BY the end of this month, state-of-the-art crime fighting technology, in the form of the Integrated Ballistic Identification System (IBIS), will be a part of the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF’s)arsenal, according to National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips.

He was speaking last Friday at a signing ceremony for the equipment at the ministry’s New Kingston offices.

Phillips said that the IBIS, which costs just over US$1.9 million, was being procured with the assistance of the Canadian Government.

Minister Phillips and Pete Gagliardi, vice-president of Strategic Planning and Marketing, Forensic Technology of Canada, signed the contract. Canadian High Commissioner Claudio Valle was also present at the signing.

IBIS is the only commercially deployed ballistics testing system available in the world, and is being used by the major law enforcement agencies in Jamaica’s principal international partner countries.

The equipment will enable the JCF to, among other things; ‘fingerprint’ firearms in Jamaica and develop an appropriate database; build a database of bullets and spent shells recovered from crime or shooting scenes; link bullets and spent shells recovered from crime or shooting scenes with other gun crimes and shooting scenes; and link recovered illegal firearms with particular gun crimes.

Speaking on the implementation of the IBIS, Phillips said, “as far as the JCF system is concerned, it will have three sites. There is the main site at the Police Forensic Lab. There will be a site in Montego Bay and a site in May Pen. And all of these will be linked together electronically, so that you may test the signatures of weapons and exchange information between the critical sites”.

He added that these would be linked to a fourth site at the National Firearms Licensing Authority. Phillips noted that every licensed firearm would have its signature taken and recorded in a national database. This, he said, would be available to police investigators.

“We will be able to eliminate easily those situations where so-called legitimate firearms get used for illegitimate purposes, or where people lend weapons and rent weapons for nefarious activities. That type of investigation will lead us to the persons who are masquerading as legitimate citizens, when they are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing,” he said.