After the Los Angeles riots in 1992, California gang members went to Arizona and paid locals to buy firearms that were later used in California crimes. Investigators discovered the illegal trafficking when the federal Integrated Ballistic Identification System (IBIS) traced the weapons' origin.
In December 1997, 9 mm cartridge cases were recovered at the scene of a crime in Milwaukee. Police entered the information into the FBI's ballistic database, Drugfire. The following January, two 9 mm Luger semi-automatic pistols were recovered from a suspected Milwaukee gang house, and the Drugfire database matched them to the cartridges.
Soon, say law enforcement officials, these cutting-edge database systems will be linked in even wider nets to produce an unprecedented level of analysis and crime-solving information that includes fingerprint, ballistic, and DNA data. A new communications system will bring the forensic and ballistic databases under one network that can be accessed by law enforcement agencies across the country.
"Eventually we'd like to see email capabilities among and between the different forensic labs, including teleconferencing and training," said Dawn Herkenham, chief of the forensic science systems unit of the FBI.
The first database the new communications network will add this year will be CODIS, the FBI laboratory's Combined DNA Index System. Since May, convicted sex offenders nationwide have had to furnish DNA samples for the database, and in four states -- Alabama, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming -- all felons have been required to give samples.
Until now, CODIS has run over regular telephone lines, using a tool based on a commercial email program. The FBI's new network aims to eliminate the phone lines and bring all of the CODIS systems under one server, using encryption to protect the information as it passes across networks.
CODIS is installed in more than 60 forensic laboratories in the United States, and, since February 1997, it has matched DNA evidence in more than 200 cases. The ballistic databases have even more impressive, longer-standing records: Drugfire, employed in 115 firearms labs, has logged more than 84,000 cases since 1992 and produced close to 3,000 hits. IBIS, run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), is used at 27 labs and has matched 872 bullets and casings, providing leads in at least 1,600 shooting incidents.
To prepare the ballistic databases for wider application, the FBI's forensics unit and the BATF, under the supervision of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will make IBIS and Drugfire compatible. The institute recently did two tests on the interoperability of these databases, which "were very informative; I would go so far as to say successful," said Herkenham, the forensics unit chief.
Like Drugfire, "IBIS uses the marks made by a casing and a bullet going through a firearm, which, under microscopic exam, will show where it rubbed on the bullet. Each one is different, like a fingerprint or a snowflake," said BJ Zapor, a BATF spokesman. The marks are coded and the information is run through the system to find potential hits.
The success of the systems depends on the number of firearms entered into the system. "Now when we get a weapon, we hang onto it," said Carlos Rabren, director of the Alabama Department of Forensic Services.
While ballistic data has been used in law enforcement for years, DNA data is a new phenomenon, with its own unique parameters.
The CODIS index uses a system of "pointers" and contains only the information necessary for making matches: a specimen identifier, the sponsoring lab's identifier, the names of the lab personnel, and the actual DNA characteristics. Consistency is key to the success of any database system, so last month the FBI came up with a protocol for all states to examine the same 13 loci of each DNA sample, Herkenham said.
Only certain convicted offenders, like sex offenders, are linked with their DNA entries and other personal information. To date, 450,000 convicted offender samples have been collected, and 150,000 have been analyzed. Each time a DNA sample is entered, a search is performed for a match.
But privacy organizations worry about the ramifications of DNA sampling on convicts. "The implications are for ... the difficulty [of] obtaining health care or jobs, because they are perceived as having some genetic markers," said Barry Steinhardt, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
CODIS also stores DNA profiles of unknown suspects and population samples, which are anonymous. Herkenham said the population samples are not a threat to privacy, since they are for statistical purposes only. How are these population samples collected? "That's difficult for me to answer," Herkenham said, "but they would have to be contributed by state and local labs."
Could DNA sampling become as commonplace as fingerprinting for driver's licenses? Probably not, Herkenham said, "But as we are able to document success with convicting violent felons, there might be a trend towards covering all felony offenses." Sex-related misdemeanors are also permissible in the national DNA index.
The affordability of DNA tests could also lead to the spread of sampling. For US$40 to $200, which is paid for under a five-year US government grant, technicians can perform DNA analysis and develop a genetic profile of a criminal suspect where once there was none.
In New Britain, Connecticut, two sexual assaults occurred within a month of one another in 1997. "We had very little to go on," said police Lieutenant Michael Sullivan. DNA samples were tested, and one matched DNA associated with a conviction several years earlier that shared similar circumstances with the 1997 case.
Although the second DNA test did not record a hit, the victim was able to identify the alleged attacker from the convict's photograph. The DNA information, and the subsequent ID were admissible as evidence, and the suspect was convicted of the assaults.
