Original Article 'Ballistic fingerprints' tell tales Judi Villa The Arizona Republic Feb. 12, 2005 12:00 AM Phoenix police Detective Darrell Smith carefully sorts through the shell casings left at the scene of a drive-by shooting. "All these shell casings came from one gun," Smith says. "You can tell by looking at it." Smith picks the best one. He's about to enter it into the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, or NIBIN, a database that takes pictures of the unique markings on a bullet or casing and searches for a match. Phoenix police hooked in to NIBIN nearly two years ago. Detectives like Smith, who works in the newly formed Gun Enforcement Squad, are entering more and more bullets and casings into the system to try to link crimes together and solve unsolved cases. Without NIBIN, "there's no way that we could take this and find a comparison," Smith said. "It would have to be done manually. I can't tell you how many shell casings are impounded. There's probably more than thousands. They'd have to do it one-on-one." NIBIN is the latest tool in crime-fighting technology, a national database that takes photos of a gun's unique "ballistic fingerprint" and tries to match it to others and to unsolved crimes. The system is similar to databases for human fingerprints and DNA evidence. Because no two firearms leave the same marks when they fire bullets, ballistic fingerprints can provide a critical tool for law enforcement agencies. There's now a better chance shell casings left at a scene will point detectives to a much-needed lead. In October 2002, when a sniper randomly killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area, police matched bullet fragments from the victims to prove the same gun was used in all the shootings. And, in January, Phoenix had its first NIBIN hit when the agency was able to match shell casings left at two homicides in 2003 and 2004. On this recent morning, Smith was entering casings from unsolved drive-by shootings in 2003. Smith put his first casing into the system's scanner. The system works by photographing the breech face of the casing, the firing pin impression and ejector marks made when a semiautomatic gun flings out the shell. On the screen, the markings look like a series of thick and thin black and white lines, hills and valleys, bumps and grinds and circles. Detectives look for a pattern that's both quality and quantity. Smith zooms in on the mark left by the firing pin. "That's got some nice characteristics around it," he says. Last year, Phoenix police entered nearly 400 exhibits into NIBIN. About 75 percent were from homicides and aggravated assaults where police had a suspect and a weapon and were hoping to link the gun to other unsolved cases. The rest of the exhibits were from scenes of unsolved crimes. Phoenix is hoping to expand the system this year by entering more evidence from unsolved crimes. "This is real good," Smith says of another casing from his pile. "This is what we look for. This is what we want." NIBIN, created in 1999, is available at more than 200 sites across the country. About 120,000 ballistic fingerprint images are stored in the system and nearly 4,500 gun crime leads have been generated to help police solve crimes, according to the Web site for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In Arizona, Phoenix, Mesa and Tucson police, as well as the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the state Department of Public Safety crime labs in Phoenix and Flagstaff have NIBIN systems up and running. Bullets and casings entered in Arizona are automatically compared to evidence entered from five states in the region. Detectives also can request a nationwide search. If the system finds a possible match, a firearms examiner then compares the evidence under a microscope. "It's linking crimes that we would never link without the system," Smith says, as he continues entering evidence from unsolved 2003 drive-by shootings. "I am hoping we get a lot more hits. The more we put in, the more possibilities we have."