New van aims to help police analyze weapons at crime scenes

“Instead of an offender being arrested for a firearm and being released before we can ever figure out what else that firearm or that person has done, we’ll have that lead in hand before they have the opportunity to make bond,” Board said.

Baltimore has struggled to get its homicide rate under control since the bloodshed began to skyrocket in the spring of 2015, following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody and the civil unrest it prompted. That year, Baltimore saw 344 homicides, and last year the city recorded 318. In the first four months of this year, the city saw 108 homicides— more than any other year except for 1993, when 110 people were killed in the same time span. However, the city’s population now is significantly smaller than it was then, making the rate of killing higher.

“This challenge is bigger than all of us and we needed the federal assistance,” said Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh. The van, she said, “will allow for comprehensive collection, an entree of ballistic evidence, timely turnaround and investigative follow up and prosecution, linking otherwise unassociated crimes, giving investigators a better chance to identify and arrest shooters before they reoffend.”

The van will spend about a month in Baltimore before moving on to Chicago, where last year’s murder rate was the deadliest in nearly two decades. So far this year it has recorded 183 murders, compared to 182 for the same time period last year.

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Information from: The Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com

Juliet Linderman, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

New van aims to help police analyze weapons at crime scenes

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