Gun crimes in Savannah have drawn increased federal agency presence. What does this mean?

Beginning in February 2022, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) increased its presence in Savannah due to an uptick in violent crime.

When ATF assigned a second squad of agents to the Savannah area, former agent Matthew Beccio moved to Georgia's first city from Washington D.C., and started serving as the supervisor of Savannah Field Office One, which focuses solely on violent crimes in Chatham County. Savannah Field Office Two handles the other 42 counties in south Georgia.

Although Beccio was unable to share the number of agents in a squad due to "operational security," he said Field Office One works with all Chatham County law enforcement agencies to expand and enhance local law enforcement capacity, especially around gun violence, through additional training and technology.

Beccio gave two reasons for the Savannah-centric move: the rapid population growth within the past decade and the uptick in assaults and homicides involving guns since 2015 ― the first year the number of violent crimes exceeded 1,000 countywide when Chatham County and Savannah had combined police forces. In 2018, when the county and city severed their partnership, violent crimes in the city alone topped 1,000 and have not dropped below that threshold since. Between 2021 and 2022, violent crimes increased by 13% with the largest increase occurring in aggravated assaults. Of the 1,250 violent crimes reported in the city of Savannah, nearly 30% were aggravated assaults involving guns.

'Organized crime, gun sales, we obviously have a bad history of gun violence in this town'

Growing up in a military family — Beccio's grandfather served in World War II, his uncle and father in Vietnam — Beccio knew from a young age that he wanted to work with the government in some capacity. He was a "civilian law enforcement professional" who worked with the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service, before joining the ATF in 2000.

He started as an ATF special agent in his hometown of Baltimore, working with the Baltimore Police until 2011. He moved to ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. for the next three years before heading to Chicago.

There, he focused exclusively on gun and violent crimes with the Chicago Police Department. In 2017, he was accepted into a joint ATF-DOJ Fellowship Program in Washington D.C. There, he served as a subject-matter expert for senators. Most notably, he investigated the Larry Nassar scandal.

That investigative knack, Beccio said, enticed Savannah ATF to bring him in.

“We're working on [the same program as I did in Chicago] in Savannah, which is exciting,” said Beccio. “It gives me the opportunity to sort of build on that experience of, you know, these are the things that kind of work for us. The volume of crime in Chicago is much higher than it is here in Savannah. So, [I am learning] how to find creative, innovative ways to address it.”

Savannah Police Capt. George Gundich, who oversees the Strategic Investigations Unit, said ATF came to SPD with the idea of increasing presence in Savannah. Thus far, he said it has helped.

"Any bigger cities are gonna have more crime, so there's more opportunity to break into what they're trying to correct," said Gundich. "Organized crime, gun sales, we obviously have a bad history of gun violence in this town. So, this is a good push for the administration to branch out and help locals more than just when we call."

The ATF agents working with local law enforcement agencies are what the Department of Justice (DOJ) calls “task force officers” — state and local officers who are deputized federally to work with the ATF, among other federal agencies, on federal cases.

In Savannah, Beccio said, ATF has used and is using a variety of investigative methods, including undercover officers, informants and wiretaps.

Gundich said the ATF agents have "integrated" with SPD by joining SPD officers on search warrants, surveillance and gang cases involving guns and gun sales.

But Beccio has bigger plans for the relationship moving forward. Specifically, Beccio overlaying SPD's ShotSpotter data with other data ATF compiles, such as the location of gun sales and guns seized during the commission of crimes to better understand how guns get into the hands of criminals. The agency uses information from the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), an automated ballistic imaging network. The NIBIN machine for all of south Georgia is located at the Chatham County Police Department.

To use NIBIN, firearms examiners or technicians enter cartridge casing evidence into the Integrated Ballistic Identification System (IBIS). The NIBIN process is as follows: test fire a gun, gather the evidence from test fire, retrieve the shell case and submit that shell case and see if it matches other crimes ― akin to creating a biography of a gun.

Federal-local partnership in training and investigation

Throughout the years, SPD lost a lot of forensics officers and NIBIN operators, and as a result, it fell behind, said Gundich. The ATF, then, has helped fill that gap, training officers on forensics and NIBIN.

As part of his job duties, Gundich handles the requests for the NIBIN reports from the ATF. Since the ATF started training officers, Gundich has seen the number of reports increase from two per week to between 20 to 25. Making a connection to a shooting case used to take six months. With ATF's training, it now takes 48 to 72 hours.

ATF Savannah also has trained the local officers on how to prepare a federal case. Beccio’s squad is responsible for “Operation Ceasefire,” a partnership between local and federal agencies to address gun violence in the community. A case falls under Operation Ceasefire, Beccio said, when it has a “federal nexus” — if there is a potential federal violation, most often a felon in possession of a firearm.

ATF then can work with the arresting officer to investigate the case. The goal is to bring the case to federal court. There, almost every defendant pleads guilty. Though less common, ATF agents can also bring charges to state court, Beccio added.

With the backlog of cases in the Chatham County District Attorney's office, the stricter federal charges help the officers get repeat offenders off the streets, Gundich added. "It eliminates the problem of the revolving door that we tend to get with local charges, where we can see the same people within two years, while when they put somebody away can be at least eight years or more."

Gundich called federal charges a "whole different animal" compared to local charges. "There's a big difference when you have a federal law enforcement agency interviewing you from local. It's not been taken away from local, but everybody gets a little more nervous. And there's a lot more on the line when you're dealing with federal charges."

Editor's Note: Public safety reporter Drew Favakeh interviewed Matthew Beccio in October 2022. Beccio retired from ATF in June 2023.

Drew Favakeh is the public safety and courts reporter for Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at AFavakeh@savannahnow.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah gun crime uptick leads to increased ATF presence