Hartsville Police Department uses new technology to help connect guns to violent crimes

HARTSVILLE, SC (WMBF) - The Hartsville Police Department is using new technology to help link confiscated guns to violent crimes.

The department is the first agency to use ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network trailer.

Inside the NIBIN Trailer is a weapons test chamber.

“Every gun is unique with the marking it leaves on a bullet shell casing, so what we’re doing is taking all the guns we have in evidence and test firing them and we’re going to send the shell casings to the lab,” Lt. Mark Blair said.

Blair said officers will fire all 200 weapons they have in evidence. Once the weapons are fired into the test chamber, the casings are sent to the State Law Enforcement Division to be analyzed.

Investigators can then use the marking found on the casing to link guns to ongoing investigations.

“So if a gun is linked to a crime scene two years ago, everything goes into the computers and it creates a digital fingerprint of a firearm so you can link one gun to multiple crime scenes,” Blair said.

Usually, the police department would have to sign each individual weapon out of evidence. Then officers would have to take them to the gun range to be fired to gather the ballistic fingerprint.

The NIBIN trailer streamlines the process because each weapon can be taken directly out of the evidence vault and fired right on site.

Blair hopes this technology will make people think before they commit violent crimes.

“I hope people see this report and see what we’re doing with firearms and shell casings and start thinking, do I really want to go shooting up someone’s house or do a drive by and leave shell casings all over the place. I hope people look at this and say maybe I should change my behavior,” Blair said.

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