we leave everywhere we go, and on virtually everything we come into contact with.

A two-minute handshake, then handling a knife led to the DNA profile of the person who never touched the weapon being identified on the swab of the weapon handle in 85 percent of the samples, according to a new study by University of Indianapolis researchers, entitled “Could Secondary DNA Transfer Falsely Place Someone at the Scene of a Crime?”

In one-fifth of those experiments, the person who had never directly touched the knife was identified as the main or only contributor of the DNA on the handle, according to the study, in the January issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

“It’s scary,” said Cynthia Cale, a graduate student and author of the paper. “Analysts need to be aware that this can happen, and they need to be able to go into court and effectively present this evidence. They need to school the jury and the judge that there are other explanations for this DNA to be there.”

The concept of “touch DNA” needs to be rethought, in both a legal and scientific context, according to Madison Earll, the other graduate student who authored the study.

“This research highlights the need to eliminate ‘touch DNA’ from our vocabulary,” said Earll, now a microbiologist at Pace Analytical. “It’s clear that this term is misleading and does not adequately explain all of the possible ways that DNA can end up on an object.”

Read more: Widow Sues City after Husband, Linked to Cold-Case Murder, Commits Suicide

“We have found that it is relatively straightforward for an innocent person’s DNA to be inadvertently transferred to surfaces that he or she has never come into contact with,” Cale wrote in a piece for the journal Nature. “This could place people at crime scenes that they had never visited or link them to weapons they had never handled.”

Cale cited an example of a man in California in 2013 who was held for a homicide for four months after his DNA was pulled from underneath the fingernails of the victim. However, it was later proven that the suspect was hospitalized and several intoxicated at the time of the crime – but the paramedics who had responded to him medically responded to the murder shortly thereafter, she wrote.

“It’s a small world,” a deputy district attorney reportedly said upon the innocent man’s release.

Other suspects have claimed their DNA was transported to incriminating places through contamination. A criminalist in a San Diego lab maintained his innocence of the killing of a girl in 1984, saying he had only worked in the lab near where the samples were originally analyzed. The criminalist killed himself before charges were brought.

The scientists said they plan to continue experiments into 2016, systematically reducing the two-minute handshake down to smaller time frames, they said.

“I think this issue has been swept under the rug,” said Krista Latham, the director of the school’s Molecular Anthropology Lab, and who oversaw the study by Cale and others. “It’s going to change the way the medicolegal system looks at DNA evidence.”

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Decrease in 2014 Violent Crimes, Property Crimes

Today, the FBI is releasing the 2014 edition of its annual report Crime in the United States,a statistical compilation of offense, arrest, and police employee data reported voluntarily by law enforcement agencies that participate in the Bureau’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. This latest report reveals that the estimated number of violent crimes reported by law enforcement to UCR’s Summary Reporting System during 2014 decreased 0.2 percent when compared with 2013 data. And the estimated number of property crimes decreased 4.3 percent from 2013 levels.

Here are some highlights from Crime in the United States, 2014:

There were an estimated 1,165,383 violent crimes (murder and non-negligent homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults) reported by law enforcement.

Aggravated assaults accounted for 63.6 percent of the violent crimes reported, while robberies accounted for 28.0 percent, rape 7.2 percent, and murders 1.2 percent.

There were an estimated 8,277,829 property crimes (burglaries, larceny-thefts, and motor vehicle thefts) reported by law enforcement. Financial losses suffered by victims of these crimes were calculated at approximately $14.3 billion.

Larceny-theft accounted for 70.8 percent of all property crimes reported, burglary for 20.9 percent, and motor vehicle theft for 8.3 percent

Police made an estimated 11,205,833 arrests during 2014—498,666 for violent crimes, and 1,553,980 for property crimes. More than 73 percent of those arrested during 2014 were male.

The highest number of arrests was for drug abuse violations (1,561,231), followed by larceny-theft (1,238,190) and driving under the influence (1,117,852).

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NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — Newport News Police and the ATF are investigating a gun store burglary that happened overnight.

Police said they responded to an alarm at The Marksman, a firearms training center, shooting sports retailer and indoor shooting range, located in the 500 block of Industrial Park Drive, just before 2 a.m. Officers said they found a car had been driven through the building and was completely inside. Several guns were taken, but no suspects were at the scene, police said.

The car is a 2006 Lincoln and it was stolen from the Kiln Creek area of Newport News between 6 p.m. on Monday and 6 p.m. Tuesday, police said. The keys were left in the car.

Business owner George McClain said surveillance video shows it all happened in minutes.

“They backed the car up to the curb there and then put black marks down. They floored it, and so when they hit the wall, they hit it full speed. Our security video shows the car penetrating the wall, and when it did, the front tires were in excess of 12 inches off the ground, so they were coming in pretty good,” he said.

McClain thinks the burglars planned the crime carefully, and took at least 25 guns, valued at approximately $450 each.

“It’s very obvious, looking at the videos, that they knew exactly where the guns were. They didn’t waste any time looking some place else or looking for the guns. They went right to them, so this is somebody that has been in the store and they were there for a reason…Everyone wants to talk about, you know, the guns are the problem. It’s not the guns. It’s these type of individuals,” McClain said.

The ATF’s industry operations investigators and Violent Crimes Task Force are also working on the case.

Anyone with information on the burglary or the stolen car is asked to call the Newport News Crime Line at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP.

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