����������ϼ�

LAS CRUCES — On average, guns involved in crimes and recovered by law enforcement around the U.S. have been used in four separate shootings.

In a news conference Thursday, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said many guns used in street-level crimes are passed around among criminal groups for use in multiple crimes before they are seized as evidence, often following a homicide.

In December, Torrez unveiled New Mexico’s first-in-the-nation statewide intelligence center compiling data on bullet casings and weapons recovered during criminal investigations.

On Thursday, he visited Las Cruces, where one of several National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) machines is housed at the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office.

“Only by understanding the patterns of crime guns and their movement through society, their movement through gangs and criminal organizations, are we able to try and get ahead of the epidemic of gun violence,” Torrez said.

The NIBIN data network was established by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 1997. In that time, ATF it has compiled 7 million pieces of ballistic evidence nationwide and generated 1.15 million leads.

The location fits in a small office and consists of a workstation featuring a microscope, video monitor and a NIBIN machine resembling the CPU of a large desktop computer. The system allows detectives to contribute ballistic evidence from casings and test-fired weapons to a federal database, potentially matching evidence from local investigations with crimes in other jurisdictions around the country.

New Mexico is the first state to organize a statewide crime gun intelligence center, with NIBIN machines in San Juan County, Gallup, Albuquerque, Roswell and Las Cruces. The rollout was funded with federal money secured by U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who said in December that the technology would be “transformational in how we solve violent crime.”

Approximately 60 days after coming online, Torrez said it was too early to prove the network was living up to that promise, but he said the technology has proved its worth over the years across the country. According to the state Department of Justice, it has already matched 10 firearms to 24 separate incidents statewide. 

In New Mexico, he said it was yielding insights into how guns move from one community to another — producing valuable leads for solving crimes and developing stronger cases for prosecutors.

To build on that progress, Torrez said more agencies need to use it. The conference was, in part, a call to police departments around the state to make use of the technology and contribute to the data base. Each NIBIN location, Torrez said, “is a regional resource … a force-multiplier for law enforcement agencies around the state.”

Sharing the podium with Torrez was Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart, who noted that the third of four murder trials was underway at a district court two miles away stemming from last year’s mass casualty shooting in Young Park — a case involving multiple firearms and hundreds of casings, many never matched to firearms recovered by police, a factor that complicated the investigation as well as prosecutions of the four defendants.

Stewart said the crime center was a way for agencies from different corners of the state to collaborate, and said it would prove more effective over time as more evidence is entered into the database. Torrez said his office is hopeful that ballistics that have been languishing over time in evidence lockers could be taken out and tested, suggesting evidence that could crack a cold case in one county might be sitting on a shelf in another.

Torrez and Stewart also said buy-in by local agencies was essential, even if it meant changes to departments’ typical practices and workflow. At her agency, Stewart said deputies were seeing results 60 days after the NIBIN machine was installed at DASO. She cited a homicide case in which she said investigators had uncovered links to unsolved shootings in other cities and built confidence in the technology.

“They have to see it work,” Stewart said. “After 60 days, they have really embraced it more than any talking, any direction or any order you could give them. They have seen the benefit.”

Algernon ��’A������������ is the Journal’s southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.