Police in Davenport may get some new help to investigate crime involving fire-arms. The city council is considering spending 400,000 dollars to join the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN).
Captain Brent Biggs says the network is hosted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and it would allow his department to send in digital pictures of shell casings and firearms recovered at crime scenes.
"It provides us the ability to compare ballistic evidence from local, regional, and national levels, as well as comparing casings from different crime scenes. And if there's a seized firearm, we're able to run that through testing and match that firearm to other evidence that was located at other scenes as well."
Biggs says Davenport detectives now depend on the Iowa state crime lab, but it's so overwhelmed with work from across the state, evidence reports can take weeks to complete - joining the ballistic information network would mean receiving evidence reports faster.
And he thinks his department would share its membership in the network with other police departments in this area.
