New Mexico expanding use of gun and bullet scanning technology to more easily link crimes

NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – State-of-the-art tech, credited with cracking some of the metro’s highest profile gun crimes, is now getting deployed across the state. A handful of new bullet casing scanners are being deployed in four new regional hubs stretching from Farmington to Roswell. The goal is to link evidence from shooting cases across city and county lines in rural communities. “What makes this different is that we very intentionally distributed these machines and the personnel necessary to run the machines across the state, so that the state itself could conduct its own comprehensive analysis,” said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez.

The New Mexico Department of Justice will be at the center of the effort with their new Crime Gun Intelligence Center. He said they’ll be the only AG’s office in the country managing a statewide program that scans bullet casings and guns found at crime scenes. Analysts will then figure out what crime scenes could be connected. The AG is deploying the scanning machines to Farmington, Gallup, Roswell, and Las Cruces. The scans get uploaded in the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBIN database, to see if the same gun was used at different scenes.

It’s the same technology the Albuquerque Police Department used to figure out and arrest the people tied to shootings at elected officials’ homes in Albuquerque. “Instead of waiting weeks and months to connect discovery, investigators now can link shootings from firearms, shell casings, and suspects in a matter of hours or days, and cases that once appeared isolated can now quickly be connected, helping us identify repeat offenders and patterns of violent activity more quickly,” said San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari.

Right now, almost every community outside the metro has to bring in its bullet casing evidence to Albuquerque in order to get it scanned and sent into the federal NIBIN system. The process can take six to 12 months. “Rural communities often cover large geographical areas with limited resources, and crime does not stop at the city limits,” said Sheriff Ferrari.

The attorney general said the machines being deployed will be used as regional hubs, available for any New Mexico police agency to use.

The New Mexico Department of Justice got a million dollars from the feds, with the help of Senator Martin Heinrich, to stand up the system, which they said is ready to start on Tuesday. AG Torrez called out state lawmakers for not helping fund the initiative. “It is a system that is broken. It’s a system that can be fixed. and the only thing we lack at this moment is the political will to do so,” said AG Torrez.