'This is such a huge step': Four new ballistics testing locations to open across NM

May 6—Law enforcement agencies across the state soon will not have to travel to the metro area for ballistics testing during investigations.

"Here's how important NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistics Information Network) is," Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said as she held a casing at a press conference Monday. "It connects this round to a specific weapon.

"How invaluable is that?"

NIBIN technology compares images of submitted ballistic evidence from shooting scenes and recovered firearms and produces a list of "possible similar results," according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"We need to start stepping up to technology," Stewart said. "We need to embrace that which can make policing more efficient, more scientific and more unarguable, in a sense, with prosecutions."

Instead of having to drive hundreds of miles to Albuquerque or Santa Fe during a shooting investigation, Stewart and her department will be able to use the saved time to focus on the case.

"This is such a huge step," she said.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez hosted the press conference at the New Mexico Department of Justice's Albuquerque office to announce the new ballistics machines in Las Cruces, Farmington, Gallup and Roswell.

In March, Heinrich secured language in a fiscal year 2023-24 federal appropriations bill to expand the use of the NIBIN for state and local agencies. More than $1 million is going toward funding the additional machines in New Mexico, Heinrich's press secretary Luis Soriano said in an email.

Albuquerque has three machines, while Santa Fe has one.

Albuquerque Police Department spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said APD uses the machines every day.

"Many of our high-profile homicide cases have been solved, in part, by using the technology," he said. Gallegos mentioned the case in which Solomon Peña is the top suspect of a scheme to shoot up local politicians' homes.

Heinrich said Stewart "was one of the first law enforcement officers to really make me understand how much time her deputies lose to transporting evidence all around the state when you don't have enough infrastructure to analyze it close to home."

He said this led him to question why there weren't more machines, which analyze shell casings "and are able to quantify the geometric relationship between a particular casing and a particular firearm."

According to the ATF, firearms examiners or technicians enter cartridge casing evidence into the Integrated Ballistic Identification System. Images are then matched against the database. Law enforcement can search against evidence from its own jurisdiction, neighboring ones and others across the country.

The new machines will "dramatically improve" the ability to "prosecute crimes involving firearms through ballistic intelligence," Soriano said.

The data will not only help investigators but aid policymakers in coming up "with targeted, meaningful, impactful approaches that are going to ultimately improve the day-to-day lives of the people we serve," Torrez said.

Next steps include administering the federal grant to kick everything off and partnering with the ATF to develop a training program, Torrez said.