NY new-gun database has yet to lead to prosecution

Original arti­cle here.

By MICHAEL HILL

ALBANY, N.Y. –New York’s 7-year-old data­base of hand­gun “fin­ger­prints” has yet to lead to a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, and ques­tions linger about its effec­tive­ness. Still, state police remain com­mit­ted to the data­base, say­ing more time and a long-awaited link to a fed­eral bal­lis­tics data­base could bring suc­cess.
Since March 2001, iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion about more than 200,000 new pis­tols and revolvers sold in New York have been entered into the Combined Ballistic Identification System data­base main­tained by state police. New York and Maryland are the only two states that main­tain statewide data­bases.
New guns are test fired, and the minute mark­ings the guns make on the shell cas­ings are recorded and entered into the dig­i­tal data­base.
Proponents say the mark­ings are as unique as fin­ger­prints and can be com­pared against shell cas­ings found at crime scenes. The results as of August: 209,239 cas­ings entered into New York’s data­base, 7,124 inquiries and two hits.
Both hits were sev­eral years ago and involve sep­a­rate crimes in Rochester — a drive-by shoot­ing that resulted in an injury and an inci­dent involv­ing shots fired — and nei­ther resulted in a pros­e­cu­tion, accord­ing to state and Rochester city police.
Gun advo­cates, who have opposed the data­base from the get-go as unwork­able, claim the lack of results is evi­dence of the system’s fail­ure. They con­tend that a gun’s “fin­ger­prints” can be changed eas­ily by tak­ing a file to the breech face. Tom King, pres­i­dent of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, said the state would be bet­ter served by spend­ing the money for the data­base — which police say costs about $1 mil­lion a year — on more police.
“We don’t have to be throw­ing mil­lions of dol­lars into a pro­gram that doesn’t work,” he said.
State police dis­agree.
Spokesman Sgt. Kern Swoboda noted that the typ­i­cal time between the legal pur­chase of a gun and the time it’s used in crimes is seven to 10 years. That would mean that the first guns logged in 2001 are just now becom­ing more likely to be used in crimes, and that matches could start com­ing in the next sev­eral years.
Police also have been try­ing for years to address lim­i­ta­tions of the statewide data­base, but the only other state with a sim­i­lar data­base is Maryland. State police there and Gov. Martin O’Malley’s office did not return calls seek­ing com­ment on the sta­tus of their state’s data­base.
The fed­eral gov­ern­ment keeps its own bal­lis­tics data­base called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. The national data­base is dif­fer­ent from New York’s data­base in that it col­lects infor­ma­tion on guns used in crimes, as opposed to new guns. But it is tech­ni­cally pos­si­ble to com­pare entries in the two data­bases.
For years, New York offi­cials have been try­ing to secure an agree­ment with fed­eral offi­cials to link to the national data­base, but it has proven dif­fi­cult because that data­base may con­tain only bal­lis­tic infor­ma­tion from crime guns. They are work­ing on a one-way sys­tem that would keep New York’s data out of the national data­base but allow New York to make inquiries into the fed­eral database’s infor­ma­tion.
Drew Wade of the fed­eral Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said one-way trans­fers could occur around November. State police Lt. Mark Heller of the agency’s foren­sic lab said the link would help the New York data­base reach its “true poten­tial.“
The fed­eral data­base has been cred­ited with nearly 25,000 hits, many of them yield­ing inves­tiga­tive infor­ma­tion. Still, ques­tions have been raised about bal­lis­tics imag­ing.
A com­mit­tee impan­eled by the National Research Council reported in March that a national ver­sion of a new-gun data­base should not be cre­ated. While the researchers said imag­ing is help­ful for gen­er­at­ing leads, they said the cur­rent tech­nol­ogy for com­par­ing tool­marks is lim­ited. They added that the fun­da­men­tal assump­tion that every gun leaves a unique mark has not been sci­en­tif­i­cally demon­strated.
The matches in the New York data­base are a “first step” in inves­ti­ga­tions, Swoboda said.
Interestingly, the same researchers who were luke­warm to tool-mark foren­sics said they saw promise in “micro­stamp­ing,” a newer tech­nique in which guns are specif­i­cally built to leave unique marks on ammu­ni­tion.
California has already passed a law requir­ing semi­au­to­matic hand­guns sold in the state start­ing in 2010 to “micro­stamp” each bul­let car­tridge in two loca­tions when­ever it is fired.
A sim­i­lar bill was intro­duced in the New York Legislature but has not been approved.