Our agency has had good results with NIBIN. You'll note that Jerry also espouses its benefits above.

I don't have a privacy problem with this technology, and I certainly am not buying in to any conspiracy theories on it, but I do have serious concerns about the accuracy and efficacy of forensic examination of the casings.

I get very worried that prosecutors and experts have oversold the accuracy of these kinds of tests, and that juries are inclined to give them more weight than they deserve.

DNA is pretty accurate stuff, and the science behind it is pretty solid. I am not sure that the same level of accuracy exists with this type of forensics.

My suggestion is if you’re going to try to scheme how to beat NIBIN, you should probably understand how it works. If you’re brilliant criminal mastermind plan is to rely on “they all look the same” or showering the chamber with steel wool, all I can say is I hope you like prison food.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
My suggestion is if you’re going to try to scheme how to beat NIBIN, you should probably understand how it works. If you’re brilliant criminal mastermind plan is to rely on “they all look the same” or showering the chamber with steel wool, all I can say is I hope you like prison food.

...and penis.

According to articles posted here, the head stamp of the casing is analyzed; not the chamber markings. High res 3D images are taken that show microscopic detail on the head stamp that can be digitally "marked" as possibly unique to this casing. There is a lot of art to this, and highly trained technicians are necessary. If the computer can find an exact match in the system, then the law can say that the same pistol was used in both crimes. Even without the pistol one can see that the matching cases could be very useful to the police in understanding the dynamics and associations of their local drug gangsters and armed robbers. I can't imagine that a conviction could be had from shell case ID alone.

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
My suggestion is if you’re going to try to scheme how to beat NIBIN, you should probably understand how it works. If you’re brilliant criminal mastermind plan is to rely on “they all look the same” or showering the chamber with steel wool, all I can say is I hope you like prison food.

...and penis.

At the crime scene, LOL.

quote:

Originally posted by ArtieS:
I don't have a privacy problem with this technology, and I certainly am not buying in to any conspiracy theories on it, but I do have serious concerns about the accuracy and efficacy of forensic examination of the casings.

I get very worried that prosecutors and experts have oversold the accuracy of these kinds of tests, and that juries are inclined to give them more weight than they deserve.

DNA is pretty accurate stuff, and the science behind it is pretty solid. I am not sure that the same level of accuracy exists with this type of forensics.

If it has been oversold, it has been oversold since the late 60s. Tool and die marking in forensic science has been around longer than that and it is a valid, accepted practice that there is very little negative case law over.

Just like in this thread, you see a lot of hype, and even more hysteria. Casing examinations haven't changed much, if at all in the last 50 years. It is now just analyzed by a computer, instead of by hand. The computer spits examines and spits out an "investigative lead" on case comparisons that match. From there, you have to take the two cases to a lab to have their forensic examiner and he uses the same technology that his father did to match the casings. To become a firearms examiner takes about five years of training, to include training for several years under the direct supervision of a senior examiner before you're allowed to test on your own.

The forensic examination of the two casings usually takes about an hour.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
Isn't this the same type of thing that Maryland(?) and New York wasted many millions of dollars on with near zero return? Even THEY were smart enough to finally give it up.

According to Baltimore Sun - Maryland scrapped that idea four years ago and admitted no crimes were solved. $5 million taxpayers dollars were wasted over a 15 year period.

I believe NY eventually had a couple hits, but nothing came from it, no crimes solved, no convictions.

If your new gun didn't come into the state with the empty test cases in the box, you had to pay your dealer to take it to the state police for test firing.

I suppose a lot of "used" guns got transferred in. I, on one occasion actually paid more for a used gun than what a new one would cost, because I was tired of playing their bullshit game.

quote:

Originally posted by GWbiker:

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
Isn't this the same type of thing that Maryland(?) and New York wasted many millions of dollars on with near zero return? Even THEY were smart enough to finally give it up.

According to Baltimore Sun - Maryland scrapped that idea four years ago and admitted no crimes were solved. $5 million taxpayers dollars were wasted over a 15 year period.

Is this the article?

https://www.baltimoresun.com/m...-20151107-story.html

Maryland scraps gun "fingerprint" database after 15 failed years
By ERIN COX
THE BALTIMORE SUN |
NOV 07, 2015 | 8:31 PM

Millions of dollars later, Maryland has officially decided that its 15-year effort to store and catalog the "fingerprints" of thousands of handguns was a failure.

Since 2000, the state required that gun manufacturers fire every handgun to be sold here and send the spent bullet casing to authorities. The idea was to build a database of "ballistic fingerprints" to help solve future crimes.

But the system — plagued by technological problems — never solved a single case. Now the hundreds of thousands of accumulated casings could be sold for scrap.

"Obviously, I'm disappointed," said former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat whose administration pushed for the database to fulfill a campaign promise. "It's a little unfortunate, in that logic and common sense suggest that it would be a good crime-fighting tool."

The database "was a waste," said Frank Sloane, owner of Pasadena Gun & Pawn in Anne Arundel County. "There's things that they could have done that would have made sense. This didn't make any sense."

In a old fallout shelter beneath Maryland State Police headquarters in Pikesville, the state has amassed more than 300,000 bullet casings, one from each new handgun sold here since the law took effect. They fill three cavernous rooms secured by a common combination lock.

Each casing was meticulously stamped with a bar code, sealed in its own envelope and filed in boxes stacked from floor to ceiling. Forensic scientists photographed the casings in hopes the system would someday identify the owner of a gun fired at a crime scene. The system cost an estimated $5 million to set up and operate over the years.

But the computerized system designed to sort and match the images never worked as envisioned. In 2007, the state stopped bothering to take the photographs, though hundreds of thousands more casings kept piling up in the fallout shelter.

The ballistic fingerprinting law was repealed effective Oct. 1, ending the requirement that spent casings be sent in. The General Assembly, in repealing the law, authorized the state police to sell off its inventory for scrap.

The science behind the system is valid. The scratches etched onto a casing can be matched to the gun that fired it, mapping a so-called fingerprint to the gun. The Maryland system was an expanded version of the successful but more limited federal National Integrated Ballistic Information Network started in the 1990s. It catalogs casings only from crime scenes and from guns confiscated by police. Maryland's unwieldy version collected the fingerprint from every single handgun sold in the state.

Worse, the system Maryland bought created images so imprecise that when an investigator submitted a crime scene casing, the database software would sometimes spit out hundreds of matches. The state sued the manufacturer in 2009 for $1.9 million, settling three years later for $390,000.

Zach Suber, a supervisor and forensic scientist for the Maryland State Police, says the process "could have been tweaked" to make it more effective. It's still possible, Suber says, that the collection of casings could have greater forensic value in the future.

That's because, on average, most guns used in crimes were bought nearly 15 years prior, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. By the time they end up on the street, they've often been stolen and resold illegally.

So the oldest ballistic fingerprints in Maryland's collection are just now reaching the age where the guns they identify may be falling into a criminal's hands, Suber said. He said the state police have no immediate plans to turn the collection into scrap metal, as the legislature suggested.

New York followed Maryland's lead and created a similar database, but that state pulled funding for the project in 2012 when it, too, had no success.

By then, it had been clear for years that the efforts weren't working. In 2008, the Department of Justice asked the National Research Council to study the value in creating a national ballistics database with fingerprints from every gun. Researchers, after reviewing the Maryland and New York programs, concluded that such an endeavor would be impractical and a waste of money.

There have been 26 instances in the past 15 years in which Maryland's cache of spent casings helped investigators in some fashion, but in each case investigators already knew the gun for which they were looking, state police said.

The first case came in 2004, when Prince George's County investigators thought the gun used in a homicide outside a Popeye's restaurant in Oxon Hill was bought by the suspect's girlfriend a month earlier.

Investigators pulled the casing from the gun the girlfriend purchased and matched it to the crime scene. But the case against Robert Garner relied more on eyewitness statements and other circumstantial evidence that put him at the scene of the shooting. Garner, who was ultimately convicted, had already been arrested and charged by the time investigators tapped into the ballistic fingerprinting database, according to state police records.

Just last week, Suber said, investigators on three different cases asked for help from the stash of spent casings. Montgomery County detectives thought a particular stolen gun might have been used in a homicide, even though they hadn't found the gun yet. In Baltimore, detectives looking into two separate murders asked for similar help.

The results aren't in, but in all three cases, investigators already suspected that a certain gun was used. Lawmakers had hoped the database would work the other way, pointing the way to a gun used in a crime.

By 2004, when Maryland officials calculated an ineffective system had already cost the state $2.4 million, some legislators tried unsuccessfully to repeal the ballistic fingerprinting law. Repeal efforts in 2005 and 2014 also failed.

"It's probably the best bill I've had," said Sen. Ed Reilly, a Republican from Anne Arundel County, who sponsored the bill that passed this year. He said prior efforts failed because a key committee chairman would not bring it to a vote.

That chairman, former state Sen. Brian Frosh, a Democrat, is now Maryland's attorney general. His successor as chairman, Sen. Bobby Zirkin, a Democrat, let the bill come up for a vote.

Frosh said he was open to repealing the law several times during his tenure, most recently in 2013, but he said police argued that the system still had potential.

"It's fair to look at it after 15 years and see how effective it was," Frosh said. "I don't have a problem abandoning it."

In the fall of 2014, state police issued a report that showed the program had solved no crimes and was costing more than ever. A sweeping gun-control law passed in 2013 — and the surge in gun sales that resulted — created a backlog and state police had to hire eight people just to organize the nearly 60,000 bullet casings sent in that year. In the report, police again suggested the program had merit.

But by the time repealing it came up for a hearing again, Zirkin said, no one defended the program.

"If there was any evidence whatsoever — any evidence — that this was helpful in solving crimes, we wouldn't have touched it," Zirkin said. "The police came in and said it was useless. No one contradicted that."

The state spent several hundred thousand dollars a year managing the bullet casings, officials say, which would put the lifetime cost of the project at roughly $5 million.

For more than a decade, meanwhile, the state police have fielded complaints that manufacturers were needlessly firing off rounds from brand-new guns.

"It drove the gun collectors nuts," Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said. "It's like a car. As soon as you drive it off the lot, it loses value."

ecox@baltsun.com

This has zero to do with NIBIN, how it works, or how effective it is.

But, I'm not really sure how welcome or effective facts are in this thread.

Zero? That's a bit much.

It sounds like the same exact thing, at least half of it anyway. (the logical cost effective half)

They were doing the same thing, plus trying to compile a catalog to compare it too.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
Zero? That's a bit much.

It sounds like the same exact thing, at least half of it anyway. (the logical cost effective half)

They were doing the same thing, plus trying to compile a catalog to compare it too.

They were not trying to do the same thing. Unless, in your mind, a gangbanger that shoots innocent people is the same as a gun owner because they both involve guns. If that is the case for you, yes, they were doing the same thing.

Guns move. They are constantly in flux in the criminal element. The NYS and MD system had no capability to track this, as it was littered with THOUSANDS of false hits. The software is and was designed to be a back door gun registration tool, and had ZERO to do with fighting violent crime. It was never meant to work to solve crimes so claiming any correlation to it is incorrect. If you believe that they were meant to solve crime ask yourself, if they entered a casing into the database, why did it spit out hundreds of possible matches, when the technology has been around to match casing precisely has been around since the early 90s in CAD? Why didn't they just join in on the NIBIN system if crime fighting was the goal? Because this was just another sham like microstamping. You're a logical guy. Ask yourself that. It was never meant to work. It was a technological albatross that was funded by other people's money so they could say they were "doing something" about violent crime, but yet edging toward the real goal against the state's real enemy, the law abiding gun owner. NIBIN, on the other hand, focuses on crime guns only. Crime guns and dope go hand in hand. Dope moves. Guns move.

The fact that they took pictures of brass ends the similarities, and one indeed has zero to do with the other.

Luckily, despite the fear, hysteria and hand wringing, NIBIN isn't going away.

spoke with the nice lady at the Police dept. in the article Corporal Pate,
She Manages the dept.

She set me straight , I had it all wrong , in my head.

The news story led me way astray.

here's what happens

the local dept. has trained specialists that know what to look for on bullets, casings, powder and primers,

they then enter the the information
on a questionnaire ,
it goes to the actual data base.

then , just like a finger print data base or face recognition data base,
a computer takes on the arduous task
of comparing the entered info against the info already in the data base.

i.i.u.c. a glorified mug shot book.

she said that only one of the 8 L.E . depts have signed on to use the system , and no they do not charge Rock Island p.d. to use the system

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
spoke with the nice lady at the Police dept. in the article Corporal Pate,
She Manages the dept.

She set me straight , I had it all wrong , in my head.

The news story led me way astray.

here's what happens

the local dept. has trained specialists that know what to look for on bullets, casings, powder and primers,

they then enter the the information
on a questionnaire ,
it goes to the actual data base.

then , just like a finger print data base or face recognition data base,
a computer takes on the arduous task
of comparing the entered info against the info already in the data base.

i.i.u.c. a glorified mug shot book.

she said that only one of the 8 L.E . depts have signed on to use the system , and no they do not charge Rock Island p.d. to use the system

And to add to that, the system is set up by region to make it more efficient. I think the country is set up into six regions. (I think). If one machine is near two regions, it is usually programmed to check both regions. If a NIBIN examiner receives a request from an officer or agent to do a nationwide search, they have to enter it specifically.

Another article from Davenport (Iowa) PD:

https://qctimes.com/news/local...a9-99855542d702.html

Man arrested after national ballistics network helps identify gun used in Davenport shooting

Thomas Geyer May 20, 2023
Updated 1 hr ago

A 9-year-old man was arrested Friday in connection with a February shooting after shell casings found at the scene were examined through the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network and linked to the gun found in his possession, Davenport Police said.

According to the arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Detective Nate Thomas, at 11:56 p.m. on Feb. 19, officers were dispatched to 1323 Ripley St. to investigate a report that the home was being struck by gunfire.

A crime scene with 11 spent shell casings was located north of the residence. There were two adults and two children in the home at the time of the shooting.

As officers arrived on the scene, a white 2001 Cadillac El Dorado with an Iowa license plate was seen driving in the area. The car’s headlights were turned off.

Officers attempted a traffic stop on the vehicle, but it fled at a high rate of speed.

Officers were able to use a precision intervention technique to bring the Cadillac to a halt in the 2100 block of Vine Street.

Miller was identified as the driver of the Cadillac.

After police had gotten a search warrant for the car, officer located and seized a stolen Smith & Wesson MP Shield 9mm handgun. The gun was hidden under the driver’s seat.

A National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, or NIBIN, lead was generated as test-fired casings from the gun matched the MP Shield 9mm casings located at the scene of the shooting.

A warrant was issued for Miller, and he was taken into custody Friday.

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, website, the NIBIN Program automates ballistics evaluations and provides leads that investigators can use in a timely manner. It is the only interstate automated ballistic imaging network in operation in the United States and is available to most major population centers in the country.

Before the NIBIN Program, firearms examiners performed the process manually, which was time consuming and labor intensive. To use NIBIN, firearms examiners or technicians enter cartridge casing evidence into the Integrated Ballistic Identification System. These images are correlated against the database. Law enforcement can search against evidence from their jurisdiction, neighboring jurisdictions and others across the country.

For court purposes, a firearms examiner will conduct a microscopic examination of the actual physical evidence to confirm a NIBIN lead as a hit.

During a first appearance on the charge Saturday in Scott County District Court, Magistrate Stephen Wing scheduled a preliminary hearing for May 30.

Miller was being held Saturday night in the Scott County Jail on a bond of $10,000, cash or surety.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sigmund,

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Right now, there are very few NIBIN machines in the nation. It takes between 21 and 24 minutes to enter a single case. So you do the math and figure how few cases can be done in a single day.

I know this post is from 2019, but I'm curious what kind of advances they've made in the interim, especially with AI getting integrated into everything. Maybe not yet, but I'm sure pretty soon, this process will be a small fraction of the 21-24 minutes per casing.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Right now, there are very few NIBIN machines in the nation. It takes between 21 and 24 minutes to enter a single case. So you do the math and figure how few cases can be done in a single day.

I know this post is from 2019, but I'm curious what kind of advances they've made in the interim, especially with AI getting integrated into everything. Maybe not yet, but I'm sure pretty soon, this process will be a small fraction of the 21-24 minutes per casing.

The process itself hasn’t changed, or gotten any faster. More machines have been added, and in some places, the machines are used more than just 8 hours per day.

The thing about the federal government when a system is put into place, it takes 5+ years to get it up and running most times. So if there was a move to see new tech today, it’ll be 2028 before you and I ever see it. N.I.B.I.N. hasn’t grown into its full potential, and the slow down really isn’t anything that can be fixed by adding on to this system. It’ll take the “next generation” of whatever it is, and that probably won’t be in my or your lifetime.

Well, that I actually believe. I went through this with the ATF stuff the last week or so, and they can't even build a fucking website that makes sense. 3mb photo limit like this is 1993 or some shit.

Having had experience with NIBIN as an ATF agent, I don’t think it’s as useful as they claim it is. ATF is trying to bill it as the firearm equivalent to what AFIS and CODiS are for fingerprints and DNA respectively and it really isn’t. Fingerprints and DNA put a person at a crime scene. It generally is enough to get an arrest or search warrant when found. NIBIN puts a gun at a crime scene. We don’t charge guns with crimes so its utility for solving a particular crime is limited. It IS useful for making a RICO case for gang related shootings, but doesn’t reallY help solve crimes the way that prints or DNA do. It can help show what other crimes a gun was involved in, and maybe point towards a proactive investigation into organized crime activity, but most police agencies that get a lot of NIBIN data don’t have the resources to look into other “possible” cases as they move on to the next homicide or attempted homicide after they close one out. There isn’t a big break in between.

It’s a tool with some utility, but it’s not the panacea that ATF bills it to be. My other problem with it ethically, is that it’s being coupled with “crime gun intelligence” to go places that we shouldn’t be going. Too much focus on the gun and not enough focus on what really makes a difference in reducing crime. NYC didn’t get cleaned up by just working cases at the severe end of the spectrum, it got cleaned up from going after the windshield washers and other perpetrators of quality of life crimes. The reality is that if you take care of the little problems, the big problems will take care of themselves. Trying to focus so much investigative effort on crimes that involve the discharge of a firearm, arguably at the very high end of seriousness of crimes, will never allow for law enforcement to catch up with the rise of violent crime.