Recording of all firearm-related evidence and conducting ATF e-traces to prevent backlog.

Orange County Sheriff's Office (OCSO) faces several challenges to analyzing firearms and fired cartridge casings in a timely manner, including a limited number of qualified analysts, no available acquisition and correlation equipment onsite, and current policies for testing and analyzing firearms evidence by Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). At present, the time to conduct firearms analysis and get a report back from FDLE takes from one to six months.

OCSO will purchase an Integrated Ballistic Identification System (IBIS) that gives the Forensic Unit the ability to analyze, correlate, and upload data to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN). This data will become part of the national database for firearms-related evidence. The specific implementation platform is the IBISTRAX-HD3D, MATCHPOINT, MATCHPOINT+ and Data Concentrator hardware and software, and a PAG800 Stereo Zoom Microscope.

Also, OCSO will engage local and regional partners to process firearms-related evidence for multiple law enforcement agencies, train additional forensic staff members to use the Brasstrax platform, build a secured workstation, utilize overtime hours to reduce the backlog of evidence, and pursue accreditation for the forensic lab. The Brasstrax/Matchpoint system will reduce the report time for firearms-related evidence to as little as 48 hours, if needed for expedited cases. Overtime hours will be utilized to reduce the more than 1,042 firearms-related pieces of evidence in backlog.

Furthermore, OCSO utilization of the Brasstrax/Matchpoint station will reduce the numbers of evidence to analyze sent to FDLE.

ca/ncf