Department: Institute of Forensic Sciences
Department Head/Elected Official: Luis A. Sanchez, M.D., Executive Director & Chief Medical Examiner
Regular or Supplemental RCA: Regular RCA
Type of Request: Grant
Project ID (if applicable): 4438003
Vendor/Entity Legal Name (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Contracted Goal (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Current Participation (if applicable): N/A
Justification for 0% MWDBE Participation Goal: N/A - Goal not applicable to request
Request Summary (Agenda Caption):
title
Request by the Institute of Forensic Sciences for approval to accept from the Office of the Governor/Criminal Justice Division grant funds in the amount of $53,199, with no required match, for the FY 2025 Criminal Justice Grant Program.
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Background and Discussion:
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences Firearms Identification laboratory provides service to over 30 law enforcement agencies in Harris County, Texas. The laboratory processes predominantly two types of cases. The first are "comparison cases," where fired evidence items such as bullets and/or cartridge cases are microscopically compared to each other to determine if they were fired from the same unknown weapon or compared to test fired items to determine if they were fired from a particular weapon. Firearms examiners have historically used standard comparison microscopes to compare evidence to test fires. The second case type processed by the Firearms lab are guns recovered with no fired evidence for comparison. These guns are test fired and the images produced entered into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) database. These databased images can be searched against each other to provide possible matches, potentially linking one gun to multiple crimes. The second part of our project requests $52,198.91 for overtime for nine Firearms Examiners and Technicians. Firearms comparison case submissions in 2023 were similar to 2022, but remained ~25% high...
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