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Eficiency of Automated Ballistic Identification Systems

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Laura Draga:

--- Quote from: Justine Kreso on May 11, 2011, 08:35:16 AM ---It is no secret that NIBIN is outdated technology that is not even being sold.
--- End quote ---

Maybe not a secret, but news to me. (Always the last to know; :'( ) We're on the list for BrassTrax. I think we're still hopeful that it will be worthwhile.

As far as answering the question, we've had several dozens of hits; I know Orlando has had far more. I don't know of any here in our region that have led to any investigative breakthroughs. One of our latest hits relates two homicides, an assault and an "other" to a found gun. Hooray!! :P Our local agency hardly seems to be interested in bringing the stuff back most of the time.

I may as well take the opportunity to go off on a tangent, since the subject of this thread is efficiency: there were two earlier threads about missed hits which provided little detail. Does anyone have information they can share about hits NIBIN has missed? I don't mean "missed" in the sense of not in the top 10 but things that have not come up in the correlation list at all.

michaelds:
Thank you for all contribuitions, however I want to make clear that all of the systems today on the market are able to identify casings and /or cartriges otherwise they wouldnt sell such equipments no more.
The issue is HOW EFICIENT they are if linked with a large database, I know from other more unknown systems  that they are very good to a certain volume but at certain point begin to pack up, rendering results to nearly useless. I made a test database of 1000 guns same model, same caliber, serial number in sequence, the results where quite interesting, especially when it comes to bullets. After one year I made a recall of some of the registered weapons, interviewing the user about his shooting and cleaning habits and then rescanned bullet and case of the gun with satisfactory results.
By no means this post is destinated to disqualify any system, all opinions are welcome and should be respected, however being free to discussions.

Bob Shem:
Your question highlights the need to keep the database a reasonable size.  The US political push to add all new firearms to the database would be a disaster if all of the data were lumped together.  However, that problem could be mitigated if crime-related items were tagged for querying.

Maintaining only crime guns and fired components in the database would be the key, but how well the technology works would be difficult to ascertain without an objective comparison between systems.

Jan De Ceuster:
I'd like to add my point of view as a European.

Let me get back to the original question and post. Of course we made hits with IBIS, specifically cartridge cases. But no hits were exclusively made with IBIS. Any potential hit was confirmed on the comparison microscope. Keep in mind that automated systems are developed as pre-screening tools to find cold hits, not as a tool to make a final call about an identification.

Here in Belgium, we have had IBIS for quite a long time. It is still being used in case work. Recently we also purchased the Evofinder system for which we are in the process of training. It is a fact that quite a few different systems are used in Europe. The cold hit rates in European countries, at least in the countries that I know off, are quite low. From experience of some European member states, it became clear that the geographical distance between cold hits is low (mostly same city, same region). I would be very interested in learning about the NIBIN experience in this respect. Are there many cross-state cold hits recorded?

For the above reasons I don't feel an urgent need for a European network, at least not at all cost. I think it is a good thing that countries/institutes get to choose their own means to work with... it is a free market after all.

Saying this, Michael, I am interested in learning about your Evofinder experiences with the 1000 same model guns.

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