Police ballistics 'among the best'
2 May 2007The South African Police Service (SAPS) ranks among the best in the world when it comes to ballistics investigations, with its computerised Integrated Ballistics Identification System (Ibis) touted as largest of its kind in the world.
SAPS ballistics office head Piet Gouws told Pretoria News last month that over 216 000 ballistics samples had been loaded onto Ibis in the 10 years since its inception, resulting in over 2 000 links to other crimes. On average, the laboratory receives up to 30 firearms a day and a comparison takes up to three days to complete.
According to Pretoria News, the system's success rate is set to improve further with the introduction of Ibis Trax, a new three-dimensional system expected to be in operation in early 2008.
Gouws told the paper that the country's four Ibis databases in Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town would also be linked by June, a first for any country in the world.
"This national database will go a long way in helping investigating officers link firearms to crimes countrywide and not just in the province they are recovered in, as is the case now," he said.
The computerised system makes it considerably easier for forensic investigators to link firearms to crimes.
According to SAPS head of ballistics training Jan de Waal, the manual system in use before had limited the pace and ability of the police to track down crime syndicates.
"You would find that there was an incident around drug trafficking, and by the time you got to the bottom of it through the manual system, the perpetrators were by that time involved in car theft," De Waal told BuaNews.
SouthAfrica.info reporter and BuaNews
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