New hub for bullet research and training, the first of its kind, opens on WSU campus

Federal and local leaders opened the doors of the National Crime Gun Intelligence Center of Excellence on the Wichita State University Innovation Campus on Monday. It will be a ballistics lab and training hub for law enforcement departments across the country.

Over 200 examiners will be employed in the center, looking closely at shell casings with the aim of helping police officers get gunmen off the street more quickly.

“This center is going to be a national hub,” said Steven Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. “It’s going to develop the investigative leads that clear homicides and catch bad guys all over this country.”

He was accompanied at the opening by U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran and WSU President Dr. Richard Muma.

Examiners at the center will have the skills to look at the markings on shell casings recovered at crime scenes and tell law enforcement what kind of gun they came from and, in some cases, connect bullets to past shootings. The information turnaround should be within 48 hours after the evidence is received at the center, Dettelbach said.

NIBIN, the network that works to share ballistic evidence across the country, has been used in Wichita for years, according to John Ham, ATF public and governmental affairs officer.

“Will there be an immediate impact here?” Ham said. “Well, we’re already doing it, but we want to be able to do it for Emporia and Liberal.”

“We’re adding capacity, which allows us to benefit law enforcement in Kansas, but it also benefits across the country because now we’ve got more people looking at more evidence, making more connections and sending those connections back to cops on the street.”

The center also will be a training hub for new researchers and students. This is the first ballistic research and training facility to have a partnership with a university, said Tonya Witherspoon, WSU associate vice president of industry engagement and applied learning.

That was an essential part of the center opening because it will bring more job and hands-on experience to students. Criminal justice students at WSU will be able to use the state-of-the-art technology in some of their studies, too, she said.

The Center of Excellence is the newest addition to WSU’s Innovation Campus and it exemplifies how the university and Wichita are growing, Witherspoon added.

“We’re diversifying. We’re taking the digital transformation technology that we have applied to aviation and aerospace and we’re moving it across other industries,” Witherspoon said. “It’s a way for us to partner with our community, industry and certainly our government, and to take the talent and skillset of our researchers, students and community to create digital transformation that moves the world forward.”