México provides ballistic training for the cops
Marcelino Miranda
Matching weapons and bullets, tracing their origins to Belize are all pieces of the puzzle that investigators face when dealing with shooting incidents. Many times the gun histories and their owners remain unknown but one northern neighboring country is hoping it can help our security forces become more efficient. On Tuesday, officials from the governments of México and Belize inaugurated a training course on forensic ballistics to members of the Belize Police Department and Forensic Service by a specialist from the Mexican Federal Attorney General’s Office. The Press Officer for the Embassy of México explained more.
Marcelino Miranda, Press Officer, Embassy of México
“Mexico is providing for the first time in 2011 the training course on ballistics for members of the police department and the forensics of Belize. This is part of a bi-national program of technical cooperation between Mexico and Belize. And this is the first of four courses that México is going to be providing to Belize. The aim of this course is to provide members of the police department with the necessary skills and knowledge about ballistics, specifically about ammunition, identifying firearms and doing microscope analysis and specialized ballistic analyst systems.”
Jose Sanchez
The officers, they will be going to México for this program?”
Marcelino Miranda
“In this case, we have an instructor from Mexico who has come to Belize. He is going to conduct this one week intensive course here for more than forty members of the Belize police department and the forensic laboratory. Mexico is contributing to Belize in its efforts to combat crime. And we expect that this course is going to provide police officers with enough skills in order to present adequate evidence before the courts in terms of ballistics and in order to reinforce the polices of the government of Belize and also to increase the level of the number of convictions before the court.”
The training, which concludes on May thirteenth, is being conducted at the Police Academy in Belmopan City.
This is all good stuff for the police department to know forensics, ballistics maybe we can tie some of these weapons to the weapon dealers in America and able to pull some of these criminals in and do some dusting for gun powder residue and at least throw them in jail for firing a gun but really is this going to help well at least not while the criminals are working for the politicians. Remember, my legacy B 4 My People.
C’mon very rarely would a police present himself in court with fingerprint matching the weapon,crime area or persay plastic bag which the criminal was arrested for and that’s one of the reasons they keep losing their cases Start with step 1 match criminals fingerprint to the crime then take it from there…nuff said
Good training however we’ll need some training in protecting the integrity of evidence.I mean to stop the disappearance of case files .
Ballistics sounds very good specially after watching those Law and Order shows, but in reality you can grab something coarse and pass it up and down the barrel of a pistol-rifle and change the defects of the rifling, giving it a completely different “fingerprint”……Normal wear and tear can also cause the rifling on a firearm to have a completely different “fingerprint”.
Ballistics is based on the defective markings that the rifling leaves on the bullet as it exits the barrel, sad to say but these can be changed…
Also with the use of Frangible ammunition you will not be able to compare any ballistics to anything because the ammo disintegrates on contact.
Polygonal rifling “different than lands and grooves rifling” cannot be traced.