CPD touts mobile ballistics lab loan, cultural awareness training

The Chicago Police Department on Monday showcased a mobile ballistics lab that allows technicians quick access to crime scenes and the ability to determine if shell casings left behind match those from other shootings.

The van, and technicians to operate it, are on loan from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives through July.

Normally, shell casings and guns go to the CPD lab on the West Side or the state’s crime lab; due to a high volume of cases, results can take days. The van, which arrived in Chicago June 1, can churn out ballistic results in two to four hours.

Test results are entered into National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, a digital catalogue of ballistics information maintained by the ATF — a sort of fingerprint database for guns.

On the first weekend in town, technicians using the van’s equipment found 29 matches for shell casings collected across the city.

“Let me put that in perspective. We were in Baltimore for a month prior to coming here and that whole month we had 25 hits,” said Walter Dandridge, a lead firearms analyst with the ATF.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson, after touring the van at a Bridgeport police station on Monday, told reporters he could not immediately say if the successes had led to any arrests.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he wants the van to stay through the warm weather months, when violence in the city typically escalates.

“I would hope that the ATF would keep the resources here in the city of Chicago throughout the summer,” he said.

ATF officials haven’t decided if the van’s Chicago stint will be extended or must move along to another part of the country, possibly a rural area with scant access to quick lab results.

The Mercedes van, part of a new ATF pilot program, still has that new-car smell.

Why not buy one of the $300,000 vans for the Chicago Police Department to own and operate?

“It takes resources. It takes funding. I would love to have everything out there … but we have to prioritize,” Johnson said.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the mobile ballistics lab is also on his wish list for Chicago.

“This high technology, people are getting used to it watching it on television — “NCIS” and all the other programs — and they assume everybody has it everywhere. Not true. In fact, it’s a limited resource and sadly we aren’t investing in it the way we should that can make such a basic difference,” Durbin said.

“I wish it would stay here full time, we could use it,” he added, noting the van could go a long way toward putting timely evidence in the hands of detectives to “solve the crimes and get the gangbangers off the street.”

Earlier Monday, Emanuel and Johnson invited reporters to the DuSable Museum of African American History in the Washington Park neighborhood, where 56 police recruits became the first to go through a day of cultural awareness training — a new requirement for future cops.

Because violence most often effects those in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, police interact more often than not with African Americans and other people of color, Johnson said.

“Many of you will begin your careers in these areas and it’s important that you understand the history that created the conditions in these neighborhoods,” Johnson said.

Besides a day at DuSable, recruits also spend day at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center Skokie; that requirement has been in place for years so future cops can “see what hate leads to, what discrimination can lead to, where bigotry can take you if unchecked,” Emanuel said Monday.