Community Spotlights
Oklahoma City, OK
January 17, 2025
A Federal-State-Local Coordinated Criminal Justice Approach
Since 2018 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma (WDOK) has prioritized its “Operation 922” initiative. Named after the federal crime at 18 U.S.C. 922, which prohibits persons with certain statuses (including felony convictions, convictions for a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, and subject to a domestic violence protection order) from possessing firearms and ammunition, Operation 922 is a strategy to reduce gun violence by targeting domestic violence.
The focus of the strategy is repeat and high-risk domestic abusers who violate federal firearms offenses with the goal of holding them accountable. The strategy enables the U.S. Attorney’s Office to protect the abusers’ intimate partners and the wider community. In practice, the WDOK has emphasized bringing federal prosecutions for domestic violence-derived crimes with the goal of reducing domestic violence gun homicides. The federal-state-local multidisciplinary coordination behind Operation 922 has redefined Oklahoma City’s response to domestic violence and increased each individual system partners’ capacity to address these cases.
In addition to the criminal justice accountability that the initiative has achieved, the multilevel coordination of the initiative and the extent to which it is informed by those who serve survivors and know them best has reaped other benefits for the community as well. It is a criminal justice system partnership model replicable in other communities.
Operation 922 March 2018 thru July 2024:
- The WDOK charged 341 defendants with federal charges for domestic violence-derived crimes, mostly the federal firearms prohibition (Section 922).
- 323 Operation 922 defendants have been convicted.
- 301 Operation 922 defendants have been sentenced to an average of nearly 74 months in prison.
- Pursuant to these Operation 922 prosecutions, 4,781 firearms and 12,240 rounds of ammunition have been seized from domestic abusers.
- About a third of these Operation 922 defendants have known associations among 43 gangs.
- Operation 922 cases have thus far come from 26 of the 40 counties within the WDOK’s jurisdiction
The formation of Operation 922
In 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma (WDOK) was in the process of developing their strategy for the district’s Project Safe Neighborhood program. The process requires identifying a significant crime problem in the community within the district’s jurisdiction, determining solutions, and then defining a “target area” to implement those solutions coordinated by federal, state, and local partners. Local law enforcement raised the issue of rising domestic violence shootings and homicides. The leadership in the WDOK was cognizant that Oklahoma ranked second in the nation in homicides of women, that the majority of those homicides were committed with a firearm, and that state prosecutors were facing many frustrations attempting to effectively prosecute domestic violence offenses. This prompted the WDOK to gather local partners and available national, state, and local data to get a fuller picture of the intersection of domestic violence and firearms.
The national data demonstrated the high risk of lethality for domestic violence victims associated with the presence of a firearm and the impact on children, law enforcement (given domestic violence-related calls were among the leading precipitators in officer line of duty injury and death), and the community at large (given the connection to mass shootings). For a local picture, they mapped domestic violence-related 911 calls within a recent time period, which showed that no corner of Oklahoma City was untouched by domestic violence and that these calls were the second most common calls precipitating officer deaths.
At that time Oklahoma had no state law prohibiting domestic violence abusers from possessing firearms. The WDOK U.S. Attorney determined that, to implement a solution to this significant crime problem, the target area for WDOK’s PSN project was not a geographic area but a subject matter area: domestic violence-derived crimes. In particular, using the federal tools available, such as Section 922, to hold violent and repeat domestic violence offenders who violate federal law accountable, with an emphasis on those violating the federal firearms prohibitions. The WDOK formed “Operation 922” to “use the power of federal prosecution to quickly remove abusers from the home, protect victims over whom the abuser exerts control, and safeguard law enforcement responding to domestic violence calls.”
Several years before the WDOK began their focus on domestic violence-derived crime, Kim Garrett was working as an advocate in the Oklahoma City Police Department. She saw how difficult and time consuming it was for a survivor of domestic violence to navigate all of the various systems and supports they might need access to in order to seek and maintain their safety. She sold OCPD leadership on the need for a family justice center that could house all the services and support a survivor might need in one place. After five years of tireless advocacy and planning by Kim and OCPD leadership, Palomar Family Justice Center—an independent nonprofit entity—opened in February 2017 with 15 on-site partners available to serve survivors in Oklahoma City. In 2023, Palomar provided more than 41,500 services, meeting a wide range of needs for 5,727 individuals.
U.S. Attorney Robert Troester forged a relationship with Kim Garrett and Palomar, gaining a deeper understanding of the unique circumstances and needs faced by domestic violence survivors in Oklahoma City. From that, and their own relationships within the community, a robust partnership was formed that includes:
- WDOK U.S. Attorney’s Office (federal prosecutor)
- Palomar Family Justice Center (including its on-site partners)
- the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) (federal law enforcement)
- the U.S. Marshals Service (federal law enforcement)
- Oklahoma City Police Department (OCPD) (local law enforcement)
- Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) (county law enforcement)
- Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) (state prosecutor)
The main activities of the initiative include WDOK working with local law enforcement and prosecution partners to identify high-risk domestic violence cases for which WDOK can bring a federal prosecution and, working with Palomar and its on-site partners, to link every domestic violence survivor connected with those cases to wraparound victim services, and continue to follow up as the case progresses and/or the survivor’s circumstances change.
Operation 922’s work began with weekly meetings between WDOK federal prosecutors, ATF agents, OCPD domestic violence detectives (whose office is co-located at Palomar), and OCDA state prosecutors. Together they explored what cases WDOK’s jurisdiction gave them the capability to handle and how OCDA could identify those cases. The individual case narratives from the OCPD domestic violence detectives and the connections that the WDOK drew to the patterns of domestic violence perpetration and community violence perpetration helped to encourage the ATF agents to focus their resources on domestic violence-derived offenses. Over time WDOK developed criteria for cases they could accept from the OCDA, and the federal prosecutors trained the state prosecutors on how to look for those criteria. ATF and WDOK prosecutors also trained the OCPD domestic violence detectives on the applicable federal charges, what to look for in a potential federal case, and what evidence would be needed to establish those charges.
Benefits realized
The multi-jurisdiction partnership overcame longstanding challenges preventing interagency criminal justice collaboration and has seen real benefits, all of which enhance the ability of the criminal justice system to respond to domestic violence-related gun violence in Oklahoma City:
- The partnership transformed the thinking of federal prosecutors and law enforcement that Section 922 (the federal firearms prohibition) is a “victimless” crime. In all of the domestic-violence derived cases WDOK has charged, the assigned prosecutor and WDOK victim-witness coordinator make and maintain contact with the domestic violence victim, even where that victim is not a witness to the charged crime and/or their participation is not necessary to the federal 922 prosecution. Recognizing that the WDOK cannot meet the multiplicity of needs that domestic violence victims have and that the WDOK victim-witness coordinator cannot provide privileged services to survivors like community-based advocates, WDOK’s relationship with Palomar ensures WDOK can connect every victim with wraparound, confidential services. Palomar’s leadership, and its partners located within the family justice center, provide WDOK and other partners with a real-world view of the impact domestic violence has on Palomar’s clients’ lives and the multivariate barriers survivors face to obtaining safety and accountability.
- The partnership has repaired and fostered relationships among federal and local law enforcement agencies that have historically been strained and resulted in a lack of coordination. It has re-energized law enforcement to devote resources to addressing domestic violence and increased support for investigating and addressing domestic violence among agency leadership and throughout the ranks. Each agency’s contribution fueled greater energy and contribution by the others.
- Being embedded in Palomar, the OCPD domestic violence detectives gained a more complete understanding of domestic violence perpetration and the ways it affects every facet of a survivor’s life. As one detective noted, “It goes way past the 911 call. Seeing victims come back to Palomar for services gives perspective beyond the case and shows the difference it makes putting effort into these cases.” As detectives and officers rotate through the domestic violence unit and observe this themselves, it has contributed to a shift throughout the department resulting in greater understanding about domestic violence and support for devoting resources to addressing it. The detective observed that “the entire chain of command has only grown in its support over these last ten years.”
In furtherance of Operation 922, WDOK provides local patrol officers with laminated cards to keep in patrol cars which detail the federal firearm prohibitors criteria and provide them with a direct line to reach someone if they have questions about firearms in a situation they are responding to or investigating.
- The Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office embedded a sheriff full-time in Palomar to serve the protection orders issued to Palomar clients and attempt to retrieve surrendered firearms from respondents. Civil attorneys on-site at Palomar represent Palomar clients in protection order proceedings and, once a protection order is issued by the court, Palomar staff prepare a cover sheet with the information necessary for service. The sheriff then serves the order and provides proof of such. One Palomar partner observed a “complete transformation” in the attitudes within the Sheriff’s Office towards domestic violence and serving protection orders over five years of partnership.
- The ATF’s access to real cases involving victims of firearm-facilitated domestic violence and the impact experienced by victims, as well as learning more about the domestic violence connection to community gun violence and law enforcement safety, convinced the agents that domestic violence-derived cases are precisely the dangerous offenders they are meant to devote their resources to—a shift in mindset from the sort of cases they were used to prioritizing. As one agent described, “By the fourth or fifth case [local law enforcement brought to us] your eyes really start to open—you start to see just how great the [long-term] impact is…When we take a gang member off the street, there is another one right behind them. But when we take a domestic violence offender from the home the whole family changes.” This new energy to work with local officials to address domestic violence-related gun violence helped the local ATF agents to acknowledge the ways they have fallen short of being effective partners with local agencies in the past. To demonstrate their commitment, ATF helped OCPD acquire other greatly needed, and costly, investigative resources.
- Through the Operation 922 initiative the U.S. Marshals Service in Oklahoma City contributed by executing domestic violence warrants to clear the backlog. This started with domestic violence warrant sweep months in October 2018 and 2019. After seeing the impact and continuing to participate in the initiative, the handling of domestic violence-related warrants, not only for federal charges, became part of the agency’s regular work. As a result, the backlog of domestic violence warrants is nearly nonexistent.
- The Operation 922 initiative provided resources to the OCDA, which eased the burden of high case volume on the state prosecutors and allowed for greater focus on the cases that remained for state prosecution. With the initiative funding, WDOK funded an OCDA domestic violence prosecutor to serve as a Special Assistant United States Attorney (SAUSA) and remain embedded in OCDA. The state domestic violence prosecutor designated as the SAUSA acts as a liaison between the state and federal prosecution agencies and spends one day a week at Palomar. Trained by WDOK prosecutors, the SAUSA screens every domestic violence case received by OCDA for the federal criteria—reviewing 10,000 to 20,000 cases a year. This direct point of contact between the agencies allows for more efficient decision-making and faster action. Additionally, the initiative solves some of the frustrations felt by the lack of options in state law to hold some abusers accountable. It has enabled WDOK to bring federal prosecutions against some high-risk domestic abusers who otherwise would have gone without any accountability in the state system.
Operation 922 has, most importantly, had a beneficial impact on individual survivors, and the community.
Evaluation and evolution
The starting point for Operation 922 was data and the real-life story it told. Since the initiative launched, WDOK has continued to collect and evaluate data, including the numbers of defendants charged, convictions entered, and lengths of sentences from the federal prosecutions.
The survivor-focused perspective that Palomar and its partners bring to the initiative makes it impossible not to see this data in the context of survivors’ real lives, in which the harm caused by their abuser does not end with a conviction and sentence. Five years into Operation 922, looking at the data indicating that the average sentence the Operation 922 defendants received was approximately five years, U.S. Attorney Troester realized that the earliest among those offenders would be nearing release. Despite WDOK recognizing Section 922 offenses are not victimless crimes, the federal system at large would not. He knew that for many of the Operation 922 cases, it was critical for the domestic violence victim to be notified of the offender’s release so that they could be connected to supportive services and have an opportunity to safety plan.
WDOK established Project RAISE UP (Resources and Aid Initiative for Survivors by Effectively Utilizing Partnerships) in response. Through Project RAISE UP, in cases arising under Operation 922 and other appropriate cases, WDOK is notified of any change in the defendant’s custodial status or release. The WDOK victim-witness coordinator reaches out to the survivor to notify them of the status change or release and to determine if there are services to which the survivor would benefit from being connected. Engaging their partner Palomar and other victim service and advocacy providers in the community these survivors again have an opportunity to be connected with wraparound services.
Institutionalizing the work
Operation 922 and Project RAISE UP have several components that support their continuity:
- Naming the program: WDOK leadership was intentional in establishing a name and brand for the initiative which helps it to be seen across the agency, and partner agencies, as a fixture of the work.
- Participation by leaders and emerging leaders: The partners to Operation 922 all have the full support of their leadership at the very top levels. But participation includes staff throughout the ranks. This helps guard against one leader championing an agency’s involvement with no succession plan. Additionally, identifying emerging leaders to be involved in the effort gives them an opportunity to develop their expertise around domestic violence and domestic violence-derived community violence and it signals to the entire agency that this is a priority.
- Raising awareness and sharing success: WDOK addresses and provides mentorship to other U.S. Attorneys and potential partners at every available opportunity to explain the benefits and successes of prioritizing domestic violence-related gun violence through a federal-state-local criminal justice partnership.
- Data collection and evaluation: Collecting and analyzing data gives the Operation 922 partners an opportunity to reflect on their efforts and identify opportunities for improvement or expansion. This is precisely what led to the development of the RAISE UP initiative.
- Fostering relationships and leveraging available resources: Operation 922 is primarily funded by the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative and with that WDOK is able to provide financial resources to some of the partner agencies to support the collaborative work. For example, WDOK funds a SAUSA to remain embedded in the state prosecutor’s office. Beyond financial resources, several of the initiative’s partners are embedded in other partners’ work. For example, WDOK U.S. Attorney Troester is on Palomar’s Advisory Council.
- Throughout the partnership there has been a genuine and concerted effort to engage in team building. The group has prioritized non-work-related activities to help people from different disciplines develop a rapport, such as, regular ping pong tournaments at Palomar. One detective explained that, from developing a deeper relationship with advocates than he previously had, he came to understand the reason for some of the things that had previously caused him frustration—like the reason an advocate won’t simply give a detective a survivor’s phone number or address is not simply stubbornness or lack of trust but confidentiality obligations. Being in a space to hear from one another provides the opportunity to better understand one another. As the Operation 922 partners have shown one another that they fulfill their promises the resulting trust between them has organically grown into other collaborations. All of which enhances the ability of the coordinated community response to serve survivors and the community.