Malaysian police fights firearm crime with ballistics tech

By EgovAsia Editors | Jul 28, 2010

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The Malaysian government [1], in conjunction with the Canadian government and Forensic Technology of Montreal, Canada, have signed a groundbreaking agreement that will see the Royal Malaysian Police [2] receive state-of-the-art ballistic identification equipment. The Integrated Ballistic Identification System [3] (IBIS) equipment will help the police [4] to better investigate and solve firearm crime and allow the country to begin its own firearm tracking program.
 
This agreement was made possible through a government-to-government contract between the Canadian Commercial Corporation, which facilitates trade on behalf of Canadian business, and the Government of Malaysia. The initial purchase of the IBIS TRAX-3D systems is valued at 10,000,000 Malaysian Ringgit. Installation of the equipment in the Royal Malaysian Police Forensic Laboratory in Kuala Lumpur is slated at the end of 2010.
 
IBIS technology works by taking digital images of the unique microscopic markings found on fired bullets and cartridge cases. An electronic signature is extracted from each image and compared against the database of previously entered ballistics [5] evidence. Almost instantly, IBIS ranks the most likely matches for the forensic [6] expert allowing police to systematically compare recovered ballistics evidence against very large "electronic" inventories of evidence with little effort.
 
"IBIS finds the needle in the haystack linking crimes, guns and suspects and has been field-proven to help police in over 50 countries solve cases that most likely would not have been solved by any other means. And keeping pace with new technology is critical to winning the war on violent crime. Our new technology can exchange and compare ballistics data electronically with other IBIS-equipped countries," said Robert A. Walsh, Forensic Technology's founder and president.