Stockton is California’s 12th largest city with a population of approximately 280,000. It consists of 56 square miles along the Interstate 5 / 99 corridors. Stockton is a multi-ethnic city and is home to a large Hispanic and Southeast Asian population. Between December 1999 and November 2003, a very productive partnership was nurtured between the Stockton Police NIBIN Lab, various Investigative Units within the Stockton Police Department and a California Department of Justice Forensic Laboratory. IBIS Specialists at the Stockton Police NIBIN Lab worked in collaboration with Stockton Investigators and forensic experts at the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services in Ripon, using IBIS and the NIBIN database to cultivate actionable intelligence from test fires from recovered firearms and a collection of various items of ballistics evidence. The work focused on an abhorrent series of violent crimes that were committed by Cambodian street gangs. Some are aligned together, some with other gangs, and some align with no one. One gun dubbed the “Bottle Cap Gun” had a particularly active role to play as the NIBIN database tracked its path of destruction through one gang-related shooting incident after another, before it was finally taken off the street by police.

The Stockton collaboration remains a sustainable model of how dedicated people, efficient processes, and innovative technology, can work together to effectively solve firearm-related crimes, and remove armed and dangerous offenders from the neighborhoods upon which they prey.