MITIGATING SHOOTING VIOLENCE: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR POLICE CHIEFS TO REMOVE BARRIERS
LTC( Ret) Frederick P. Fife
Gun violence remains one of the most urgent leadership challenges facing American police chiefs. Research and operational experience show that shootings are often concentrated among a few people and a few places, yet proven strategies are not always implemented in a timely, systematic, coordinated, and sustainable way. Precision policing, supported by connected technology and disciplined leadership, offers chiefs a practical framework to target the right people and the right places for enforcement action without upending public trust.
Gun violence is more than a crime problem. It is also a public health issue that continues to impact urban centers across the United States. The fallout associated with shooting hits extends beyond the immediate victim. Families are disrupted, communities absorb trauma, hospitals bear extraordinary financial costs, and neighborhoods already burdened by instability are forced to endure the consequences of repeated violence. America’ s most underserved communities live closest to this reality. Even those not struck by a bullet often carry the long-term burden of witnessing shootings and living within the criminal shooting environment.
For New Jersey’ s police chiefs, that reality creates a serious and complicated obligation. Chiefs are expected to reduce shootings, protect officers, maintain constitutional discipline, and preserve public trust, all simultaneously. That expectation is further challenged by limited resources, political pressures, strained community relations, and the fragmented systems that often define modern policing. Yet the profession is not operating in the dark. Evidence-based policing has provided chiefs with a series of levers that can be pulled to mitigate gun violence. The challenge is not merely identifying the right levers. The challenge is ensuring that police executives can pull those levers in a timely, systematic, coordinated, and sustainable way.
The empirical reality that a small number of people and places drive a large share of violence underpins the logic of precision policing. Research consistently suggests that serious violent behavior is concentrated within a very small percentage of the population in major cities. Those most likely to shoot or get shot are often already known to law enforcement and frequently have a nexus to prior violence, gang activity, and gun possession. Shooting hits are similarly clustered in small geographic areas. A relatively small number of places account for a disproportionate share of violence and crime. These findings collectively point chiefs toward the same conclusion: if police can focus on the few people and few places most associated with shooting hits, they can have a disproportionate impact on reducing victimization.
That is the foundation of precision policing. It is intelligence led and data driven. It is not broad saturation for its own sake, and it is not enforcement divorced from impact. It is a measured effort to apply police treatment options surgically to problem people and problem places. Evidence-based precision policing allows chiefs to deploy scarce resources judiciously and view tactics through the lens of impact over activity. It offers a way to mitigate shooting violence in a constitutionally compassionate way while maintaining, and in some cases building, community trust.
The profession already understands several of the primary levers available to reduce shootings. Targeted investigations focus investigative resources on individuals most likely to shoot or be shot. Hot spot policing concentrates police presence and problem-solving efforts in small, high-risk geographic areas responsible for a disproportionate share of shooting hits. Community engagement, including violence interrupters and other
May 2026
community partners, attempts to mediate conflicts and reduce retaliatory violence. Each treatment has evidence of effectiveness on its own, and the literature suggests synergy when combined. Still, the existence of an evidence base is not enough. Chiefs operate in the space between what is known and what is possible. That space is where barriers live.
This is where the knowledge-action gap theory becomes especially important. Research has identified multiple effective strategies for reducing shootings, yet law enforcement agencies often struggle to implement them consistently. That struggle is not theoretical. It is operational. Chiefs may have knowledge of a treatment but still confront barriers to their implementation as they relate to policy, resources, analytic capacity, organizational culture, politics, or partnerships. There is often conflict between the short-term goals of a shortterm police chief and the long-term goals associated with scholarly research and sustained implementation. When those barriers are not identified and removed, evidence-based practices are applied incompletely or only during crisis, and communities continue to experience shooting violence.
Targeted
Investigations & Focused Enforcement Targeted investigations remain a critical part of any serious strategy. When investigators have access to robust data, intelligence, and technology, they can
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