While most murders occurred in large cities, the cities were not contributing their homicides to the nationwide database. Of the 21,000 homicides (average) reported per year in the 1990s,9 only about 1,500 to 1,800 were submitted to the nationwide database. In 1996, a business analysis revealed several details about ViCAP.8 *Only 3 to 7 percent of the total cases were reported each year. But, a tremendous change has occurred in the way ViCAP now provides services to state and local law enforcement. Brooks envisioned ViCAP as a “nationwide clearing-house…to provide all law enforcement agencies reporting similar-pattern violent crimes with the information necessary to initiate a coordinated multiagency investigation.”Ħ ViCAP attempts to identify similar characteristics that may exist in a series of unsolved murders and provide all police agencies reporting similar patterns with information necessary to initiate a coordinated multiagency investigation.ħ Redesign of ViCAP Since ViCAP’s beginning at the FBI Academy in July 1985, its goal of identifying cases exhibiting similar characteristics and providing that information to law enforcement agencies for a coordinated, case-closing investigation has remained constant. Department of Justice provided the initial funding for the NCAVC and stipulated that it would be “…under the direction and control of the FBI training center at Quantico, Virginia.”Ĥ ViCAP became a part of the NCAVC with its goal to “…collect, collate, and analyze all aspects of the investigation of similar-pattern, multiple murders, on a nationwide basis, regardless of the location or number of police agencies involved.”ĥ Mr. After three workshops, with the last held in November 1983, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) emerged. Moreover, when officers identify offenders, a search of the computer using their modus operandi (MO) would reveal other open cases for which they might be responsible.ģ In 1983, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National Institute of Justice gave a planning grant, the “National Missing/Abducted Children and Serial Murder Tracking and Prevention Program,” to Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. They could use clues from other cases that exhibit similar characteristics to solve more cases. If open and closed cases were stored in the computer, investigators easily could query the database for similar ones when they first confront new, “mystery” cases. Brooks refined his idea and concluded that a computer could capture relevant information about murders. He found such an article in a newspaper and, using pieces from that case coupled with evidence from his own cases, arrested an individual who subsequently was tried, convicted, and executed for the murders. For 18 months, he used his off-duty time to visit the Los Angeles central library and read out-of-town newspapers to look for information on murders that exhibited characteristics similar to those he was investigating. Brooks, convinced that these were not the killer’s first murders and that the offender would kill again, devised an early form of ViCAP. Their bodies, tied with rope in such a fashion as to suggest that the killer might practice bondage, subsequently were found in the desert. Brooks investigated the murders of two Los Angeles women who had replied to an advertisement for photographic models. Origin of ViCAP The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP)1 originated from an idea by local law enforcement and the late Pierce Brooks.2 Information technology (IT) has enhanced communication for law enforcement, allowing departments to close violent crime cases with the arrest of an offender. Generally, personnel who need information about violent crime cases do not connect with the investigators who have that knowledge. Yet, the communication might not reach the employees who have the necessary information. Personnel in large departments might ask officers in the next jurisdiction by sending a teletype or similar communication. Those in mid-sized agencies might question investigators working other shifts. Where should officers go to obtain information about unsolved violent crime cases? Where do they direct their inquiries? Who do they ask? Officers in small departments might ask their colleagues during morning roll call. More User Friendly and Used by More Agencies.
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