By Jeanette DeDios | KUNM News
A center created late last year to track guns used in shootings around the state has resulted in authorities connecting over 500 crimes. Attorney General Raúl Torrez gave an update in Gallup on Wednesday on the statewide initiative.
The New Mexico Department of Justice created the Crime Gun Intelligence Center last December and also used federal funding to buy four ballistics machines. Those went to sheriffs’ offices in Doña Ana and San Juan counties, as well as police departments in Gallup and Roswell.
Since then the machines have run over 2,000 ballistic tests, which connected 527 crimes around New Mexico.
McKinley County Sheriff James Mariano said the database helped investigators tie a gun discarded in New Mexico to a drive-by shooting in Arizona.
“That firearm was tied back to that crime in Phoenix, Arizona, giving the investigators the opportunity to look at the last person who owned that firearm and give the investigation a place to go, which would have otherwise been dead and considered a closed case,” he said.
Mariano said tracking gun shells can tell the entirety of the gun’s life.
“The information that we’re being provided through this system is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s technology being applied to fight back,” he said.
Another recovered firearm that was tested and run through the database was tied to 17 criminal events around the state.
Torrez said this database allows investigators to look at possible suspects more broadly based on where a gun’s been.
“So it’s the ability to see not only crime types, but crime locations, and the common denominator is the weapon itself, and that’s really what the power is, is that it illuminates connections,” he said.
He said the ultimate goal is to have 100% coverage across the state of New Mexico, in all 33 counties.
Jeanette Dedios is a reporter at KUNM News. She is from the Jicarilla Apache and Diné Nations and grew up in Albuquerque, N.M. She graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2022 where she earned a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism, English and film. She was a 2022-2023 New Mexico Local News Fellow at KUNM. Jeanette can be contacted at jeanettededios@kunm.org.
This story was originally published by KUNM News.
