KENNEWICK, Wash. — The Kennewick Police Department (KPD) is the only agency in Washington, besides the Washington State Patrol, to have access to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), a database run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
“Casings are located and they’re a piece of evidence, but what do you do with them,” asked Kennewick Police Sergeant Remie Rees. “Prior to NIBIN, there was no way, or I should say minimal ways, of associating one incident with another incident.”
Nationally, police can use NIBIN to link shell casings to guns.
“I can tell you it’s completely blown my mind,” said Kris Safranek, a detective with KPD. “I enjoy working with the firearms, the test-fires; getting the casings entered in because I understand when you get those investigative leads how important they can be.”
Just like your fingerprints, anytime a gun is fired it leaves it’s own unique markings on a bullet casing. So when police recover guns that may have been used in a crime, they test fire those guns and upload the unique markings left on the casings. They also upload any casings they might find at a crime scene even if they don’t have the gun which fired them.
“We’re only as good as the network that we build, right? So if we have casings that are being recovered from all around the area, we’re not going to get a lead if the casings are never entered, right? We’re not going to know that one gun has been tied to thirteen shootings as we’ve shown previously – we had one gun that was tied to thirteen shootings,” said Detective Safranek.
As of October 16th, Kennewick Police have received 49 leads from evidence collected and entered into NIBIN – That’s just this year, and not including leads from any other agencies in the Tri-Cities area.
“NIBIN is just yet one more way that we can help hold people accountable and make our area safe, which is our ultimate goal,” said Sergeant Rees.
One of only four in the state, KPD works closely with the ATF to bring NIBIN to the Tri-Cities.
And thanks to a grant from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program, they’re able to test-fire guns at the department.
Since NIBIN was implemented at KPD, they’ve received evidence from departments as far away as Alaska and Hawaii, something Sergeant Rees says they’re always willing to do for other law enforcement agencies that need it.
This post was originally published on here
