Geisha Kow­lessar

Elec­tron­ic trac­ing has be­gun on the 102 firearms which were re­cov­ered since the state of emer­gency was im­ple­ment­ed on Au­gust 21. The elec­tron­ic trac­ing sys­tem, al­so known as eTrace, is be­ing con­duct­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers of the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA). CA­PA pre­vi­ous­ly was known as the Modus Operan­di Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The eTrace sys­tem is a web-based firearm trace re­quest sub­mis­sion sys­tem that pro­vides for the elec­tron­ic ex­change of crime gun da­ta in a se­cure web-based en­vi­ron­ment.

An of­fi­cer at CA­PA said sev­er­al se­r­i­al num­bers found on the il­le­gal weapons had been sub­mit­ted to the unit by in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers. He said CA­PA was still await­ing the sub­mis­sion of oth­er se­r­i­al num­bers from the guns re­cov­ered dur­ing the emer­gency. He added: "Apart from the se­r­i­al num­ber the in­ves­ti­ga­tor will al­so sub­mit the make and mod­el of the firearm to CA­PA. "CA­PA will then send the in­for­ma­tion to the bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF), based in the US," the of­fi­cer ex­plained.

He said from the se­r­i­al num­bers sub­mit­ted to the ATF thus far, there had not been any cor­re­spon­dence from ATF re­gard­ing the ori­gin of the guns or whether it was linked to any oth­er crimes abroad. The of­fi­cer added that if eTrace did not re­lay any re­sults to CA­PA then In­ter­pol would in­ter­cede. How­ev­er, an In­ter­pol of­fi­cer said there was no doubt from the weapons found it was clear the crim­i­nals pos­sessed far more so­phis­ti­cat­ed firearms than the po­lice. He men­tioned the re­cent re­cov­ery of a gun in T&T which was traced to a man­u­fac­tur­er in Italy. "That firearm was shipped to Bar­ba­dos and it found its way in Trinidad and it was used in a mur­der," the of­fi­cer added.

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About the elec­tron­ic trac­ing sys­tem

The Elec­tron­ic Trac­ing Sys­tem, eTrace, is an In­ter­net-based sys­tem that al­lows par­tic­i­pat­ing law en­force­ment agen­cies to sub­mit firearm traces to the ATF's Na­tion­al Trac­ing Cen­tre (NTC). Au­tho­rised users can re­ceive firearm trace re­sults, via this same In­ter­net web site, search a data­base of all firearm traces sub­mit­ted by their in­di­vid­ual agency and per­form an­a­lyt­i­cal func­tions.

Firearms trac­ing is the sys­tem­at­ic track­ing of the move­ment of a firearm re­cov­ered by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials from its cre­ation by the man­u­fac­tur­er or its in­tro­duc­tion in­to US com­merce by the im­porter through the dis­tri­b­u­tion chain to the first re­tail pur­chase. Law en­force­ment traces a firearm re­cov­ered at a crime scene to de­vel­op in­ves­tiga­tive leads that may link a sus­pect to a firearm in a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion; iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial traf­fick­ers and de­tect in-state, in­ter­state and in­ter­na­tion­al pat­terns in the sources and kinds of crime guns.