PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Officials believe a new system will help law enforcement solve cases faster in all four suburban Philadelphia counties.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele says Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties are sharing a National Integrated Ballistic Information Network machine, or NIBIN for short, to give local law enforcement a better chance in the fight against gun crimes.
"It’ll allow us to connect and trace gun crimes through fired casings and evidence collected at crime scenes, through crime guns," Steele said.
"Gun crimes know no boundaries. A criminal using a gun doesn’t stop at a county line."
He says the machine’s network reaches beyond the region – "which is a database, I believe, over 6 [million] or 7 million fired cartridge casings from crime guns across the United States."
Steele says information from evidence entered into the database will help speed up investigations.
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"Detectives can use that information to look at the evidence and suspects in each case ... and determine the connections."
Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said the NIBIN machine will allow investigators to see which guns are used repeatedly.
"This NIBIN tool will help us follow the path of those crime guns, from one crime to another, and stop the next crime from even happening," Stollsteimer said.
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"It’s a small number of guns that get passed from gun trafficker to gun trafficker, from drug organization to drug organization."
The purchase of the NIBIN machine, whose price was not disclosed, was made possible through the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program.
Philadelphia is already a part of the NIBIN system and has its own machine.