Fourteen months ago, two key decisions by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost took effect that drastically enhanced the ability of Ohio law enforcement to solve gun crimes.
The first decision increased the presence and impact of the National Integrated Ballistic Imaging Network in Ohio. NIBIN, run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is an automated digital database that allows for the capture and comparison of fired cartridge cases to solve gun crimes.
The second decision was a policy revision at BCI, which effectively increased the collection and testing of DNA from the guns and cartridge cases submitted to the bureau by law enforcement agencies throughout Ohio.
Previously, NIBIN analysis and DNA testing were rarely used together in analyzing firearms evidence from violent crimes. When coupled with gun tracing, however, they offer the best means to determine whether a gun was used in multiple crimes and to identify who was using it.
“With NIBIN and DNA, we’ve doubled down on our efforts to target the worst of the worst,” Yost said.
In the year since Yost’s two-pronged strategy took effect, nearly 150 additional law enforcement agencies have entered evidence into NIBIN through BCI, resulting in substantially more investigative leads; these were agencies that had never previously entered NIBIN evidence. Meanwhile, BCI’s expanded DNA testing of gun-crime evidence identified 122 repeat offenders and yielded scores of additional investigative leads.
Expanded NIBIN access
At the direction of AG Yost, BCI last year installed a total of five NIBIN imaging stations at three of its crime laboratories across the state. Labs in Bowling Green, London and Richfield now have two each; previously, only Richfield had a NIBIN station.
The expansion means Ohio law enforcement agencies can scan fired cartridge cases and enter them into NIBIN far more quickly and easily than before. (The total number of NIBIN stations in Ohio is 16; this includes stations at the Highway Patrol and at metropolitan and county crime labs.)
The goal is to quickly uncover any connections between cartridge cases from one crime scene to those of another, and in turn identify repeat offenders and prevent additional shootings.
NIBIN automatically compares the unique markings on each cartridge case to millions of other cartridge-case images in the database, resulting in a list of possible matches to other gun crimes in Ohio and across the country —a critical step in getting repeat violent criminals off the street.
Because NIBIN’s effectiveness as a crime-fighting tool increases as the size of the database increases, AG Yost has urged all Ohio agencies to enter their fired cartridge cases into the network.
The message hit home.
Jennifer Duvall, who manages the Comparative Sciences Laboratory at BCI, said that from July 2023 through June 2024, 144 agencies that had never previously entered evidence into NIBIN through BCI started doing so. In all, 4,369 fired cartridge cases were submitted by 316 agencies. They generated 771 investigative leads, for an 18% lead rate.
Broader DNA testing
At the same time that BCI was handling a wave of NIBIN entries, it was increasing the amount of DNA testing performed on the cartridge cases and guns submitted by law enforcement agencies.
Under Yost’s policy change, BCI’s DNA Lab was directed to collect and analyze DNA from two new sources:
- Guns confiscated by law enforcement in weapons-under-disability cases (and to analyze the DNA standard obtained from the suspect).
- Gun and cartridge cases recovered in non-violent crimes — for example, in cases in which shots are fired into a house but nobody is hit.
In addition, the lab was directed to swab all guns and fired cartridge cases to preserve biological evidence for possible DNA testing in the future.
Obtaining usable DNA profiles from guns has always been a challenge because they are frequently handled by multiple people and have surfaces that inherently complicate the recovery of DNA.
But as DNA processing has continued to evolve, BCI forensic scientists have achieved greater success in developing DNA profiles. (As a further step, BCI is providing training for law enforcement to improve the likelihood that the DNA swabs collected will yield a usable profile.)
DNA Lab Manager Brenda Gerardi said law enforcement agencies submitted more than 1,400 gun-crime cases to BCI for DNA testing from July 2023 through June 2024.
This included more than 900 guns, 60% of which yielded usable DNA profiles.
During those 12 months, BCI entered a total of 653 DNA profiles from gun crimes into CODIS, the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. Eligible DNA profiles that were developed specifically from guns and cartridge cases, including guns seized in weapons under disability cases, matched profiles in CODIS 52% of the time.
Significantly, the gun crime DNA testing also identified 122 repeat offenders. In some cases, the testing linked additional cases to known offenders. In other cases, the testing linked DNA evidence from one crime scene to DNA found at one or more other crime scenes, where
the offender hasn’t been identified by name yet.
In addition to expanding the NIBIN network in Ohio and broadening the scope of DNA testing on firearms evidence, AG Yost’s push to crack down on gun crime included another important component — the hiring of additional BCI analysts and agents.
BCI’s Criminal Intelligence Unit, for example, has added three analysts whose primary focus is helping law enforcement agencies follow up on investigative leads generated by NIBIN.
BCI also plays a key role in Ohio’s Crime Gun Intelligence Centers. Jointly led by the ATF and local police departments, CGICs are multiagency law enforcement hubs focused exclusively on investigating and preventing gun violence in real time. There are more than 60 CGICs nationwide.
With the opening of the Cleveland hub in June, Ohio is now home to three full-scale CGICs.
BCI has an agent and criminal intelligence analyst assigned to each of the CGICs in Columbus and Cleveland, said Dana Forney, the director of BCI’s Criminal Intelligence Unit, and is working with the Cincinnati CGIC to determine what additional support it might need.
Success stories
- The Warren Police Department responded to a retail store for gunshots fired in the parking lot. Detectives discovered that the gunfire was directed toward a house and had struck a 9-year-old inside. Based on video surveillance from the store, detectives arrested Say’Quan Parks. NIBIN technology at BCI's Richfield lab linked the cartridge cases recovered from the scene to Parks' gun. Parks was sentenced to a minimum of 25½ years in prison.
- During a pursuit involving Akron police, officers were fired on by two suspects. The vehicle managed to elude officers, but cartridge cases were collected and sent to BCI for NIBIN and DNA testing. DNA testing revealed the identity of a known gang member.
- A NIBIN lead linked a homicide under investigation by the Ashtabula County Sheriff’s Office with a firearm recovered by the Ashtabula Police Department. BCI’s Criminal Intelligence Unit assisted the homicide investigation, and a suspect was ultimately charged with a number of offenses, including aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and attempted murder. The suspect is awaiting trial.