New Mexico AG Torrez says new ‘crime gun’ tracking effort leading to arrests across jurisdictions

The New Mexico Department of Justice in December announced its Crime Gun Intelligence Center, which lets investigators review and compare spent shell casings from crime scenes using a digital database in a manner similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s national fingerprint database. At the time, Torrez said he hoped the new system would help police departments track guns used in multiple violent crimes across New Mexico cities, counties and towns.

On Wednesday, he said that roughly half of the leads generated under the new system identified such cases.

“We have long known, for those of us in law enforcement, that crime guns are passed, usually within groups,” he told reporters alongside law enforcement leaders from Gallup, Farmington and the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh. “Guns that are being used on the streets of Albuquerque may actually be coming from Ohkay Owingeh. Guns that are originating in Farmington may then end up in Gallup and then may end up back in Farmington.”

Torrez added that officers across the state have uploaded about 2,000 ballistics into the statewide network. More than 40% of leads generated this way lead to an arrest, he said.

Analysts in one case identified a gun that was used in 17 different crimes, Torrez said. Officials have taken more than half the guns identified through the database off the street, he said.

Departments use specialized machines that are tied into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network to compare spent ammunition to those in the database. When Torrez announced the initiative in December, he said his office was installing these machines in the Gallup and Roswell police departments and the San Juan and Doña Ana county sheriff’s offices to enable those agencies to serve as regional hubs.

Previously, the Albuquerque Police Department had the most advanced NIBIN machine in the state, meaning officers from rural departments had to drive several hours to use it.

McKinley County Sheriff James Maiorano III said the machine has already shown promising results for his office’s investigations.

He cited the case of a drive-by shooting in Phoenix, where someone fired more than 50 rounds from inside a vehicle. One of the spent casings clearly belonged to a 9mm firearm. Months later, officials with the New Mexico Department of Transportation called Maiorano’s office to say they had found a gun that had been left on the side of the interstate.

Once recovered, New Mexico officials were able to run the gun’s ammunition through the database and confirm that they appeared to match the 9mm shell found on the ground in Phoenix.

That technology gave investigators “the opportunity to look at the last person who owned that firearm and give the investigation a place to go,” Maiorano said. “It would have otherwise been dead and considered a closed case.”