WICHITA —Steven Dettelbach, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined Director of Bureau of Justice Assistance Director Karhlton Moore and Senator JerryMoran to announce construction of a new ATF Forensics Laboratory on the gourds of Wichita State University's Innovation Campus.
“The future of fighting violent crime in this country is going to come straight through Wichita," according to a statement from Dettelbach.
"A new laboratory has been paid for, is being designed and will be built," U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said. "What takes place there is ballistics," Moran said. "The shell casings that come out of a crime scene, new technologies now allow the detection and analysis of DNA from those casings, so a whole new opportunity for ATF to provide better information to solve crimes."
"Also, there's something called correlation, which is the computer programming that can put the evidence together and do the analysis to figure out what gun or person it comes from, they're going to do correlation as the second center of that in the country."
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is pleased that giving law enforcement everywhere these tools will allow them to better catch the bad guys, while leaving responsible gun owners alone.
"The better we can be in law enforcement at finding out who the bad guy is that pulled the trigger, the less impetus there will be for laws that overreach into regular citizens lives," Kobach said.
"In my view, let's make law enforcement as effective as possible. That will address the violent crimes we see all across the country. Let's not just pass more laws that restrict the freedoms of ordinary people. Let's catch the bad guys faster and more efficiently and that will be better for all of us."
The leads created by NIBIN matching are used to help solve homicides, attempted homicides, robberies and other shooting incidents.
The lab is expected to create 100 new jobs.