NIBIN Success Story

Below is an arti­cle describ­ing a suc­cess story involv­ing the cur­rent “Ballisitics Fingerprinting” sys­tem IBIS, devel­oped by Forensic Technologies Inc. (FTI), imple­mented by the ATF as part of the NIBIN.

One aspect of the arti­cle below that I ques­tion, is that the sys­tem was able to match .40 Glock bul­lets from two dou­ble homi­cide scenes. Without going into too much detail, I’m sure they meant the car­tridge cas­ings, but I wasn’t involved in the case, so I don’t know for sure.

Original arti­cle located here.

BrassTRAX helps police in Palm Beach County match guns to killers

By Jerome Burdi | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
12:33 AM EDT, May 16, 2008

West Palm Beach — The .40-caliber Glock hand­gun stolen from a sheriff’s deputy claimed the lives of four men in three days and left a trail of evi­dence in its bul­let car­tridges, dis­carded at the mur­der scenes.

It was a bloody November 2004 in the city.

Two dou­ble homi­cides on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, labeled revenge killings by police, prompted out­cry and com­mu­nity lead­ers orga­nized ral­lies. Police told the pub­lic the attacks were planned, not ran­dom. The only clue detec­tives had was that the killer used the same gun in the four slayings.

Detectives solved the case by con­nect­ing all the bul­lets using the National Integrated Ballistics Identification Network, or NIBIN. The data­base ana­lyzed the dis­tinct mark­ings on each of the bul­lets — link­ing them to one gun and one killer.

The case was so suc­cess­ful that West Palm Beach police recently bought BrassTRAX, a cam­era sys­tem that allows offi­cers to cap­ture images of those markings.

“The gun has the fin­ger­print, it has its own unique micro­scopic detail,” said Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office senior foren­sic sci­en­tist Omar Felix. “That fin­ger­print is impressed into the car­tridge case or on the bul­let when it’s shot out of the barrel.”

When police retrieve bul­let car­tridges from a crime scene, they ana­lyze and enter details of the mark­ings into NIBIN, the national data­base. The data­base will repeat­edly search to see if that gun has been used in other crimes.

When offi­cers retrieve a gun, they shoot a bul­let into a metal tube called a “bul­let catcher.” The offi­cer then removes the bul­let car­tridge and records the mark­ings the gun made in BrassTRAX. That image is then input into the national database.

West Palm Beach police started using the BrassTRAX sys­tem — paid for with $100,000 from the county’s Criminal Justice Commission — in March. The pur­chase makes West Palm Beach police the sec­ond police agency in the county that can enter bul­let car­tridge images into the national network.

The Sheriff’s Office has used the NIBIN net­work since 2001 and all the police agen­cies in the county used to take their bul­let evi­dence there. West Palm Beach’s newer tech­nol­ogy will help reduce the Sheriff’s Office work­load and cut the some­times months-long wait to make entries, offi­cials said.

Riviera, Delray and Boynton Beach police depart­ments are also autho­rized to input their infor­ma­tion into the data­base using the West Palm Beach Police Department’s BrassTRAX.

The West Palm Beach Police Department also enters infor­ma­tion from offi­cers’ guns into the sys­tem in case one is stolen and used, like the deputy’s gun that was used in the November 2004 dou­ble homicides.

Detectives said those cases — where four men were slain in a hail of bul­lets from the hand­gun and two other firearms — are a good exam­ple of how trac­ing a gun or bul­lets can lead inves­ti­ga­tors to a killer.

“We had no wit­nesses, we had noth­ing except expended shell cas­ings and pro­jec­tiles from the vic­tims,” said West Palm Beach police Detective Donald Iman.

Investigators began com­par­ing those bul­lets and were able to link them to one gun — the Glock. The bul­let evi­dence was the key to link­ing Derek Dixon to the slayings.

“It’s evi­dence if we can prove that gun was in one person’s hands,” Iman said.

Police arrested Dixon as a sus­pect in a car­jack­ing case nearly two months after the killings. He was charged with the mur­ders based on the tes­ti­mony of a co-defendant and a recorded con­ver­sa­tion from the county jail where he admit­ted to the mur­ders, accord­ing to police reports. In March, Dixon, 22, pleaded guilty to the four counts of sec­ond degree mur­der and is now serv­ing 40 years in fed­eral prison for the killings, which will run at the same time as the 40 years he’s already serv­ing for car­jack­ing and pos­ses­sion of a firearm by a con­victed felon.

Iman doc­u­mented how the gun evi­dence and the national net­work helped map out Dixon’s rampage:

To get the sheriff’s deputy’s gun from the thief who stole it, Dixon traded some stolen jew­elry in a street deal in July 2004.

Using the bal­lis­tics data­base to match the bul­lets fired at each of the scenes, police traced Dixon’s attacks between August and December 2004.

He was later iden­ti­fied from sur­veil­lance cam­era images of a Steak ‘n Shake restau­rant shoot­ing in August. No one was injured but bul­let car­tridges were left behind.

On Sept. 25, Dixon fired the hand­gun after a fight at a night­club on Okeechobee Boulevard but again no one was injured, police said. Victims refused to coöper­ate but police found more bul­let cartridges.

The first dou­ble homi­cide occurred on Nov. 4 when Dixon thought the vic­tims, Reynold Barnes, 23, and Eddie Lee Gibbs, 26, were the peo­ple he was fir­ing at in the Steak ‘n Shake inci­dent. After leav­ing an IHop Restaurant, Dixon fired the Glock hand­gun and another shooter fired a .380 Beretta, police said.

Gibbs and Barnes were hit at least 10 times and died.

Three days later on Nov. 7, Dixon saw Larry Turner, 23, who he thought tried to kill his brother. He fol­lowed a car with three peo­ple in it and opened fire in a drive-by shoot­ing. Turner was injured but Ali Jean and Turner Norwood, both 22, were killed and bul­let car­tridges from the hand­gun were left behind.

At a car­jack­ing Dec. 3 out­side an Arby’s restau­rant in Palm Beach Gardens, shots were fired and a Glock hand­gun was dropped at the scene.

It was the one police were look­ing for.

Jerome Burdi can be reached at jjburdi@sun-sentinel.com or 561–243-6531.