Richard Aborn, a national gun control advocate and former homicide prosecutor, cited the following statistics: Across the U.S., 15 kids die every day from gunshot wounds.

Mr. Tacopina, 34, was once a homicide prosecutor in Brooklyn.

Everything here is truly stood on its head," a homicide prosecutor said.

In 1998, he began writing "Hollowpoint," a novel about a a Brooklyn homicide prosecutor investigating the shooting death of a 14-year-old girl.

When the reporter asked about his day job, he replied: "Brooklyn is the best place to be a homicide prosecutor.

"This was probably the toughest case any homicide prosecutor in the county ever had to prosecute," Mr. Keahon said.

Sherman Jackson, a childhood friend of Mr. Rivera's and a former homicide prosecutor in Queens, said that the district attorney's office had refused to face the truth.

He worked as an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County, New York (Brooklyn), and became its top homicide prosecutor.

"Everyone who's ever prosecuted a murder case wants a death-qualified jury," says Brian McMonagle, a homicide prosecutor from 1986 to 1989, now a defense lawyer.

(One-third of the homicide prosecutors are black or Hispanic, among them Charles Grant, the chief of the unit.)