Ballistics imaging helps police determine if one gun was used in multiple shootings
This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.Manager Darryl Barr of the Forensic Firearms and Toolmark Laboratory examines a firearm at a lab in Calgary on Feb. 19, 2020. The Calgary Police Service built its the lab in 2011, becoming the first municipal police service in Canada to conduct ballistics imaging in-house.
Using evidence left behind at crime scenes, ballistics imaging helps police determine if one gun was used in multiple shootings. When a gun is fired, the bullet and cartridge case pick up tiny markings unique to that weapon. By entering high-resolution images of the fired ammunition into a national database, scientists can link different cases to a single gun.
The changes are a shift toward the model in the United States, where it’s become increasingly common for local police services to conduct the initial imaging of evidence to speed up the analysis process. In a 2017 report, the task force recommended the province open its own firearms lab, while also calling for enhanced capacity and improved response times within RCMP labs.
What makes that possible is the Canadian Integrated Ballistics Identification Network , a national database maintained by the RCMP. Possible links between evidence, identified by the technology and reviewed digitally, are referred to as “leads.” They can be produced quickly, as cases and memories are fresh. Definitively confirming a link between cases, known as a “hit," often takes longer, as a forensic scientist must physically examine the pieces of evidence.
“You don’t need to be an expert to feed the machine, but you need to be an expert to read the results,” said Pete Gagliardi, a former special agent with the ATF and one of the early developers of NIBIN, who now consults about solving gun crime.
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