ATF to open first-of-its-kind Center of Excellence at Wichita State’s Innovation Campus

In a huge win for Wichita State University, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is preparing to open a Crime Gun Intelligence Center of Excellence on the school’s Innovation Campus.

The national center, unlike anything the ATF currently has, is part of its Crime Gun Intelligence strategy. There will be several components to the center.

Those include a new center for ballistics analysis; a new home for the ATF’s Crime Gun Intelligence governing board; a new home for the ATF’s Intelligence Research Specialists Academy and other advanced training; and a new facility for crime gun intelligence training for law enforcement and anyone else nationally with a role in investigating firearms-related crimes.

“It’s going to be a lot of things,” said George Lauder, assistant director for the ATF’s Office of Field Operations. “We are incredibly excited about it.”

The ATF is leasing the three-story, 54,000-square-foot building just north of NetApp’s new Innovation Campus building. Before that building was ready for occupancy, NetApp was temporarily in the space that the ATF is now taking.

“It’s a great facility,” Lauder said.

The largest component of the facility will be the NIBIN National Correlation and Training Center within the Center for Excellence, which is how the ATF is referring to the center for short.

The Correlation and Training Center will be the second of its kind nationally and the first with ties to a university, which will allow for student involvement through WSU’s School of Criminal Justice.

“This is going to be unique and one of a kind,” said Kristin Brewer, director of the Midwest Criminal Justice Institute at WSU.

“It’s going to be a huge opportunity for students.”

It’s also going to be an opportunity for a lot more crime solving.

NIBIN stands for National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. The network is centered around a BrassTRAX machine, which analyzes fired casings from crime scenes and determines if they were used in other crimes.

“It’s basically like a fingerprint system for fired shell casings,” Lauder said.

He is the former special agent in charge of the Kansas City Field Division, and he said Wichita is a key city within that division, so he spent a lot of time here.

The Wichita Police Department “has always been a great partner,” he said.

In early 2018, Lauder said he was introduced to WSU and found that it has a “robust criminal justice program” and shares a facility with the Wichita Sedgwick County Law Enforcement Training Center, which also is on the Innovation Campus.

In 2016, WSU and Wichita Police began talking about getting a BrassTRAX machine for the school and ended up acquiring one in 2019.

“It presented a great opportunity for students to get applied learning,” said Brewer, who also is co-director of the Wichita Crime Gun Intelligence Center that houses the BrassTRAX machine.

Today, the school is able to help more than 20 area law enforcement agencies analyze recovered casings.

“It was a novel idea,” Lauder said.

He said that previously, all BrassTRAX machines were either at police departments or forensic labs.

“Wichita State has been leading the way in many respects,” Lauder said. “They recognized, hey, there’s a role for academia here, and I agree.”

At least 200 new jobs

The NIBIN center will generate 200 to 250 new jobs, the majority of which will be correlation review specialists.

The jobs aren’t through the ATF. The ATF contracts with private companies for the workers.

Those contracts are still being negotiated, so it’s hard to say exactly what salaries will be, but they likely will be entry-level and mid-level types of pay.

Lauder said the hope is to have personnel in place by early October.

Employees will take images and analyze casings to determine if they were used in other crimes and send that information back to law enforcement agencies.

With about 5,000 people in the bureau, half of whom are special agents, the ATF is the smallest agency within the Department of Justice.

Though its mission includes work with alcohol, tobacco, arson and explosives, about 75% of its work is focused on federal firearms enforcement.

There are already almost 10 ATF agents working in Wichita, and there will be additional full-time ATF personnel who coordinate the training academy and research personnel for the new WSU center and people who will lead the programs.

Lauder said the Wichita center will be “providing a service that is helping solve violent crimes in communities across the country.”

He said that likely will include crimes in Wichita, too.

“It’s just a matter of time.”

How it works

The technology behind a BrassTRAX machine, which takes high-resolution 3D images of the unique markings on fired casings, has been around since the 1990s. Initially, it was used as a tool in laboratories.

Lauder said that changed in the last decade when pioneering agents in the field began using it to generate investigative leads.

“Through our analysis, we realized, hey, we can improve how we use these systems, and we evolved,” he said.

Software allowed for comparison with other casings in a national database.

“And so it generates leads,” Lauder said. “You still need a human to look at those exemplars and make determinations.”

He said it’s not like DNA that conclusively points to a person. However, it does connect a fired casing to a weapon.

“It has been eye-opening to see how productive the technology has been in these last 10 years,” Lauder said. “We forever connect crime scenes that were seemingly unrelated.”

The first national correlation center opened in Huntsville, Ala., in 2019. Initially, that center had 45 correlation review specialists who examined 200 casings a day. Now, 200 review specialists examine 1,700 casings a day.

There are 248 sites around country using the machines, some of which do their own correlations.

There is a waiting list for law enforcement agencies to be added to the national center. The second center in Wichita will change that.

“We will eliminate the wait list and whatever sites come on in the future,” Lauder said. “We will be able to accommodate them at least for the foreseeable future.”

Typically, results are ready in 72 hours, though often it’s quicker than that. Lauder said he expects wait times will be reduced with the extra center.

He said it also is important to have a second facility in case of an electrical or natural disaster.

“We didn’t want to have a single point of failure,” Lauder said. “This second site is going to ensure that there is redundancy between the two sites.”

‘It only makes sense’

In addition to the work that specialists will do with imaging casings, Lauder said the new center will train future intelligence research specialists.

“It will become our national academy for that job series.”

He said intelligence analysts help make sense of information and provide that to field offices and work with agents and investigators on cases.

Also, Lauder said all kinds of police departments and other law enforcement centers nationally will send people to the Center of Excellence to share the latest crime-fighting technology and processes.

“This is the Center for Crime Gun Intelligence,” he said. “It only makes sense.”

He said it also makes sense for Wichita to be the permanent home for the ATF’s Crime Gun Intelligence governing board.

The board is comprised of national police chiefs and representatives of U.S. attorneys and laboratories involved in crime fighting. It oversees Crime Gun Intelligence processes for the ATF and ensures standards and consistency nationally.

Lauder said the ATF’s partnership with academia in creating the Center of Excellence also will create an environment “where we can learn from each other.”

He said there are other potential partnerships. There are no concrete plans to do anything specific, Lauder said, “But we certainly hope that those ideas come in very short order.”

“We believe that the community is supportive of that sort of service we provide,” he said. “Wichita has always been a great place for us.”

‘A rich history’

Brewer said WSU has one of the oldest criminal justice programs in the country.

“We offer a rich history mixed with innovation and applied learning . . . as well as technology,” she said.

The school offers degrees in criminal justice, forensics science and homeland security.

WSU is starting its third year of teaching a NIBIN class, which is cross-listed between the forensics science and criminal justice programs. Brewer said WSU is the first university to create a NIBIN course of study.

“This collaboration is important to WSU.”

Brewer said the center supports WSU President Rick Muma’s priorities of fueling the talent pipeline in the region, diversifying and boosting the state’s economy through innovation, education and applied learning and entering a new era of digital transformation.

In addition to helping students and creating internship and job possibilities for them, she said Wichita police and WSU recognized the need for NIBIN to reduce violent crime.

“This provides opportunities to help law enforcement across the nation, not just here locally,” she said.

“This is just a great partnership.”

Lauder said he can’t take credit for the Center for Excellence name, but he said he thinks it’s a fitting one.

“We believe that this is going to be a huge benefit for the entire country.”