Steps state should take before the gun fires again

Sounds of gunfire came from the darkness of a small park known for dog walks, not drug rips. Neighbors drew their blinds, tucked their children into bed and worried. Some nights they called police. The gunman would be gone. The park would be empty — except for hundreds of witnesses.

The “witnesses” I’m talking about were bullet casings. They were sprinkled around the grass like bird seed.

Police, following our county’s new protocol, gathered the casings and submitted them to the local crime lab. There, crime analysts quickly measured their unique markings, the tell-tale scratches caused by their firing. Bullet casings are like fingerprints. No two from different guns, even guns of the same make and model, are alike. The analysts promptly entered the markings into a shared database called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBIN. The markings matched two guns and two shootings, including a road-rage shooting miles away in another city. Within weeks there was an arrest.

If bullet casings and even the weapons are “witnesses” to violent crimes, we are leaving thousands of them uninterviewed, ignored in evidence bags and storage units. Each piece of evidence quickly entered into the NIBIN database could mean one less weapon being aimed at a convenience store clerk, one less car being jacked, one less child being buried.

As with fingerprints, fibers and DNA, these vital pieces of evidence can — and will — be matched to other crimes. Robberies, assaults and murders will be solved.

I am sponsoring a bill that will require that these casings and weapons are submitted to crime labs throughout the state and quickly tested to see if they match other violent crimes.

We have already seen the value of doing this with DNA and the evidence collected in sexual assault examinations. Now we need to do the same for guns and bullet casings. And — like CODIS for DNA and the AFIS Fingerprint system — the more we use NIBIN the more effective it will be.

Most major localities are on board: San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. Nationally, New Jersey, Delaware and the city of Phoenix require universal collection and processing of this ballistic evidence.

The NIBIN success stories across the country are astounding. In San Jose in 2007, NIBIN based ballistics helped bring down the murderous El Hoyo Palmas gang who — during one shooting spree — shot to death a father of two who was helping someone get back into their accidentally locked car.

In New Orleans, officers responding to a call about gunfire found nothing but casings in a backyard. They found something far more terrible the next day, a few blocks away: a 19-year-old woman, a 9-year-old and a toddler, shot to death. NIBIN discovered the ballistic links between four guns used in the triple homicide, the backyard incident and five other shootings. The evidence led investigators to a witness who helped convict a suspect in the triple homicide.

Why are we in California waiting? You might think we can’t afford this. This lives-saving program would cost about the same ($10 million) as the total budget for the movie “Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow.” I don’t think we can afford to allow vital evidence to gather dust while a crime gun is on our streets.

This is only one solution to a seemingly intractable epidemic of gun violence. We can do it today. I want evidence collected. I want evidence tested. I want the evidence to be used to arrest the violent criminal. I want evidence to prosecute and convict the violent criminal. I want the violent criminal to go to prison, not a park.

Please support AB 2781 by Assemblymember Evan Low.