Assessing a police department's reliance on the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) to solve shooting cases: Can NIBIN increase shooting clearance rates?

Often, police response to shooting incidents lacks the investigative leads needed for successful follow-up and prosecution. This may result from a lack of surveillance video or witnesses investigators rely on to solve such cases quickly. To overcome these obstacles, law enforcement has turned to forensic science to provide police with the information and clues to be successful. Ballistic evidence is one such tool that can provide police with detailed information regarding linked shooting cases that can help identify possible new witnesses, surveillance videos, potential suspects and criminal groups, motive, and account for the number of firearms used at the scene. This is all made possible with access to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) database, which is overseen by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Though such a database is useful, law enforcement agencies that do not have access must rely on consolidated state or local labs for ballistic evidence processing. This results in delayed lab reports by weeks or even months, failing to provide the timely information investigators need. To overcome such delays, police departments across the United States have begun purchasing the technology to enter and compare ballistic evidence in the NIBIN database in hopes of identifying other linked shooting cases. Based on previous research, this may not always mean the agency will obtain timely information if they fail to have a plan to push NIBIN leads generated, when there is a match, out to investigators whose job is to follow up on such information. This study examined one department’s use of the NIBIN database for leads and how investigators used them as part of the investigative process. Using a mixed-methods research approach, data was obtained from the agency and investigators to determine if the agency saw a reduction in fatal and nonfatal shootings and improved clearance rates after becoming a NIBIN site compared to previous periods when they did not have direct access to the NIBIN database. Furthermore, information obtained from investigators sought to understand their perceptions of using the NIBIN database as a tool in the investigative process.