Crime and Justice International Magazine - Sam Houston State University

 

This type of repetitive violence has severe social consequences in terms of human suffering and the fear that it generates among those who live within its reach. It also has drastic economic impact in terms of the cost of crime to society in general and, more specifically, on the socioeconomic structure of the affected neighborhood. The fact is that people avoid doing business and socializing in areas where firearms violence is reported to be prevalent.

From practical experience one thing is clear: unless we are able to collect and analyze accurate information about the criminal misuse of firearms across a city, state, or the country, we cannot begin to apply effective enforcement tactics and design new strategies to address the problem. Without such critical information developed in a timely manner, we are destined to have inefficient work processes and waste scarce resources.

As the saying goes every crime gun has a story to tell. The “story” comes from the inside and the outside the gun itself. From the inside comes “ballistics data” in the form of unique markings left on fired ammunition components by the internal working parts of a gun. From the outside comes identifying data in the form of make, model, and serial number that can be used to track the transaction history of the gun. Crime-solving success is dependant upon the efficient and effective management of both sources of information from crime guns.

Through its National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) Program, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) deploys Integrated Ballistic Identification System (IBIS) equipment into Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies for their use in imaging and comparing crime gun evidence. Millions of dollars have been spent to create the NIBIN network and IBIS equipment. This equipment allows firearms technicians to acquire digital images of the markings made by a firearm on bullets and cartridge casings; the images then undergo automated initial comparison. If a high-confidence candidate emerges, firearms examiners compare the original evidence to confirm a match. By minimizing the amount of non-matching evidence that firearms examiners must inspect to find a confirmable match, the NIBIN system enables law enforcement agencies to discover links between crimes more quickly, including links that would have been lost without the technology. In funding and supporting this program, ATF provides Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies with an effective intelligence tool that many could not afford on their own. The system also makes it possible to share intelligence across jurisdictional boundaries, enabling Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to work together to stop violent crime and criminals.

 

The NIBIN Program currently has 228 sites that have received IBIS equipment. There are 182 agencies participating in the program, and every major population center has access to ballistic imaging technology.

NIBIN partner agencies and ATF work in partnership against violent crime. ATF purchases IBIS equipment for deployment and provides for regular upgrades and service, as well as administering the network over which it communicates. Also, ATF provides a weeklong training course for new users of the system. In return, NIBIN partners agree to support the program with adequate staffing and resources, to enter as much gun crime evidence as possible into their IBIS systems, to share evidence and intelligence information with other law enforcement agencies, and to abide by ATF regulations for use of the NIBIN system.

 

Though no investigative tool is perfect or will be effective in every situation, the availability of an open case file of many thousands of exhibits – searchable in minutes instead of the lifetimes that would be required for an entirely manual search – provides invaluable information to law enforcement authorities.

Since ATF and its partner agencies began using this technology, over one million pieces of crime scene evidence have been entered and over 20,000 “hits” have been logged, many of them yielding investigative information not obtainable by other means.¹

 

The following case study illustrates how the NIBIN program can aid police in the investigation of shooting crimes:

September 30, 1995 – Chicago: A drive-by shooting occurred in which a 19-year-old man was killed and another wounded. Expended cartridge cases were retained as evidence from the crime scene and entered into the NIBIN database using IBIS technology.

 

September 28, 2003: Police stopped a vehicle with a shattered rear window and seized a Glock firearm.

 

 

June 22, 2004: The crime lab used IBIS to search the test fires from the Glock pistol against the NIBIN database. The NIBIN query linked the test fires to the evidence from the earlier drive-by shooting. Police knew that they had the murder weapon in hand.

 

October 7, 2004: ATF traced the transaction history of the murder weapon to a woman who said that she bought the gun for her boyfriend because he was a felon and was unable to buy guns legally. She gave police the name of her boyfriend and the names of more witnesses.

 

May 17, 2005: Police interviewed one of those witnesses – he had been with the boyfriend when he killed the 19-year-old during the drive-by shooting. The witness testified before a Grand Jury.

 

May 18, 2005: The boyfriend, a one-time enforcer for the “Gangster Disciples” street gang, was arrested and charged with the murder.

 

This case highlights some critical points:

 

1. It takes all three – people, processes, and technology – applied in a balanced way to listen to the story that every crime gun has to tell.

 

2. Both the ballistics data from inside the gun and the identifying data from outside the gun must be well managed.

 

One of the relevant processes in firearms crime investigation is forensic ballistics analysis. For the past 80 years, police have relied upon the science of “forensic ballistics” to link fired bullets and cartridge cases to each other and to crime guns that were in police custody. The court-tested theory has remained unchanged. Every gun leaves unique microscopic markings on the surface areas of fired bullets and cartridge cases. Experts compare these markings in an effort to identify similarities that positively link them together, subsequently concluding that the ammunition components were fired from the same gun. Up until about 15 years ago, the process of an expert linking ballistics evidence has been a very labor intensive and manual one.

 

The manual process of forensic ballistics analysis received a boost of speed and sustainability with the introduction of automated ballistics technology. Harnessing the power of computers, ballistics imaging technology captures digital images of the unique markings left on fired bullets and cartridge cases and stores them in a database. The technology is able to search a particular image against the inventory of other images in the database with lightning speed and rank them in order of the highest likelihood of a match for confirmation by an expert.

 

Ballistics imaging technology has been proven in the field to help police link crimes, guns, and suspects, and has been shown to be particularly effective in situations involving firearm violence.

 

In Stockton, California, gang and homicide investigators teamed up with their own ballistics imaging specialists, as well as with State prosecutors and forensic experts to form a true crime-solving partnership targeting Cambodian street gangs.

 

Over a three-year period, the partners relied on the ATF NIBIN Network and IBIS ballistics imaging technology to link evidence from 83 gang-related shootings and test fires from 35 seized firearms, two of which were machine guns.

 

From the IBIS links, police generated actionable intelligence leading to the execution of 55 search warrants and the arrest of 25 “gangsters” for 6 murders, 22 firearm assaults, and 50 drive-by shootings.

 

In the end, 16 criminals were convicted for crimes involving the murders and shootings, receiving lengthy prison sentences including life without parole as well as a death penalty verdict.

 

 

Networks such as NIBIN can share critical data quickly across different jurisdictions and even different States. These networks provide enormous strength and value because certain evidence that may seem insignificant to the entering agency can be the missing link that breaks open a case for the agency in the next jurisdiction. The more evidence put into the system, the more crimes, guns, and suspects that will be linked, and the more information investigators will have to put violent criminals behind bars. The evidence of one police agency can now be shared by every agency involved in the NIBIN network.

 

March 1996, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office investigated a home invasion that resulted in the robbery and murder of Hazel Love, a 68-year-old woman in McCalla, Alabama.

 

Investigators recovered several discharged cartridge cases as evidence at the scene and later bullets at the autopsy. The evidence was submitted to the Department of Forensic Sciences Lab (DFS) in Birmingham.

 

IBIS operators at the DFS Lab entered the evidence into the NIBIN database.

 

September 2000, police in Adamsville, Alabama, conducted an investigation concerning a felon in unlawful possession of a firearm. At the time a firearm was retained as evidence and placed on a shelf in the property room.

 

December 2002, Birmingham police investigating a home invasion learned of the firearm stored in Adamsville. Investigators requested a NIBIN check on the firearm.

 

Two weeks later, the DFS Lab surprisingly reported that there was no NIBIN link to the Birmingham home invasion but there was a link between the Adamsville firearm and the 1996 murder of Hazel Love in McCalla. A ballistics expert later confirmed the match.

 

February 2003, Jefferson County Sheriffs arrested two men linked to the Adamsville firearm for the murder of Hazel Love as well as for serious crimes across the county. One of the suspects is serving multiple life sentences without parole.

 

This case demonstrates the need for the collection and sharing of ballistics data from all firearms seized by police within a region because until this was done the Love murder remained unsolved. Sheriff Mike Hale was quoted as saying, “This was a great team effort and a great example of what new technology can do for law enforcement.”

 

While the Birmingham authorities got it right in this case, not all agencies are so fortunate. Programs like NIBIN can only be optimized when the right people, processes, and technology are in place and in balance at the outset. Unfortunately, not all NIBIN users are as effective as they could and should be. The reasons for this vary. Furthermore, many police agencies throughout the United States have little or no access to NIBIN at all. What has been obvious, though, is among those agencies using the NIBIN system some agencies were having much more success than others.

 

Forensic Technology Inc., the developer of the IBIS technology, has collected and published a workbook entitled, “13 Critical Tasks for an Efficient and Effective Ballistics Information Sharing Network.” This workbook is intended to detail a number of best practices in use by police around the world. (It is available online.) The workbook includes best practices related to issues that have been problematic to agencies around the country such as:

 

• Stakeholder Management

• Program Integration

• Formal Memorandum of Understanding

• The Comprehensive Collection of Firearms and Related Evidence

• The Transfer of Evidence to the Ballistics Unit

• The Assessment and Evaluation of Evidence to Provide Information

• Test Firing

• Image Acquisition

• Correlation Results Review

• Confirmation of Hits (Links)

• Communication of Hit Information to Relevant Investigative Personnel

• Leveraging Tactics and Strategies

• Continuous Program Improvement

 

It is important to note that although the manufacturer of the IBIS system published the best practices manual, the practices themselves have been compiled from law enforcement agencies and forensic laboratories around the world. One of the only commonalities among the various entities involved in the best practices process was their ability to continually get hits from their use of the system.

 

In conclusion, NIBIN is an existing Ballistic Imaging Network available throughout the nation. It has been created at a cost of millions of dollars and has demonstrated to be an effective tool in solving firearm crime. What is needed now is a coordinated effort on the part of all the NIBIN partners to leverage this technology to be as effective and efficient as possible. In order not to reinvent the wheel, agencies should review their practices against the best practices that have been developed and demonstrated to be effective so that through the NIBIN partnership more firearm-related crimes could be solved. If an agency currently does not have a ballistic laboratory or does not have access to a State or other laboratory using the NIBIN system, it should check with their nearest ATF office and inquire how to access NIBIN.