Staff Reports
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez provided an update in Gallup Aug. 19 on the progress of the New Mexico Department of Justice’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center, highlighting specific cases that show how the program is helping local law enforcement solve crimes.
Torrez was joined by Gallup Police Chief Erin Toadlena-Pablo, McKinley County Sheriff James Maiorano III, Ohkay Owingeh Director of Public Safety Jace Trujillo, and Farmington Police Department Sergeant Eduardo Arreola.
“Gun violence doesn’t respect city or county lines, but for too long, our response to it did,” Torrez said. “Today’s results show what changes when we meet that violence with advanced technology and real-time collaboration across jurisdictions.”
Torrez announced the CGIC, the first housed within an attorney general’s office in the country, in December. At that time, the NMDOJ also announced it had secured federal funding to acquire four National Integrated Ballistic Information Network machines, placed with the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office, the Gallup Police Department, the Roswell Police Department, and the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office.
In the months since, the CGIC has entered more than 2,000 ballistic acquisitions into the statewide NIBIN network, connecting 527 criminal incidents across New Mexico. About half of all CGIC leads cross jurisdictional lines, meaning the same firearm has been tied to crimes in more than one community.
Leads generated through the CGIC have produced a 41% arrest rate, and more than half of all firearms tied to a CGIC lead have been recovered and taken off the street. In one case, the CGIC traced a single firearm to 17 separate criminal incidents; that firearm has since been recovered and is no longer in the community.
The network has also grown steadily: 13 departments entered casings for the first time in July alone, bringing the total number of partner departments to roughly 30 statewide. The NMDOJ has conducted five test fire operations to date, with six more in the planning stages, safely testing and entering 732 firearms into NIBIN. By early winter, that number is expected to approach 2,000.
“The partnership with the Attorney General’s office has been critical in our fight against crime. The NIBIN machine has brought law enforcement agencies together because crime and criminals do not stay within one jurisdiction,” Gallup Police Chief Erin Toadlena-Pablo said. “It is imperative for us to communicate effectively to solve both cold cases and new cases, and we hope to see more law enforcement agencies participate in this initiative.”
McKinley County Sheriff James Maiorano III said his office has already received three referals about guns in his office’s possession that were connected to crimes in Gallup, Albuquerque, and Phoenix.
“We are hopeful that these leads will bring us to the doorstep of suspects, bringing victims and their families the day in court they deserve,” Maiorano said.
The CGIC uses forensic evidence to identify connections between firearms used in crimes across the state, helping investigators identify suspects, witnesses, and other critical leads. The NIBIN machines deployed through the statewide network capture, analyze, and cross-reference ballistic evidence from crime scenes, giving law enforcement start-to-finish intelligence on guns used in violent crime.
