UTC initiative brings law enforcement, academics together to fight violent crime

By KATE COIL

TT&C Assistant Editor

A new research center at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga is bringing academics and law enforcement together, using data to tackle violent crime.  

The Violence Reduction Initiative (VRI), based within UTC’s Criminal Justice Department, unites students, faculty, community organizations, and law enforcement to research and develop policies aimed at reducing violence. 

Dr. Rick Dierenfeldt, UC Foundation associate professor and head of the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is himself a former police officer and said the VRI brings researchers and officers together to create data-informed solutions.  

“I didn’t want to call this a research center, because it is an initiative,” Dierenfeldt said. “I want this to be treated as a process. There isn’t a start and a stop. It isn’t just a physical location. This is a new mentality about embracing data-informed evidence-based practices and helping bring together community support and implement best practices. A lot of times, we find out that the gut instincts of agencies is right, but now we have the math to support it.” 

The VRI grew out of another three-year partnership between  Dierenfeldt collaborated and the Chattanooga Police Department. The Gun Crime Intelligence Center (GCIC) helped bring down firearm-related crimes by using data to track guns. The project helped reframe how police in Chattanooga “closed” cases, using shell casing fingerprints captured by a 3D computer to determine if one gun had been used in multiple crimes.  

“As part of that process, they really revolutionized their approach to gun crime in everything from canvassing to collecting, cataloging, and entering all spent shell casings and rounds to dedicating more resources to follow-up investigations,” Dierenfeldt said. “Our job was to see what impact those changes were having on 17 different performance metrics. As I was going through their logs, I noticed the same guns were being used multiple times by multiple offenders over months at a time. It’s great to get a bad guy off the street, but if that gun remains and is in the hands of a criminally controlled organization, it’s going to get used over and over again.” 

As a result of the GCIC, Chattanooga police reopened 300 cold cases, leading to the seizure of firearms tied to violent crimes. This effort contributed to a 27% decrease in firearm homicides, 36% decrease in overall homicides, and 42% decrease in shooting victims.  

These successes helped establish a model now replicated in more than 60 other jurisdictions. Additionally, the Chattanooga Police Department and UTC received the ATF’s Excellence in Crime Gun Intelligence Award for their efforts. 

The program also prioritized “focused deterrence,” which targets chronic offenders who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime. 

“Chronic offenders represent about 6% of the whole offender population, but they are responsible for more than half of all crime,” he said. “If you can remove them from the community, you create a firebreak there and have opportunities to implement to wrap-around services and support and mediate the extent to which the next generation is socialized into that life of violence.” 

Dierenfeldt hopes the VRI can build on the previous program’s success. 

“I didn’t believe we had caught lightening in a bottle and this was only going to happen once,” he said. “That’s when we submitted a proposal for the VRI in our criminal justice department. We envision this as a hub to house all of our community-based research projects. It has researchers, post-docs, graduate assistants, military grade encrypted hard drives, you name it. We are able to contribute on the research side, where a lot of agencies don’t have the staff, and combine what we do with not just their data but their knowledge of their respective fields." 

Sometimes, Dierenfeldt said reducing violent crime can begin in unexpected ways, such as tackling underlying causes like mental health issues, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and a lack of employment and educational opportunities. Data can also reduce retaliatory violence by identifying triggering cases and bringing in community resources to prevent escalation of violence.  

Different perspectives can also find simple prevention tactics. After analyzing data from the victims and offenders of 1,300 shootings resulting in injury in Chattanooga, Dierenfield said he felt some context was missing. Using Google Street View, he found some 40% of the addresses where shootings occurred had overgrown trees and shrubbery. 

“I don’t have to arrest that problem away,” he said. “My recommendation to the city was to enforce the city codes and require them to trim back the shrubbery. When you enforce codes, crime is going to drop. These are not huge, expensive changes, but most people don’t consider them because it can’t be that simple.” 

The VRI involvement also boosts the success of grant applications. VRI is presently working with two law enforcement agencies on projects that have received federal funding: a $1,999,187 Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) grant for a partnership with the city of Chattanooga for the Chattanooga United to Reduce Violence (CURV) Initiative and a $844,294 BJA grant for Hamilton County’s Recidivism Reduction Initiative (RRI). 

A third grant is also in the works to reduce opioid overdoses in Rhea County in partnership with the Hamilton County Coalition’s New Start program, which is looking to expand into more rural areas. Dierenfeldt said the VRI is open to working with law enforcement and community agencies across the state. He can be contacted via email at Ricki-Dierenfeldt@utc.edu or via phone at 423-425-2174.